Professor Andrew Wilson

Professor Andrew Wilson

Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire
Archaeology, Classics

Andrew Wilson is Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire at the University of Oxford (since 2004). His research focuses on the Roman economy, ancient technology, Roman gold mining, urbanism and settlement. He is co-director (with Alan Bowman) of the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OxREP), and (with Chris Howgego) of the OxREP-Ashmolean Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire project; and he is also Principal Investigator of the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project (EAMENA).

Links
Email: andrew.wilson@arch.ox.ac.uk
ORCID
Oxford Academia Profile
Google Scholar Profile
The Oxford Roman Economy Project
Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire
EAMENA Database
Research Areas
The Archaeology of the Roman Economy
Roman Mining
Ancient Technology
Ancient Water Management
Ancient Plagues and Diseases
The Archaeology of the Third-century Crisis

Selected Publications

Catastrophes in Context: Disaster and Response in the Roman and Early Byzantine World. Turnhout, Brepols.

Raja, R. and Wilson, A. I. (eds) (2026)

The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project

Wilson, A. I. and Russell, B. (2024). (Aphrodisias 14). Wiesbaden, Reichert Verlag.

The Economy of Roman Religion (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy).

Wilson, A. I., Ray, N. and Trentacoste, A. (eds) (2023). Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Simulating Roman Economies: Theories, Methods, and Computational Models (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy).

Brughmans, T. and Wilson, A. I. (eds) (2022). Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Wilson, A. I. (2022). ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events: The end of classical urbanism in southwestern Asia Minor in the early seventh century AD’

M. Whitby and P. Booth (eds), Mélanges James Howard-Johnston (Travaux et mémoires 26), 565–594. Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance.

Wilson, A. I. (2020). ‘Roman water-power: chronological trends and geographical spread’

P. Erdkamp, K. Verboven and A. Zuiderhoek (eds), Capital, Investment, and Innovation in the Roman World (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy), 147–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Teaching

I give various lectures on Roman Archaeology: "Roman Archaeology: Cities and Settlement under the Empire", in Michaelmas Term; "The Archaeology of the Roman Economy" in Hilary Term, and other Roman courses as required.

At Masters level I teach options on Greek and Roman Landscape Archaeology, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy, and the Middle Imperial Period (AD 70–250).

Featured Research

Plague image by Katherine Hearne

25 Minutes on...Plagues

The '25 Minutes on...' series draws on the range of expertise among All Souls Fellows, some of them established leaders in their fields, others elected early in their careers for the promise of becoming so. Here, five of the College’s Fellows discuss their research on the theme of Plagues, each from a very different angle: the earliest known outbreaks among prehistoric hunter-gatherers; the epidemic that helped precipitate a crisis in the Roman Empire; the ways institutions have handled contagion from the Black Death to Covid; the mathematical modelling of pandemics; and the modern threat of antimicrobial resistance. The talks are intended for a general audience and assume no specialist knowledge.
Roman military camps

‘Spectacular’ new find: Roman military camps in desert found by Oxford archaeologists using Google Earth

Three new Roman fortified camps have been identified across northern Arabia by a remote sensing survey by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology. Their paper, published in the journal Antiquity, reports the discovery may be evidence of a probable undocumented military campaign across south east Jordan into Saudi Arabia.

Other Research

Trading across the Syrtes: Euesperides and the Punic world
2013 | Chapter | AMPHORAE - GREEK
9 Approaches to Quantifying Roman Trade
25th June 2009 | Chapter | 4301 Archaeology
Water supply in the Roman period: aqueducts and cisterns
2009 | Chapter | AQUEDUCTS AQUEDUCTS - NORTH AFRICA CISTERNS CISTERNS - ROMAN DJERBA JERBA ROMAN ROMAN PERIOD TIME TUNISIA WATER WATER-SUPPLY
Site recovery rates and the ancient population of the Biferno Valley
2008 | Chapter | ANCIENT ARCHAEOLOGY BIFERNO VALLEY SURVEY DEMOGRAPHY FIELD SURVEY ITALY LANDSCAPE OXFORD POPULATION
Hydraulic Engineering
2008 | Chapter | AQUEDUCTS CISTERNS DRAINAGE ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY - ANCIENT WORLD TECHNOLOGY - GREEK TECHNOLOGY - ROMAN WATER-LIFTING DEVICES WATER-SUPPLY WELLS
Machines
2008 | Chapter | ECONOMY - ROMAN ENGINEERING GREEK MACHINE MACHINES MASS PRODUCTION MECHANICS MECHANISMS ROMAN TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY - ANCIENT WORLD TECHNOLOGY - GREEK TECHNOLOGY - ROMAN TRADE
The problem of water supply
2008 | Chapter | AQUEDUCTS MOROCCO NORTH AFRICA THAMUSIDA WATER WATER-SUPPLY
Economy and trade
2008 | Chapter | Roman Empire
The uptake of mechanical technology in the ancient world: the water-mill (OXREP working paper)
2007 | Other | TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY - ANCIENT WORLD TECHNOLOGY - ROMAN WATER-MILLS
The metal supply of the Roman Empire
2007 | Chapter | COINAGE ECONOMY - ROMAN EMPIRE METAL METAL SUPPLY METALS MINING MONEY SUPPLY ROMAN ROMAN EMPIRE ROME