It’s been a while, but here’s finally a new episode of the Ancient World Magazine podcast. In this episode, Dr Joshua Hall talks with Dr Ulla Rajala (Stockholm University) about Early Rome, with special reference to a number of books that have recently been published on this topic.

The first of these books is Nicola Terrenato’s The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas (2019). The second is Gabriele Cifani’s The Origins of the Roman Economy: From the Iron Age to the Early Republic in a Mediterranean Perspective (2021). Both books have been published by Cambridge University Press.

The discussion also includes a reference to The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and in particular to Christopher Smith’s review of the book, which you can read for yourself on his website.