Twentieth-Century Italian Scholarship on Roman Craftsmen, Traders and their Professional Organizations

This chapter sketches the development of Italian scholarship on the theme in, specifically, the twentieth century. It emphasizes how political developments on a national level, both in the fascist era and in the post-war decades, had a decisive influence on the way in which Italian scholars discussed Roman crafts and trade. The chapter particularly highlights the importance of the Marxist turn in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which led to a lot of initiatives aimed at promoting the study of everyday economic life. At the same time, the chapter argues that Italian scholarship has, in the last twenty years, increasingly integrated itself into international debates.