Modern and ancient historians have long been willing to engage in the comparative analysis of ancient and modern slave-owning societies, yet archaeologists of both the Greek and Roman worlds have been far less willing to do the same. To the extent that they study slavery at all, they do so almost entirely within Graeco-Roman spatial and temporal confines. Taking Roman slavery as its starting point, this contribution attempts to remove some of the hurdles that archaeologists have placed in the way of a comparative analysis of slavery, and offers some suggestions for new ways forward.