Panel 3.6 – Building BIG – Constructing Economies: from Design to Long-Term Impact of Large-Scale Building Projects


Organiser/Chair:

  • Ann Brysbaert (Leiden University)
  • Jari Pakkanen (Royal Hollow, University of London)

Panel abstract

The economic growth of modern societies has been closely linked with construction industries: investments, transport infrastructures for materials, and labour-intensive building programmes all have a large impact on local, regional and even global economies. The end results have shaped the built environment of our every-day lives and have often led to an increased quality of life and affluence, though there are many contrary cases as well. In past pre-industrial societies whenever large-scale building projects took place, extensive manual labour was invested from the moment materials were scouted for, extracted, transported, employed and subsequently maintained. Since most ancient societies were based on subsistence economies, important decision-making was a daily balancing act between building work and agriculture. These decisions often influenced strongly the patterns of land use and may have also resulted in circular economic strategies. This session invites archaeological, experimental, historical and ethnographic/anthropological perspectives addressing the socio-economic and political decision-making needed for construction projects to materialize. With economic and technological processes of construction as a focus, we aim to contribute responses to the following questions: 1- How were large-scale buildings constructed from material, logistical and planning perspectives? 2- How and why were these buildings subsequently and diachronically used and maintained by the various groups? 3- What types and levels of resources and investment, human and other, were needed to achieve and sustain these construction projects? 4- Given that construction took place diachronically and geographically more or less worldwide, can we recognise common denominators, and which are these? How can multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches further our research in the Ancient Mediterranean? 5- In economic terms, is it useful to quantify the necessary resources, how can it be done, and what can such data tell us?

 

Paper abstracts

1. Ann Brysbaert (Leiden University)

Logistics and infrastructure in support of building BIG in the Late Bronze Age Argolid, Greece
In past pre-industrial societies, when large-scale building projects took place, extensive manual labour was invested from the moment materials were scouted for, extracted, transported, employed and subsequently maintained. Since most ancient societies were based on subsistence economies, important decision-making was a daily balancing act between building work and agriculture. These decisions often influenced land use-strategies on several socio-economic levels.
This paper focuses on the Mycenaean Late Bronze Age in the Argolid where large-scale building processes have been intensively studied for quite some time now. However, in employing archaeological, historical and ethnographic perspectives on a much ignored aspect of the economics of prehistoric building – its required infrastructure network – this paper seeks to formulate thoughts on material, logistical and planning perspectives that may have been employed to facilitate, maintain and even improve the infrastructure needed to build long-term and on a large-scale. Taking the local topography into account, it provides a more realistic picture about the types and levels of resources and investment that were needed to achieve and sustain these construction projects. As such it addresses both the practical, and the socio-economic and political decision-making, held at several levels, and needed for the construction projects to materialize.

"Logistics and Infrastructure in Support of Building BIG in the Late Bronze Age Argolid, Greece" (Fulltext)

 

2. Kalliopi Efkleidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Understanding large urban planning production in Mycenaean Greece
From the Late Helladic IIIA2-B period and on (ca. 1300B.C.), we find a series of large urban planning schemes taking place in the palatial centers of the Mycenaean Argolid, in Southern Greece. Current research has tended to treat different parts of these large building programs individually and not as unit. This approach, however, does not help us understand in depth the principles and aims behind any large urban planning scheme. In this paper, I focus on the changing urban plan of palatial Mycenae and review the various stages of its transformation through the end of the palatial period (ca. 1200B.C.). I use the evidence to argue that this scheme was strategically initialized and financed by a rising elite which founded its power on control of the palatial sector of the settlement’s economy (workshops for processing exotic and local raw materials and storages for goods traded) and sought social and political legitimation by establishing a close spatial and symbolic bond with the revered elite ancestors and the divine. Gradually, these three axes (economy, ancestors, the divine) were transformed into the founding pillars of the wanax’s power.

"Understanding Large Urban Planning Production in Mycenaean Greece: the Case of Mycenae" (Fulltext)

 

3. Daniel Turner (Leiden University)

Constructing multi-use tombs in Late Bronze Age Attica and Achaea
In the late second millennium BC, Mycenaeans dug large tombs into hillsides with speed and precision. Many of these chamber and tholos tombs take an iconic shape: 1) a narrow passage (dromos) leading to a façade pierced by 2) a bottleneck entrance (stomion) closed with a rubble wall. Through the stomion lies 3) a vaulted chamber (thalamos) many times the size required for interring bodies and possessions. Digging such extravagant, multi-use tombs required strength, coordination, and confidence. Both the initial construction and subsequent reopening(s) created a spectacle similar to cyclopean wall construction, albeit at a smaller scale. Reconstructing that process has simplified with advances in photogrammetry and comparative labor costs. This paper combines photogrammetric models and comparative labor costs to discuss tomb construction at sites in Achaea and Attica.

"Constructing multi-use tombs in Late Bronze Age Attica and Achaea" (Fulltext)

 

4. Yannick Boswinkel (Leiden University)

Breaking down monumental constructions: People, costs and techniques
Studying monumentality has many issues, partly because it is such an ambiguous term. However, if one accepts the monumentality of a construction as being bigger and better relative to contemporary structures there might be a means to compare structures. To be able to compare size and quality, one could quantify a structure based on the necessary labour-investments. Quantifying monumentality through labour-cost studies is not new and has been criticized as well as celebrated in the past. By breaking down a structure to its individual components and how these came to be, it is possible to get an estimate of the workforce that was needed for different stages like quarrying and transporting the material as well as for the actual construction of the building. One of the issues with such studies is the sheer amount of assumptions that are needed at every step of the process of calculating a total sum of investment. A case study from Mycenaean Greece (±1600-1100 BC) will be presented in which fortification walls have been recorded in 3D with high accuracy, using Total Stations and photogrammetry. It will be evaluated whether such high precision recording can add anything to the quality of the labour-cost analysis. If the quality can be increased, then this might increase the usability and the reliability of labour-cost analyses. Ultimately, it might improve our understanding of monumental constructions.

"Breaking down monumental constructions: People, costs and techniques" (Fulltext)

 

5. Sabine Beckmann (University of Crete)

Built to last – Middle Bronze Age landscaping development in the region of Agios Nikolaos
The mountain slopes west of Agios Nikolaos, settled in Minoan Protopalatial times by over 330 dispersed agricultural sites built with massive foundations, are situated far from known Minoan settlements and palaces. They present an otherwise unknown feature of Bronze Age landscaping, comprising not just dwelling ruins, but also ample traces of small enclosures (pens, gardens) and long enclosure walls (in sum over 150km length). The sites sit rarely further than 300m from each other, and the enclosure walls attribute on average 3.5ha of mixed rocky and arable land to them, defining the sites’ function as “mixed agriculture”.
The massive architecture of the few known until recently preserved ruins has led scholars in the past to see them as military sites, and only the actually extant large number of dwellings and their enclosure walls made clear that these installations were not part of a defence system along a “Mycenaean Military Road” (A. Evans in 1895), but rather of a well organized hinterland landscape, capable of providing the coastal settlements with a range of commodities needed to expand power structures and international trade.The sheer massiveness of the sites’ constructions also show them to have been an effort suitable to the first Cretan “palatial” society’s political economy – “built to last” as many of them have been re-used in the recent past for mixed agriculture.

"Built to Last – Middle Bronze Age Landscaping Development and Its Economic Implications in the Region of Agios Nikolaos, Crete" (Fulltext)

 

6. Jari Pakkanen (Royal Hollow, University of London)

Building Big and Greek Classical and Hellenistic Houses? Estimating Total Costs of Private Housing in Attica'
The presentation will use different types of source materials to estimate the construction costs of private housing in Late Classical and Hellenistic Attica. The city blocks and houses of the Piraeus are the basis of the first case study and new data from the fieldwork project on the island of Salamis conducted by the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica, Piraeus and the Islands and the Finnish Institute at Athens form the second one. Archaeological data, building accounts, other ancient textual sources and modern ethnographical data are the most important categories of evidence. The cost of constructing an individual house was small but the total expenditure of building city blocks in towns and cities was substantial. The ancient remains in Attica are mostly covered by dense modern blocks, so the new archaeological data from Salamis is important. Also, the city blocks in the Piraeus and Salamis follow a rectangular plan, so the excavated remains are sufficient for a reliable reconstruction of a typical insula. A model of how to estimate the total cost of building materials and construction processes of private ancient houses is presented. Econometric quantification can lead to new ways of studying the social and economic significance of construction and upkeep of private houses. The work-rate estimates used in the calculations are based on a range of different sources and it is possible to cross-check their values.

"Building Big and Greek Classical and Hellenistic Houses? Estimating Total Costs of Private Housing in Attica" (Fulltext)

 

7. Janet DeLaine (University of Oxford)

Building for the gods: the so-called ‘Capitolium’ at Ostia
The so-called ‘Capitolium’ at Ostia, built in the early Hadrianic period, was the largest and most imposing of Ostia’s temples, representing the greatest input of resources in terms of materials and construction in its religious landscape. The shell is built of brick-faced concrete, the standard building material of second century AD Ostia, but of the highest quality using very uniform brick from an extremely small group of suppliers. The marble elements of the architectural order and surface decoration, on the other hand, were exceptional in the context of Ostia, with some elements having their closest parallels in the Pantheon at Rome, built just a few years previously. On the basis of this it has been argued that the temple must have been the gift of the emperor Hadrian, as being beyond the resources of the local community. This paper sets out to test our current understanding of this building project by putting it on a firm economic footing, and comparing it quantitatively both to other temples in Ostia and to the Pantheon itself.

"Building for the Gods: the Capitolium at Ostia" (Fulltext)

 

8. Roberta Ferritto and Rosaria Perrella (University of Reading)

The impact of the luxury maritime villa construction boom on the prestigious coast between southern Latium and Campania
The proliferation of maritime villas along the coast between southern Latium and Campania led to a progressive demographic, socio-economic, and environmental change.
Generally, prior studies have been seen in the Bay of Naples the geographical area of the Italian peninsula where first maritime villas emerged. Actually, comparing our research data, a substantial difference has been observed: it was the coastal Latium the area that first experimented with the construction of maritime villas.
This paper will examine the effects occurred in both regions following the intensive building activity of maritime villas along their coasts from socio-economic, productive, architectural and organisational perspectives.
By comparing the information between the two regions, it has been possible to detect common architectural trends from which, depending on the morphology of the territory, we move away. Thanks to the cross-referencing of data, it has been possible to create a dense network of comparisons with similar maritime architectures in the Ancient Mediterranean.
The maritime villa was a true form of economic investment aimed to satisfy both the villa's own needs and local and outside market. A profit-making enterprise typical of our villas came from fishponds with the breeding of high-quality fish. In order to quantify the average income that could be achieved from these structures, we tried to attempt of quantifying the amount of fish that could be grown at the fishponds of villas.

"The impact of the luxury maritime villa construction boom on the prestigious coast between southern Latium and Campania" (Fulltext)

 

9. Anna Gutierrez Garcia-M. (IRAMAT-CRP2A, Université Bordeaux Montaign)

Stone for a provincial capital. Procurement strategies, logistics and dynamics for the monumentalization of Roman Tarraco's urban landscape
During the last decades, the understanding of the Roman town of Tarraco (modern Tarragona, Spain) has leapt forward thanks to the several archaeological excavations and research programs carried out. Among them, those related with the remarkable nearby quarry of El Mèdol, from where most of the stone used in the building projects were prized off, had shed new light on the extent, chronology and dynamics of the local resources exploitation directly engaged in this phase of great constructive activity and urban renovation.
The discovery of a control point of the production and the remains of a possible Roman shrine as the results of the archaeological excavations undertaken in specific areas of the main quarrying area as well as the location a large collection of ephemeral inscriptions on blocks abandoned in front of the quarry and of a loading bay in a nearby beach provide exceptional information on both the technical, operational and human aspects of the procurement of the most basic raw material needed for Tarraco’s chief large-scale building public project.
On the other hand, the increasing studies on marble and other ornamental stone remains and the advances on Tarraco’s harbour help to understand the various-scale dynamics that provided the decorative stone and sculptures needed to give these public buildings the dignity or decorum to befit its status as capital of the largest province of the Western Roman Empire.

"Stone for a Provincial Capital – Procurement and Transport Logistics for the Monumentalization of Roman Tarraco" (Fulltext)

 

10. Ben Russell (University of Edinburgh)

Shipping Building Materials by Sea: Logistics and Planning
Demand for prestige materials, primarily from major imperially-funded projects but also from locally-funded schemes all around the Roman world, put enormous strain on the producers of raw materials and, especially, transporters. Big buildings demanded big materials and this had an impact on the infrastructure through which these materials were used and the means of transport employed. Purpose-built vehicles are attested in certain cases (the special barges used for moving obelisks being the best-known examples) but in most cases existing vehicle types and infrastructure were used and simply pushed to their limits. Fashions for polychrome stones placed particular strain on systems of supply and will be the focus of this paper. Three topics will be examined:

What the shipwreck evidence reveals about the size and arrangement of cargoes of stone destined for building, the routes taken by these cargoes;
The infrastructure at ports around the Mediterranean and how these points of departure and arrival were tied into wider transport networks that facilitated the movement of stone;
The practical impact of different fashions for stone use on supply networks and the limitations of ancient transport systems on the distribution of stone.
The aim of this paper is to explore how the practicalities of transport played a key role in determining what stones were used in what projects and in what quantities.

"Shipments Great and Small: Moving Building Materials by Sea" (Fulltext)