‘Exhausted by Fishermen’s Nets’ Roman Sea Fisheries and their Management

In the last few centuries BC and first centuries AD, during the late Republic and early Empire, the number of Roman territories increased throughout the Mediterranean. With this socio-political expansion, economic stability and prosperity also increased, as did the population of Rome and its settlements. In the third-second centuries BC, new colonies were established in the ora maritima (the Tyrrhenian coastal zones in Campania and Latium) and throughout the Italic peninsula as well as the western islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.1 A majority of these new population centres were fortuitously situated on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which provided a major source of food. A variety of evidence depicts increased demand for seafood and increased fishing activity, but also observable population decline in the Tyrrhenian fisheries. Particularly by the early Empire, in the first century AD, the human response to these changes is traceable in the archaeo-historic record.