Title: The Roman Atlantic: Ecology and Empire on an Ocean Frontier

Synopsis: This presentation explores the Atlantic façade of the Roman empire, stretching from the British isles to the northwest coast of Africa. It surveys the peculiar ecologies of this seascape and its various interfaces with the coast; examines the making of a distinctly 'Roman' Atlantic, which combined Phoenician and Greek geographical knowledge with Roman infrastructural development; and traces the changing commercial and cultural connectivities that tethered this peripheral region to a Mediterranean empire. It concludes with some more general propositions about how we might write oceanic histories of the ancient world.