Mediterranean Families in Antiquity grew out of a conference on “The Mediterranean Family from Antiquity to Modern Times” held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, in 2012. The impetus was the classic 1984 article by Richard Saller and Brent Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers and Slaves” (Journal of Roman Studies 74: 124-156) (xi). Whether the nuclear family model was the predominant form of kin grouping in the Roman Empire was one of the guiding questions of the original conference. As an answer, the resulting volume puts on display a panorama of family formations in the ancient Mediterranean world of which the nuclear family was just one particular type.