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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEXCORE (The Digest and the Exploitation of the Countryside in the Western Roman Empire (2d cent. BC-3rd cent. AD).Evidence of the water control)

Teaser

Summary

Control of lands and of natural resources are foundational to the economy of the Roman world. Concerning more specifically the agricultural exploitation the crucial issues of drainage and irrigation are paradoxically under-represented in traditional written sources, whereas jurisprudential texts of the Digest constitutes an abundant and detailed material on the subject but still insufficiently explored by historians. : the the Digest. The objective of the project was therefore to demonstrate how relevant the study of Roman texts, composed from the 2nd c. BC to the 3rd c. AD and compiled under Justinian in the 6th c., is for our understanding of the Roman water management, in a twofold approach: first, to establish a methodology for the historical exploitation of the jurisprudential texts; second, to apply it to case studies in Italy, Africa and Spain. The investigations showed that legal texts on water sharing and water diversions were part of a large set of solutions developed to cope with hydraulic risks along administrative and technical responses. The choice of private individuals and local communities to resort to one or the other depended on the environmental, institutional and economical context.
Water control raised a great interest from the ancient jurists who, from the 2nd c. BC onwards, provided sophisticated legal solutions for the exploitation of the resource and for the management of hydraulic risks (shortage, floods, and erosion). At the same period, Romans started to rule over new territories and peoples who had developed their own solutions to cope with their environment and conflicts emerged between the global (i.e. the Roman Empire) and the local level. This historical process is extremely topical as we observe todayâ€™s difficulties to reconcile local and global interests, and to integrate local and global regulatory systems. In this regard, contemporary examples are plenty: conflicts over the global warming, the fossil fuel industries or the management of the Amazonian forest. The challenging implementation of overarching legal solutions is at the heart of international negotiations. It is the case of the Paris Agreement on climate change, approved in 2016 by 195 countries. The possible withdrawal of the USA from the agreement clearly shows the potentiality for conflicts between local and global environmental interests.

Work performed

A comparison between the legal treatment of flood and earthquake risks has shown that the management of hydraulic risks is made possible by the identification of the human vulnerability. Agricultural practices were indeed well identified as posing a possible threat to the neighbouring plots. The analysis of the texts shows a clear acknowledgement, in the Roman world, that acting upon the human behaviours was more efficient than trying to control the natural hazards themselves. This result has been presented at Viennaâ€™s Forum Antike seminar in December 2018, and then turned into a paper submitted to the Journal of Roman Studies. The regulation of social, technical and economic practices was enforced by public policy, but the protection of their interests by private individuals was equally instrumental in this process for which procedural tools were developed by Roman jurists. This conclusion is proposed in a contribution in press in the Proceedings of a conference held in Berlin in 2017 and co-edited by the fellow and Prof. Cosima MÃ¶ller (FU Berlin).
On the methodological level, jurisprudential sources illustrate: firstly, the perception that human practices may increase the risks and that it was more efficient to act on the human behaviour than to try and control the natural hazard; secondly, the acknowledgement that private individuals, while protecting their private interests, were the best in managing the risks for the benefit of the whole community. The investigation was then directed towards the case studies. While central Italy and the Ebro Valley, in Spain, have been carefully considered, the case of Africa and especially of the Medjerda wadi (Tunisia) still needs to be explored.
In central Italy, the fellow proposes that access to water provided by land servitudes were primarily designed for small, intensively cultivated plots devoted to market gardening around the metropolis. The most favoured areas were in the valleys, where the proximity of navigable rivers facilitated the transportation of goods towards the urban market. The pressure on natural resources was high in this kind of suburban landscape and the jurists were asked to regulate the competition for accessing the water (see M. Ronin Â« Sharing Water in the Roman Countryside: Environmental Issues, Economic Interests and Legal Solutions Â», Water Management in Ancient Civilizations, Jonas Berking Ã©d., Berlin, 2018). On the contrary, it is proposed that the legal action to ward off rainwater was developed for the exploitation of terraced landscapes, which became crucial in the supplying of Rome with the expansion of cultivated areas towards the nearby hillsides in the 2nd c. BC. The main concern, there, was not to access water, easily stocked in reservoirs and cisterns, but to prevent waterlogging and erosion. By shaping the sophisticated and detailed features of the legal action to ward off water, jurists help to prevent these risks.
In Spain, the Ebro valley constitutes the example of a landscape comparable with the Tiber Valley, where irrigation was necessary to intensive cultivations, presumably destined to long-distance (and maybe overseas) export. On the rural territory of the colony of Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), the Roman administration provided the institutional framework for irrigation communities along the river. The existence of these communities was besides authorized by the legal status that Romans granted to a public river like the Ebro: the water was freely accessible to riverside landowners.

Final results

The fellowship was the opportunity for the fellow to discuss scientific and career issues with the PI, who has also offered valuable advice for the enhancement of the fellowâ€™s publication activity in international journals. The fellow was fully integrated into the life and activities of the host institution. She has established excellent contact with peers and more experienced researchers. She has developed a long-term scientific project based on the key issue of the control and exploitation of natural resources under the Roman administration. It was successfully presented by the fellow in her application for a permanent position of researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, and she was subsequently offered a position to start in October 2019.
Our understanding of issues linked with the management of natural resources and risks in the Roman Empire is highly relevant for todayâ€™s society. The fellowâ€™s engagement with students during the Oxfordâ€™s Faculty of Classics Open days and teaching activities clearly focused on the idea that the Roman example not only provides a historical model of integration of different regulatory systems, but also reveals how, twenty centuries ago, were implemented legal solutions which are, for some, still in use in the countries of roman law tradition in Africa, South America and Europe.