Dimitri Van Limbergen

The role of overseas export and local consumption demand in the development of viticulture in central Adriatic Italy (200 BC – AD 150) : the case of the Ager Potentinus and the wider Potenza valley

The history of Italy’s wine industry between the end of the Second Punic War (218–201bc) and the High Imperial period (late 1st–2nd century ad) has long been described in terms of a boom-and-bust cycle, driven mainly by overseas exports and provincial import replacement.1 In a now classic narrative, Rome’s progressive conquest of theMediterranean in theLateRepublicanperiod (200– 30bc) generated enormous markets in both East and West that consisted not only of Roman colonists andmilitarymen on campaign, but also of local elites, keen to emulate thenew fashions, habits and status symbols introduced in their regions by Italian merchants and businessmen. This very favourable conjuncture offered financially robust farmers and other entrepreneurial individuals in central Italy the opportunity to specialize in the production of highly profitable ‘cash crops’ such as grapes (and olives), and thus to intensify their cultivation through the introduction of a comprehensive system of more systematic land management. Viticulture in particular was in that context a highly remunera-