The edited volume Epirus under the Romans: Economic Dynamics and the Countryside reassesses Epirus, a region long dismissed as peripheral within the Greco-Roman world. Moving beyond narratives of decline after 167 BC, the volume draws on archaeological and historical evidence to explore how the region was transformed, adapted and integrated into Roman economic structures.
The chapters investigate themes including the development of settlements and fortified centres before the Roman conquest, and the subsequent restructuring of rural territories through land division and the exploitation of agricultural and pastoral resources. They also examine the emergence of villae rusticae and large agricultural estates, and the foundation of Nicopolis as a dominant urban and economic hub. Case studies address trade and monetary circulation, shifting patterns of rural investment, and, in some areas, the resilience of inland and coastal economies. Further contributions draw on material culture, including mosaics, and on epigraphic evidence, while also developing spatial approaches to rural connectivity and widening the perspective through comparative discussion beyond the region.
Taken together, the volume demonstrates that Epirus was defined not by marginality within the Roman world, but by the interaction of its people and landscape, where pastoral and agricultural traditions were reconfigured within the wider economic systems of the Roman Mediterranean.