May, 2023 Research Update

Amici!  It is now June!

More correctly it is now more than a full week into June, so I apologize for this update coming late.  Here is a cat picture to make it up for y'all:

We're now properly into summer and so I've had the month of May to push forward on the book project and, to my considerable surprise, we seem to be back on schedule to have the entire planned package for book-contract-review ready by the end of June.

To go into a bit more detail on that, when I spoke to Oxford University Press' editor, he asked for 5-6 chapters, so I've opted to split the difference and do five chapters plus my chapter-length introduction.  In terms of sections, that is neatly 50% of the total planned scope; in terms of word count its a bit more than that because the chapters I've picked are some of the longer ones.

As you may recall, I laid out the planned organization of the project back in October (here); one change I've made since then is flipping the order of sections 2 and 3.  We're doing the Western Mediterranean first and the Eastern second.  My reasoning there is that the presence of mercenaries with La Tene material culture kit in Hellenistic armies is going to make it useful to do them first.  The chapters I'm planning to include in the review package are:

"Introduction: The Question and Its Answers" - Included because this is my 'literature review' that shows I am aware of the other ways the question of Roman military capacity has been answered in the past; it also sets up my different approach.

"Ch1: Farming Foundations" - Included because this is, in essence, my theory foundation, setting up how all economic activity depends on fungible agricultural resources (which might be extracted as money, manpower, labor, food supplies, etc.).

"Ch3: Bronze, Iron and Steel" - This is the chapter that covers the basics of equipment production (so I don't have to keep explaining bronze working in every single chapter), but it also makes my case for worked metal content as a useful lens for comparing the cost of different pieces of equipment.)

"Ch4: Gallic Military Equipment" - This chapter applies the method to Gallic military kit, reconstructing their stuff and assessing the resource demands.  The reason I include this is it is now the first reconstruction chapter, which means it has the section where I explain the methodology of the reconstruction.  I want a reviewer to see that in order to understand what I am doing.

"Ch10: Roman Military Equipment" - The same but for the Romans, this is in because it's the core of the argument and the point at which I can show that the Roman army really is heavier and more expensive.  That in turn sets up:

"Ch11: The Roman Mobilization System" - This chapter is in because it is the 'payoff' for the whole book, the point at which, having established that Roman armies cost more by functionally every metric, I at last explain how I think the Romans managed to do that.

I'm also including a revised version of the book proposal and a bibliography for the chapters in question.  I will note that the chapters are coming in fairly long; I made a choice early in drafting to let myself run a bit long on the assumption that it's easier to cut them back down again and that the risk of getting bounced on peer review because I shortened a chapter and left out details the reviewer was expecting is greater.

In terms of progress, the introduction and chapters 1, 3 and 11 are done; 4 and 10 remain in progress but both are close to finished now.  The main sections remaining to be written are the ones on mail armor, though there are some odds and ends I'm cleaning up too.  The same thing I am waiting for here is I've had some more CAD-reconstruction (using CAD software to digitally recreate an object from its published measurements to figure out how much it would have massed in iron when new; I had this done for a bunch of other objects earlier in the project so this is the second (really third) round) for some mail armor rings to beef up the mail section.  I'm hoping to get final versions of that in the next week or two, while in the meantime I finish and polish what is left.

Now as a reminder, once the proposal package is in, its likely to be 2-3 months before I know if the press is interested moving forward with a contract and that is hardly guaranteed!  We may end up having to revise and go through the process again with OUP, or just try again with a different press.  On the upside, if the first approach doesn't work, we'll still have all of these chapters in decent shape.

So getting these last chapters finished, the book proposal revised, everything looking nice and so on is the plan for June.  Beyond that, in theory I agreed to co-write an article on Roman strategy with Michael Taylor, so I'll be turning to try to make a contribution there.

Meanwhile in terms of teaching, my plans for next year have solidified; I'll be teaching at NCSU, doing ancient history and US Military History in the Fall and then ancient history (again) and US Naval History (again) in the Spring.  I'm a touch surprised by their need to have me do ancient history so much, since the department was hiring an ancient historian, but the rumor mill says that search failed (no one was hired).  Unclear if they will rerun the search (but as always, the chances of a department hiring their own non-tenure-track faculty is always very low for very stupid reasons).

In any case, that's the month.  There may be a bit more Firesides this month than usual as I try to focus on finishing up this stage of the book project.  That said, I'm hoping to do the next ACOUP Senate topic this month, which is a look at ancient colonization, particularly Greek and Carthaginian.

Alright, enough of that - back to work on footnotes!