The establishment of Christianity in the late- and post-Roman world caused an economic as well as a religious revolution, but, while a great deal of attention has been paid to the religious developments of the period, the impact of the establishment of the Church on the economy has attracted...

From the earliest times, the religious factor has said its word on several social systems. The social factor has been of great importance and relevance to the social construction of the communities as well as to the regulation of the various institutions I have chosen the ones that represent the...

The papers gathered in this volume explore the economic and social roles of exchange systems in past societies from a variety of different perspectives. Based on a broad range of individual case studies, the authors tackle problems surrounding the identification of (pre-monetary) currencies in...

Prologue -- Listening to the Silenced -- Part I: Introduction to Olympian Political Economy -- Property -- In Praise of the Homo Faber -- Interlude -- Olympianism and Democracy -- Unity in Democratic Action -- Part II: Olympian Culture System -- Ecumenism, Conviviality, and the Modality of...

From the sixteenth to early-nineteenth century, four times more Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. While this forced migration stripped slaves of their liberty, it failed to destroy many of their cultural practices, which came with Africans to the New World. In...

Material life in west and West Central Africa, 1650-1800 : an introduction -- Seeds of change : African agricultural workers in the Anglo-American colonies -- Cultivating knowledge : African tobacco and cotton workers in the Americas -- In an ocean of blue : West African indigo workers in the...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...