Medicine and Trade in the Classical World. University of Cambridge, 9-10 September 2019.

Conference in honour of Vivian Nutton.

University of Cambridge,

9-10 September 2019.

Organisers: Rebecca Flemming (Cambridge) and Laurence Totelin (Cardiff).

This conference aims to explore medicine and trade in the classical world in the light of new research into many aspects of the ancient economy. We invite paper proposals from those working primarily in medical or economic fields, in history, archaeology and classics, from graduate students, early career researchers and established scholars, with possible topics including (but not restricted to):

• long distance commerce and local networks of exchange involving medicinal items, exotic or mundane;

• the retail and purchase of such items (and the remedies they contributed to) in urban and rural locations;

• the ways medical practitioners and patients interacted with these goods and networks more generally;

• questions of state regulation around these trades and transactions;

• evidence for the nature of the substances moved, made and sold;

• more metaphorical or conceptual approaches to the relations between trade and medicine in antiquity.

We construe ‘Classical World’ pretty broadly in this case, as covering both the Greek and Roman worlds together with their many trading partners, from the archaic period to late antiquity. The plan is to enable and encourage wide cross-disciplinary debate and dialogue about and around the overlap between the medical and economic in this geographical and chronological frame, focusing on matters of trade and commerce.

Confirmed speakers include: Zosia Archibald (Liverpool); Petros Bouras-Vallianatos (Edinburgh); Matthew Cobb (Lampeter); Muriel Labonnelie (Dijon).