To browse Academia. The paper explores the underappreciated significance of maritime infrastructure during the Roman Empire, challenging the focus on land-based systems prevalent in modern scholarship. It highlights the incomplete understanding of funding and development processes, emphasizing the blurred lines between public and private initiatives in maritime infrastructure projects. Through analysis of historical documents and evidence, the study reveals the complexity and diversity of maritime infrastructure, suggesting a significant level of technological advancement and investment that has been overlooked in traditional historiography.
The purpose of this study is to analyse regional trajectories in Mediterranean coastal developments between ca. The aim is to test the proposition that the development of harbour infrastructure should be followed by a decline in shipwrecks around coastal areas. Economically speaking, investing in harbours would result in faster and safer transhipment areas, and would enable regions to cope better with intensifying trade while the high costs of harbour infrastructure or lighthouses would be offset by the reduction in the loss of ships, and hence loss of capital.
In reality, the relationship between shipwreck data and local harbour infrastructure in the ancient Mediterranean is far more complex. Here we discuss two coastal regions, central Tyrrhenian Italy and southern France.
We suggest the realization of a need for the substantial development of infrastructure in order to cope with intensifying trade, is a phenomenon that predates the Roman Imperial period.
This paper aims to compare ancient and modern port structures hoping that the modern can help us in a better understanding of the ancient, with special focus on breakwaters and quay walls. The oldest known port structures are briefly presented. Vertical breakwaters and quays, large concrete blocks, pilae and arched breakwaters, piling walls, cofferdams, rubble mound breakwaters and river training walls are described in the ancient and in the modern world.
