Roman urban crafts

This is a revised and supplemented edition of a dissertation, defended in 2015 at the Department of Archaeology of the Historical Faculty in Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.

The two-chambered updraught kiln is the most widespread and identifiable variant among the ceramic firing installations throughout the Mediterranean in Antiquity. Its popularity owes to its fine technical properties, as well as the long-established traditions in the manufacture of clay-made artefacts.
The present dissertation explores the development and distribution of the two-chambered ceramic kilns in the territory of modern Bulgaria during the 1st – 6th century. For that purpose, published and unpublished data for ceramic kilns is studied, from the time of their appearance in Thrace in the course of the Late Iron Age until the end of Late Antiquity. The catalogue comprises detailed information for 289 kilns dated to the Roman and Late Antique periods. The acquired data base provides ground for the identification of the construction techniques and materials used in the erection of these structures, and to distinguish those of the former which appeared in today’s Bulgarian lands after the Roman conquest. The developed typology for the two-chambered kilns under discussion is based on the floor plan of the combustion chamber and the type of support for the perforated floor. The last chapter of the dissertation is dedicated to the archaeologically attested production centres and workshops from the 1st – 6th century and includes an attempt for the clarification of the chronological limits of their operation, together with a proposition for a periodisation scheme of ceramic production in the considered time period.
Between the second half of the 1st and the beginning of the 7th century the two-chambered kilns were the most frequently used ceramic firing structures in today’s Bulgarian territory. The number of studied kilns from this chronological period is significantly larger in comparison to those from the previous and the next one – respectively the Late Iron Age and the Middle Ages. This fact could be explained with the considerable demand for fine and coarse wheel-made pottery during the Roman and the Late Antique periods, together with the large-scale urbanisation and fortification activities carried out in that time, which required a great amount of ceramic building material. The two-chambered updraught kilns were the optimal – and sometimes the only – variant for the firing of both types of goods.
The influences on the development and organisation of ceramic production in the 1st – 6th century owed to the infiltration of new population, the urbanisation projects carried out by central authorities, and, in general, to the incorporation of this craft in the Empire’s economy. Being intrinsic part of it, the manufacture of ceramic goods also experienced the negative effects of the multiple military conflicts in the studied time period, some of which may serve as chronological limits for certain phases of its development.

A fiercely debated aspect of Pompeii's history, is the nature of the city's textile economy. This paper presents a new perspective, in which the Pompeian textile economy is contextualized and discussed in relation to local, regional and supra-regional economic networks.

In many respects, the funerary relief of Philonicus and Demetrius (inventory number BM 1954,1214.1) is typical of the monuments erected by Roman freedmen in that it commemorates its subjects via their professional identities as craftsmen. Yet previous studies have thus far been unable to provide a cohesive interpretation of its iconography, thereby limiting the insights that this monument can offer. This article will address this by providing a systematic reinterpretation of the contents of this relief by comparing its imagery with that of archaeological finds and the reliefs of other craftsmen. Much of the confusion surrounding this relief stems from its use of familiar iconographic features in an unfamiliar way, with the layout of its imagery providing a complete narrative of their identity. This reinterpretation reveals Philonicus and Demetrius' shared identities as specialized blacksmiths who were employed by the Roman state as manufacturers of woodworking tools, providing several important insights into the professional lives of such craftsmen within the early empire.

This article examines the evidence for production activities in the cities of Roman North Africa and shows how the importance of urban craft production has been largely overlooked in many discussions of the ancient economy. It is usually difficult to determine the true scale of urban production activities without extensive excavation, since workshops were often quite small; they may, however, have been numerous and scattered throughout a city. Excavations of the scale required are rarely achievable with today's techniques; two sites excavated in the first half of the twentieth century, however, reveal a situation characterized by a number of workshops: 22 fulleries at Timgad and 18 establishments for salting fish in Sabratha. Urban surface survey is suggested here as the best method to investigate sites where it is feasible, in order to identify the extent of the deposits of waste production, with the help of geophysical surveys to locate ovens and furnaces, and excavation to investigage specific areas. This combination of techniques has been successfully tested at Leptiminus, Meninx and Thamusida, and has allowed us to identify the presence of production activities for ceramics, metal working, and the extraction of purple dye. The evidence emerging from recent archaeological investigations suggests that the contribution of craft manufacture to the economy of Roman cities was potentially significant, while the aggregate scale of production in the sites discussed indicates a much larger role for craft activities than has usually been considered. The model of the 'consumer city' does not seem suitable for many Roman cities, and attempts to describe the economy of Roman urbanism should pay more attention to the role of cities in networks of local, regional, and long-distance trade.

Questo articolo esamina l'evidenza per le attività industriali nelle città del nord Africa romano e dimostra come l'importanza della produzione artigianale urbana sia stata largamente sottovalutata in molte discussioni di economia antica. Di solito è difficile stabilire la giusta scala delle attività produttive urbane senza effettuare degli scavi estensivi, visto che i laboratori erano molto spesso piuttosto piccoli; ciò non toglie che essi potrebbero essere stati comunque numerosi e distribuiti all'interno della città. Scavi della estensione necessaria non sono irrealizzabili con le tecniche odierne; due siti scavati nella prima metà del ventesimo secolo hanno infatti portato alla luce un quadro caratterizzato da numerosi laboratori: 22 fulloniche a Timgad e 18 stabilimenti per la salatura del pesce a Sabratha. La ricognizione di superficie viene qui indicata come il metodo migliore per effettuare ricerche nei siti che lo consentono, al fine di identificare l'ampiezza dei depositi di rifiuti di fabbricazione, con l'aiuto di indagini geofisiche per trovare forni e fornaci, e scavi di alcune aree specifiche. Questo tipo di tecniche è stato sperimentato con successo a Leptiminus, Meninx e Thamusida, e ha permesso di identificare la presenza di attività di produzione ceramica, lavoro dei metalli e dell'industria per l'estrazione della porpora per la tintura. L'evidenza che emerge dalle recenti indagini archeologiche suggerisce che il contributo dell'industria cittadina all'economia delle città antiche fosse potenzialmente significativo, mentre la scala di produzione nei siti discussi indica un carattere artigianale della vita di queste città molto più consistente di quanto non sia stato di solito ritenuto. Il modello della 'città di consumo' non sembra adattarsi completamente a molte delle città romane, e i tentativi di descrizione dell'economia dell'urbanismo romano dovrebbero prestare più attenzione al ruolo delle città nelle reti di commercio locale, regionale e su lunga distanza.

London was the administrative centre for, and largest city in, Roman Britain. After centuries of excavation, Londinium is one of the best understood cities in the Empire. London is also home to one of the most exceptional collections of craft and agricultural tools in the Roman world.
This book provides a complete illustrated catalogue and analysis of 837 Roman tools from London. Many are exceptionally well preserved, some are unknown elsewhere, and most have not previously been published. A detailed typological discussion synthesises decades of developments in French and German literature with new insights from the London material.
Taking a social focus, this book moves beyond typological analysis to show how Roman artefacts can illuminate the lives of ordinary people. Using a framework of practice theory, this book explores the lives of Roman craft and agricultural workers in London; a diverse and changing group which has rarely been examined previously.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the archaeology of textile productionin North Africa. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence for the production and dyeing of textiles, to assess how we may distinguish between the remains of fulling establishments and dyeworks, and between different kinds of dyeing; and to see what can be deduced about the scale and organisation of production. It must be stressed that such a picture will necessarily remain very sketchy until more sites have been excavated with a view to answering these sorts of questions. Because minor finds such as spindlewhorls, loomweights and needles from North African sites are rarely and poorly published, I shall focus on the evidence for physical plant and infrastructure, which is necessarily related primarily to the stages of fulling and dyeing. This is essentially an archaeology of soaking and trampling; both fulling and dyeing require vats and tubs. Fulling involves trampling cloth in tubs in a detergent solution to remove the lanolin from the fibres, followed by rinsing in vats, and then drying, carding, bleaching and pressing. The vats and tubs have no need to be heated. Dyeing, however, may well involve heating the solution, and may not have involved treading or trampling. Sites discussed in this paper include Timgad, Thuburbo Maius, Tiddis, Cuicul (Djemila) Hippo Regius, Meninx, and Berenice (Benghazi).

The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the places where they worked in the city, and their everyday lives on the shop floor and beyond.

Through focusing on the lower segments of society, Flohr uses everyday work as the major organizing principle of the narrative: the volume discusses the decisions taken by those responsible for the organization of work, and how these decisions subsequently had an impact on the social lives of people carrying out the work. It emphasizes how socio-economic differences between cities resulted in fundamentally different working lives for many of their people, and that not only were economic activities shaped by Roman society, they in turn played a key role in shaping it.

Using an in-depth and qualitative analysis of material remains related to economic activities, with a combined study of epigraphic and literary records, this volume portrays an insightful view of the socio-economic history of urban communities in the Roman world.

Abschlussarbeit (B.A.) über die eisenmetallurgischen Fundstellen im römischen Aachen sowie dem näheren Umland. Besondere Beachtung erhielt eine Grabungsmaßnahme in der Antoniusstraße (Altstadt Aachen), bei der drei Rennofen-Befunde angetroffen wurden.

Seit mehr als 150 Jahren üben die spätantiken Gläser mit graviertem Figurendekor durch die Vielfalt der auf ihnen dargestellten Bildthemen und die beigefügten Inschriften eine besondere Faszination aus. An der Schnittstelle von Glasforschung, Archäologie und Epigraphik stehen sie im Fokus unterschiedlicher Forschungsdisziplinen. Eine ganzheitliche interdisziplinäre Erschließung dieser Materialgruppe fehlte jedoch bislang.
Das vorliegende zweibändige Werk präsentiert erstmals den gesamten heute international greifbaren Bestand (Katalog), der, basierend auf einer einheitlichen modernen Dokumentation, neu diskutiert und bewertet wird (Textband). Einen Schwerpunkt bildet die lange vernachlässigte Erörterung der Herstellungstechnik. Die aus Mikroskopaufnahmen und durch 3-D-Messverfahren gewonnenen Erkenntnisse bieten noch nie dagewesene Einblicke in die Handwerkskunst der Glasgravur und Forschern die Möglichkeit einer besseren Zuweisung von Neufunden zu bestimmten Stilgruppen.

ISBN: 978-3-7954-3548-6
https://www.schnell-und-steiner.de/artikel_10311.ahtml

Es handelt sich um die publizierte Dissertation der Autorin.

The late antique figure engraved glasses have already fascinated several generations of researchers due to the variety of their images and the accompanying inscriptions. At the crossroads of glass research, archaeology and epigraphy, they are the focus of various research disciplines. However, a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to this group has been lacking until now.
The present two-volume work presents for the first time the entire inventory, which is internationally accessible today (catalogue volume). Based on a modern documentation, the figure engraved glasses are discussed and evaluated anew (text volume). One main topic is the long neglected discussion of the production technique. The knowledge gained from microscope photographs and by means of 3-D measuring techniques offers unprecedented insights into the craftsmanship of glass engraving and allows researchers to better assign new finds to specific style groups.

This is the published dissertation of the author.

"This paper examines a group of workshops revealed by clearance excavations in the 1920s-1940s at the Roman city of Sabratha in Libya. The excavations of the domestic and commercial quarters around the forum were never published, but among the remains still visible at the site are at least 18 workshops characterised by groups of 2, 3 or 4 vats whose size and arrangement closely recalls those at known fish-salting factories along the Tunisian coast. It is proposed that the workshops at Sabratha are also for salting fish, or for garum production, or both. The workshops have surprisingly little space for preparation or other activities, and in this respect are closer to the small fish-salting workshops recently discovered at Pompeii than to the large factories of the Straits of Gibraltar.
This paper presents the evidence for the workshops, and discusses the reasons for their interpretation as fish-salting establishments, and their possible date. Some reflections are offered on the possible capacities of the workshops, and the nature of their products. The wider significance of the Sabratha fish-salting establishments is that, like the larger workshops of Baelo Claudia, Pompeii, Tyritake and Chersonesos, they provide further evidence for urban-based production of salted fish products."

"This paper proposes a new identification of a mosaic workshop of Late Antiquity in the Near East. Two mosaic pavements, that is, the mosaic of the Bath of Achilles discovered forty years ago in room 40 of the Villa of Theseus in Nea Paphos, Cyprus, and the renowned representation of the Life of Alexander from the
Villa of Patrikios in Baalbeck, published by M. Chéhab in 1958, display many similarities which leave no doubt that both of them were made by the same mosaic workshop. In the first half of the 5th century, like during the whole Roman period, Cypriot mosaics were closely linked with those of the Syro-Palestinian coastal area. The author suggests also a new date of execution of the mosaic from Baalbeck in the first half of the 5th century."

"This paper proposes a new identification of a mosaic workshop of Late Antiquity in the Near East. Two mosaic pavements, that is, the mosaic of the Bath of Achilles discovered forty years ago in room 40 of the Villa of Theseus in Nea Paphos, Cyprus, and the renowned representation of the Life of Alexander from the
Villa of Patrikios in Baalbeck, published by M. Chéhab in 1958, display many similarities which leave no doubt that both of them were made by the same mosaic workshop. In the first half of the 5th century, like during the whole Roman period, Cypriot mosaics were closely linked with those of the Syro-Palestinian coastal area. The author suggests also a new date of execution of the mosaic from Baalbeck in the first half of the 5th century."

The completed PhD thesis was based on the analysed information for 265 ceramic kilns, excavated in the modern territory of Bulgaria and dated to the 1st – 6th c. AD. In addition, more than 20 pottery kilns from the Pre-Roman period in the same region were examined. The complex results from this survey led to the following conclusions. 
The earliest two-chambered updraught kilns excavated in Bulgaria were dated to the beginning of the Late Iron Age. After the Roman conquest in the first half of the 1st century AD these structures became the most popular among the ones used for the firing of clay made objects.
During the Roman and Early Byzantine periods two major techniques of kiln building were in use. The main feature of the first one was the employment of the natural soil as a building material, used for the design of most of the kiln components. The second technique was characterized by the use of large amount of building materials for the same purpose, mainly bricks, tiles, less frequently stones, prefabricated ceramic elements, ceramic pipes and mud bricks.
Great diversity was attested in the types of kilns in use at that time. The newly established typology comprised four types and seventeen subtypes of structures with round or quadrangular plan of the combustion chamber.
In the time between the second half of the 1st and the last decades of the 3rd c. AD most of the workshops and production centres were established along important roads and in rural settlements. The ones from the northern part of nowadays Bulgaria were supplying both the local population and the Roman military units, most of the latter stationed along the Danubian limes.
After the end of the 3rd and until the beginning of the 7th c. AD pottery manufacture was organized on a smaller scale, usually in towns and fortified settlements. On the contrary, there was a development in the production of building ceramics, especially during the 4th c. AD, which was probably related to building activities initiated by the authorities.

Bone, antler, ivory, horn and tooth artefacts from the early Roman (50 BC - AD 50) town "old Virunum" on the Magdalensberg in southern Noricum / Austria. Material culture studies, including typology, chronology, numerous parallels, bone and antler manufacturing, raw materials.

This article continues the author’s paper The fibula production of Brigetio: clay moulds published in Dissertationes Archaeologicae 3.8 (2020). The main aim of this paper is the presentation of a model plus several semi-finished and waste fibulae from Brigetio, adding to our knowledge about the fibula production of this archaeological site. The objects belong to the types of the Norico–Pannonian winged fibula, Pannonian trumpet fibula, knee fibula and crossbow fibula. Their types and detailed descriptions are presented. The local distribution of the fibula variants in Brigetio and Komárom-Esztergom County is also summarized.

Over the past decades, archaeological field surveys and excavations have greatly enriched our knowledge of the Roman countryside. Drawing on such new data, the volume The Economic Integration of Roman Italy, edited by Tymon de Haas and Gijs Tol, presents a series of papers that explore the changes Rome’s territorial and economic
expansion brought about in the countryside of the Italian peninsula. By drawing on a variety of source materials (e.g. pottery, settlement patterns, environmental data), they shed light on the complexity of rural settlement and economies on the local, regional and supraregional scales. As such, the volume contributes to a re-assessment of Roman economic history in light of concepts such as globalization, integration, economic performance and growth.

PDF contains: resumen español / résumé français / abstract italiano / resumo português.

Due to size limits, the file on Academia.edu only has 150 dpi images; the file on OhioLINK is 300 dpi.

In the Augustan period, a group of workers built a series of fish-salting vats in Tuscany using virtually identical techniques as the team that installed a set of vats in southwest Spain a few generations earlier. How did this happen? The builders surely never met, so the resemblance between their constructions is remarkable. But even more striking is how common this phenomenon was among the countless ordinary, mundane structures found throughout the Roman world. The basic explanation for these similarities is simple: the knowledge that underpinned their design and construction spread from person to person and place to place. This, however, leaves many questions about the intricacies of the process unanswered.

In this dissertation I examine how the movement of knowledge among sub-elite communities shaped the construction of ancient industrial buildings. I introduce a “knowledge network analysis” framework—an analytical approach that I developed to focus attention on how knowledge moves through communities, setting people and the social ties that bind them at the forefront of my investigation. I critically examine ancient literary, epigraphic, iconographic, and archaeological evidence, complemented by comparative anthropological and sociological studies, to reconstruct who designed and built Roman workshops, how the requisite knowledge moved among them, and what socio-cultural factors shaped the links between them. I then apply this model to the archaeological remains of two Roman industries—fish-salting (food production) and fulling (cloth treatment)—which together encompass 405 workshops containing 2,829 pieces of equipment. I analyze patterns in their design and construction to deduce the contours of the “toolkits” of knowledge that were used to create them, and to deduce who used these toolkits and how they spread.

I determine that in each industry, both workshop managers and specialized builders contributed crucial know-how. As a result of the industries’ distributions and geospatial positions, however, their knowledge networks had distinct shapes. The workshops of the geographically concentrated fish-salting industry were similar and highly specialized; workshops in the scattered fulling industry were largely generic, but some specialized practices spread within social clusters. Finally, I show how the positions of these industries in their wider natural, social, cultural, and economic contexts further shaped the development of their knowledge networks. I explore aspects of the impact an industry’s processes and business model had on its distribution; the role of urbanism and the market economy in promoting knowledge transmission; the impact of intensive building activity on knowledge creation and movement; the reasons why specialized knowledge emerged; the limits of knowledge networks and the causes of regionalism; and the evolution of knowledge during periods of social, political, and economic upheaval.

By investigating systems of knowledge that were essential to the creation and use of spaces and objects, this study reveals part of the intellectual infrastructure of the Roman world. In doing so, it presents a new framework for reconstructing the spread of craft knowledge—one not restricted to the ancient Mediterranean—while speaking to the study of the sub-elite, architecture and construction, crafts and industrial spaces, the economy, and the provinces.

NOTE: For the data set, see https://www.academia.edu/50109245/A_Dataset_of_Roman_Fish_Salting_and_Fulling_Workshops