River Ecologies and Exchange
American Academy in Rome
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Roma
Data evento
28 April 2026
On 28 April, the American Academy in Rome will host an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine how riverscapes changed in the centuries of the Roman empire and afterwards and what those changes meant for human societies and their economies. The conference, River Ecologies and Exchange, draws on geology, archaeology, and history to reconstruct major river systems and trace their evolving relationships with the communities that lived alongside them.
Participants will present new research on a range of interconnected themes: the resettling of river valleys following demographic and political upheaval; the silting of ports and the decline of riverine infrastructure; the long-term consequences of Roman land clearances on fluvial environments; and the transition from monetized to non-monetary exchange systems in the post-Roman world. Four major river systems will serve as the focus of comparative analysis—the Tiber, the Po, the Ebro, and the Nile—examined across the longue durée from approximately 100 to 1500 CE.
The meeting brings together the disciplines of geology, archaeology, and history to interrogate large scale changes over long time periods. By combining the evidence of sediment cores and field survey with documentary sources and numismatic data, the conference aims to produce a richer, more integrated picture of how rivers shaped and were reshaped by human activity in the premodern world, and in turn the role of rivers in inland commerce as Mediterranean commerce waxed and waned.