Preliminary notes on the economic analysis of the Graeco-Roman economies in a surplus approach perspective

Two previous papers (Cesaratto and Di Bucchianico 2021a, 2021b) proposed the classical economists’ surplus approach as a way to overcome the controversy between substantialists and formalists in anthropology and economic archaeology. In our approach, institutions play the role of control and regulation of the production and distribution of surplus in each given historical formation. Interestingly, the debate among economic historians on earlier economic formations has also seen a parallel fracture between the so-called primitivists and modernists. In this paper I will examine this controversy with reference to the Greco-Roman world. It is, of course, naive for newbies like us not only to hazard interpretations of those economies, but even to claim to know in depth any substantial part of the enormous literature and problems. With no presumption of completeness it has however been possible to identify a number of authors that are particularly authoritative and representative of the different points of view. While surveys are available on the literature reviewed here, my originality is in the classical surplus perspective I look at it