DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

Taco Terpstra is a socioeconomic historian of ancient Rome. His core research focuses on Roman economic development, imperial state formation, and imperial state governance. In addition, he has an active interest in Roman material culture, having worked as an archaeologist and field director in Pompeii and Stabiae. His research has further centered on the archaeological and papyrological evidence from Roman Egypt. He is the author of Rome and the Rise of the West: How the Roman Empire Shaped the Modern Economy (Princeton UP 2026); Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean: Private Order and Public Institutions (Princeton UP 2019); and Trading Communities in the Roman World: A Micro-Economic and Institutional Perspective (Brill 2013). His teaching includes courses on Roman sociopolitical and economic history, methodologies of historical inquiry, and the archaeology of Roman Campania.

View Taco Terpstra's Academia.edu profile

Research Interests: Roman economic development, imperial state formation, and imperial state governance, Roman material culture, archaeology, papyrology, Roman Campania, Roman Egypt

Selected Publications

Terpstra, T. 2026. Rome and the Rise of the West: How the Roman Empire Shaped the Modern Economy. Princeton University Press.

Terpstra, T. 2024. "Power and Its Trappings in the Han and Roman Bureaucracies." In Place and Performance in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China, edited by H. Beck and G. Vankeerberghen. 89-113. Cambridge University Press.

Terpstra T. 2024. “The Economics of Immorality: The U.S. Antebellum South, Stalinist Russia and the Roman Empire." In Models, Methods, and Morality: Assessing Modern Approaches to the Greco-Roman Economy, edited by S. Murray and S. Bernard, 125-149. Palgrave Macmillan.

Terpstra, T. 2021. “Mediterranean Silver Production and the Site of Antas, Sardinia,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 40, 2.

Terpstra, T. 2020. “Roman Technological Progress in Comparative Context: The Roman Empire, Medieval Europe and Imperial China,” Explorations in Economic History 75, 101300.

Terpstra T. 2020. “The Imperial Cult and the Sacred Bonds of Roman Overseas Commerce.” In Roman Port Societies: The Evidence of Inscriptions, edited by S. Keay and P.  Arnaud, 178-197. Cambridge.

Terpstra, T. 2019. Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean. Princeton University Press.

Terpstra, T. 2018. “Neo-Institutionalism in Ancient Economic History: The Road Ahead” In A Research Agenda for New Institutional Economics, edited by C. Ménard and M. Shirley, 233-240. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.