•  11
    The Adlocvtio at the Accession of the Roman Emperor
    Classical Quarterly 73 (1): 397-418. 2023.
    One of the most distinctive rituals of Roman imperial accession was the adlocutio, the speech delivered by the new emperor to a military assembly, which can be documented from the first to the fifth centuries a.d. This article seeks to explain the extraordinary endurance of this neglected genre of speech by examining its origins, setting and content. After outlining the unusual nature of the accession adlocutio when set against both earlier and contemporary Mediterranean practice, the first half…Read more
  •  9
    Seshat: The Global History Databank
    with Peter Turchin, Rob Brennan, Thomas Currie, Pieter Francois, Daniel Hoyer, Joseph Manning, Arkadiusz Marciniak, Daniel Mullins, Alessio Palmisano, Peter Peregrine, Edward A. L. Turner, and Harvey Whitehouse
    The vast amount of knowledge about past human societies has not been systematically organized and, therefore, remains inaccessible for empirically testing theories about cultural evolution and historical dynamics. For example, what evolutionary mechanisms were involved in the transition from the small-scale, uncentralized societies, in which humans lived 10,000 years ago, to the large-scale societies with an extensive division of labor, great differentials in wealth and power, and elaborate gove…Read more