The DOI matches its OpenAlex record; 16 of the 16 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy
Abstract
This paper explores, in a very preliminary fashion, the relationship in the ancient world between the design and use of mechanical technology, social or political patronage and investment, and economic return, using three main areas as case studies: water-lifting devices, the water-powered grain mill, and the diverse uses of water-power in mining. The emphasis is on the use of devices and techniques which replaced human power with alternative power sources, and especially on water-power for driving machinery and hydraulic mining techniques employing the erosive power of water. It is argued that water-power was used on a wide scale and in diversified forms at an early date (by the first century A.D.), and that the use of mechanical technology to perform economically critical work had an important impact on economic performance and the potential for per capita growth, especially in the latter centuries B.C. and the first two centuries A.D. Conversely, in the third century A.D. the cessation of the employment of hydraulic mining techniques enabling large-scale extraction of gold and other metals may have had an adverse economic impact on the economy as a whole. Growth and progress do not necessarily follow a linear pattern of advance; technologies are lost as well as adopted.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Pares, R. (1937) · The Economic History Review · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.1937.tb00915.x · Cited by 1,213
Hong, S., Candelone, J.-P., Patterson, C. C., & Boutron, C. F. (1994) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.265.5180.1841 · Cited by 715
Limet, H., & Forbes, R. J. (1966) · Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient · doi:10.2307/3595950 · Cited by 404
Hong, S., Candelone, J.-P., Patterson, C. C., & Boutron, C. F. (1996) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.272.5259.246 · Cited by 399
Rosman, K. J. R., Chisholm, W., Hong, S., Candelone, J.-P., & Boutron, C. F. (1997) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es970038k · Cited by 343
Mattingly, D. J. (1988) · Journal of Roman Archaeology · doi:10.1017/s1047759400009971 · Cited by 316
Technical Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World
Finley, M. I. (1965) · The Economic History Review · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.1965.tb01659.x · Cited by 309
Technological innovation and economic progress in the ancient world: M. I. Finley re‐considered
Greene, K. (2000) · The Economic History Review · doi:10.1111/1468-0289.00151 · Cited by 238
Madrider Mitteilungen 19 (1978)
Laet, D., & Sigfried, J. (1964) · L'Antiquité Classique · Cited by 172
Water supply for Roman farms in Latium and South Etruria
Thomas, R. K., & Wilson, A. I. (1994) · Papers of the British School at Rome · doi:10.1017/s0068246200010060 · Cited by 113
Self-citation
Cited by
Scheidel, W. (2007) · The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World · doi:10.1017/chol9780521780537.004 · Cited by 346
McConnell, J. R., Wilson, A. I., Stohl, A., Arienzo, M. M., Chellman, N. J., Eckhardt, S., Thompson, E. M., Pollard, A. M., & Steffensen, J. P. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1721818115 · Cited by 312
Self-citationPrice, S. J., Ford, J. R., Cooper, A. H., & Neal, C. (2011) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences · doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0296 · Cited by 250
Metadata
- Authors
- Wilson, A. I.
- Venue
- The Journal of Roman Studies
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2002-11-01
- Volume
- 92
- Pages
- 1-32
- ISSN
- 0075-4358 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4247487205
- Cited by
- 322
- References
- 16
- FWCI
- 7.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/s0075435800032135
- The paper
- Wilson, A. I. (2002). Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy. The Journal of Roman Studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0075435800032135
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
