Panel 3.25 – Production of tiles and bricks


Organiser/Chair:

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Paper abstracts

1. Carlo De Domenico (University of Pisa)

Stamps for Buildings: Marking Roof Tiles and Architectural Terracottas in Greece from Archaic to late Roman Times
Inscribing building material has been a widespread craft practice of the workshops in Greece since the Archaic age to the late Roman times. Roof tiles and clay antefixes were usually marked before being baked with symbols and names to signal ownership, destination, guarantee of quality of the product and conformity to the official metrological standards.
This field of research in Greece has been little explored until now. Apart from the collection of stamps of Corfu (Kindt 1997) and Constantinople (Bardill 2004), my recent works on Athenian and Corinthian productions have attempted to shed a light on the role of the marks in the building industry of two crucial contexts of Greece (De Domenico 2015; eadem cds).
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the stamping process in the tile workshops: specifically I investigate its acquisition, development and spread in Attica and Peloponnese, and, through a comparative analysis on typologies of materials, categories of stamps, I pay particular attention to the principal centers of productions, Athens, Corinth and Sparta, and to the prosopography of the producers.

 

2. Luigi Vecchio (Università degli Studi di Salerno) / Luigi Cicala (Università di Napoli FEDERICO II)

I mattoni di Elea-Velia: archeologia ed epigrafia della produzione
L’analisi delle produzioni laterizie di Elea-Velia in età ellenistica, peculiari per forma e sistema di bollatura, viene affrontata, nell’ambito di un ampio progetto di ricerca, attraverso una lettura organica dei caratteri archeologici e epigrafici. La produzione, interessante per modalità e ampiezza, è caratterizzata da un elevato livello di standardizzazione, legato ad un intervento statale di particolare rilevanza. Lo studio, di cui si presentano i risultati finora raggiunti, propone, innanzitutto, una lettura contestuale, relativamente a messa in opera, tecniche edilizie, tipologie architettoniche, ciclo di vita e reimpiego. Viene poi preso in esame il sistema di bollatura che prevede due bolli: uno ‘variabile’ costituito dall’abbreviazione di un antroponimo, variamente interpretato (indicazione del magistrato o del proprietario o del gestore dell’officina), l’altro ‘costante’, composto dalla sigla delta-heta (abbreviazione dell’aggettivo demosios) che allude allo Stato. Elea-Velia si dimostra un osservatorio prezioso per lo studio dell’organizzazione della produzione laterizia in Magna Grecia, offrendo numerosi spunti di discussione sui criteri, le scelte operative e le figure di un “sistema” che coinvolge gran parte delle risorse artigianali della città.

"The Bricks of Elea/Velia: Archaeology and Epigraphy of Production" (Fulltext)

 

3. Heinz Sperling

Rekonstruktion von Betriebsmodellen antiker Produktionsanlagen mit Hilfe von Prozessketten-Analysen Methodik und Fallstudien bei der Ziegelherstellung in römischer Zeit
Analysen von Produktionsabläufen – und der zugehörigen Prozessketten – wurden hier dazu eingesetzt, quantitative Betrachtungen zum Produktionsgeschehen an Fundplätzen mit Ziegelbrennöfen anzustellen. Aussagen zu Mengen produzierter Ware, benötigter Rohstoffe, Personalbedarf und anderen Parametern des Betriebsablaufes werden dadurch für jeden Standort möglich.
Basis dieser interdisziplinären Methodik sind spezifische Werte je Aktivität wie z.B. die Dauer der Formerarbeiten und des Brennvorganges im Ofen, aber auch thermodynamische und physikalische Größen sowie verfahrenstechnische und arbeitsorganisatorische Verknüpfungen. Diese wurden für die römische Zeitepoche aus Experimenten, aus der Literatur und über Plausibilitätsbetrachtungen gewonnen.
Anwendungsbeispiele - Rekonstruktionen möglicher der Betriebsmodelle - mit hohem Detaillierungsgrad, z. B. für eine Brennsaison für einen Brennofen in der römischen Militärziegelei Dormagen, liegen vor.

"Rekonstruktion von Betriebsmodellen antiker Produktionsanlagen mit Hilfe von Prozessketten-Analysen. Methodik und Anwendung bei der Ziegelherstellung in römischer Zeit" (Fulltext)

 

4. Alvaro Jimenez-Sancho

The beginnings of bricks import in southwestern Hispania. An ideological reading.
The use of brick to the length and breadth of the Roman Empire seems to be greatly depending on the availability of raw materials in each zone. However its use on public buildings have been the focus of the majority of investigations, taking as a reference the architecture of Rome itself. In Hispania the governments of Trajan and Hadrian have been considered the culmination of the use of brick, even though the oldest evidence date from the 2nd century BC regarding the need of using this material in thermal buildings. However, the presence of bricks in domestic contexts has just been treated by the investigations. In this article we want to draw attention to several urban excavations as in the lower Guadalquivir, where the bricks and the tegulae begin to arrive in the period of the Civil Wars, in particular in relation to the colonization policy started by Julius Caesar.
Although brick production is at least attested in the colony Romula Hispalis (Seville) in the reign of Claudius, our hypothesis is that the deductio of this colony was the arrival of these materials as a reference ideological evidence of the new legal status, understanding brick as the specifically Roman material that brings together a series of ideological values which are manifested in its use. In this sense, Seville as one of the most important ports in the Western Mediterranean will be fundamental in understanding the arrival of these materials.