This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For centuries, the study of ancient history relied primarily on interpreting classical texts and examining inscriptions and archaeological remains at their sites of origin or in museums. In recent years, however, a little-known transformation has profoundly changed this landscape.
The digitization of extensive archaeological collections, coupled with the development of quantitative methods that can integrate millions of scattered records, is ushering in a new era of historical research. Like other scientific disciplines that have benefited from processing colossal amounts of information, archaeology and history have entered the era of data science. Two researchers from the Regional and Urban Economics Lab at the University of São Paulo (NEREUS-USP) in Brazil have presented an example of this approach.
Using techniques from regional economics, spatial analysis, geographic information systems and large international archaeological databases, they reconstructed the monetary circulation of the Roman Republic, focusing on the period from 155 BCE to 2 CE, based on the remains of approximately 4 million coins found in excavations conducted over two centuries. Their study shows that the consolidation of Roman rule depended less on military conquest and more on the economic integration of the territories they conquered. The research was conducted by Eduardo Amaral Haddad, a professor at the School of Economics, Business and Accounting (FEA-USP), and Inácio Fernandes Araújo, currently a professor at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP).
The two authors published an article in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. The research seeks to understand how coins reflect the functioning of a growing economy, going beyond simply tracking their movement. "Each coin preserved by archaeology provides three key pieces of information: where it was minted, when it was produced, and where it was found some 2,000 years later.
Taken in isolation, that information reveals little. However, when millions of records are analyzed together, they can reveal the paths taken by money, the intensity of economic exchanges, the integration between different regions, and even the institutional evolution of one of the largest economies of antiquity," Haddad says. The project originated in 2014 when Haddad, already a professor at FEA-USP, took a sabbatical at Princeton University in the United States.
Although he was conducting research in economics, he began attending a weekly seminar organized by the Department of Classical Studies out of personal interest. "At one of those meetings, I attended a presentation of a study that used shipwreck remains and pottery shards to reconstruct trade networks in the ancient Mediterranean. Shortly thereafter, while exploring the university library, I found a catalog of Roman coins that contained the information I needed: the date of minting, the location where each coin was produced, and the site where it was found during archaeological excavations.
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