Archaeology:
Green....'the archaeology of the roman economy'
Millett...'the romanisation of britain'
Documentary:
G.E.M. de Ste. Croix...'the class struggle in the ancient greek world'
Love...'Antiquity and capitalism'
You might want to read max weber's 'the agrarian sociology of ancient
civilisations' (bit dated now)
karl marx 'pre-capitalist economic formations' (bit dated now)
(and this one is dead useful for lots of things)...Michael mann's 'the
sources of social power'
Well, if you can be bothered (i have to do it for my studies anyway).
It is interesting that the lunar empire has so many perspectives...good
or bad? it is the same with the roman empire and modern social scientists.
For example,
de Ste. Croix compared it to a primitive capitalist society, which
sought to enslave all and collapsed due to inherent contradictions
Rostovtzeff (who fled from stalin's USSR) saw it as an evil empire,
bent on statist policies (old rostovtzeff was a bit right wing you see)
Gibbon saw its demise due to a beneficient christianity (taking his lead
from
tacitus, who originally saw the barbaric germans as 'innocent,' and his
fellow romans as corrupt scumbags)
However, i would emphasise the need to remain critical - and at the
moment at least, the collapse of the empire does seem largely due to
economic failure (perhaps due to the present concern with economic
decline in the west?).
Dominic.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #580
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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