Economic Integration and Labor Organization in Roman Mining: The Question of Capitalism

This essay, via a case study of the early imperial mines of the Iberian Pyrite Belt (southern Lusitania and western Baetica), incorporates the study of Roman mining into wider discussions on the structure of the Roman economy and later capitalist mining enterprises by examining two aspects of Roman mining economies. First, it addresses the integration of imperial mining with private industries, arguing that the imperial economy both stimulated and depended upon local and, typically, privately organized economic activity for the supply of equipment, provision of food, and other services. Second, it explores the extent to which mining depended upon free labor and the ways in which free and slave labor were assimilated into the mining industry.