Panel 5.13 – Networks at Work: Trade and Transport of Roman Building Materials in the Mediterranean

Organiser/Chair:

• Lynne Lancaster (Ohio University)

External Discussant:

• Janet Delaine (University of Oxford)

Speakers:

• Elizabeth Jane Shepherd (Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo)
  Selling tiles by the thousands. Roman CBM cargoes in the Mediterranean
• Francesca Diosono
  Timber transport and trade in roman Italy
• Lynne Lancaster (Ohio University)
  Transport and Trade of Volcanic Building Materials in the Mediterranean: State of the Question
• Justin Leidwanger (Stanford University)
  Contextualizing the Late Antique Stone Trade: The Marzamemi “Church Wreck” Reconsidered

This session focuses on the different modes of medium- and long-distance trade and transport of building materials, such as roof tiles, bricks, timber, and stone. The goal is to understand better the overlapping factors that affected the development of supply networks over time as the Roman Empire expanded, developed its infrastructure, and eventually shifted its focus eastward from Rome towards Constantinople. Much of the evidence for trade in building materials comes from shipwrecks, which allow a glimpse into the types of cargos that were carried on various sized ships. Recently discovered shipwrecks carrying building materials contribute to a growing database of such finds that goes well beyond the material collected in A. J. Parker's seminal work, Ancient Shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and the Roman Provinces (1992). Moreover, previously known wrecks are being reassessed with an eye towards determining the agency behind the seaborne transport network of building supplies and assessing the changing patterns of connectivity over the long term. Supplementing the evidence from shipwrecks are the results of archaeometric studies using new and more accurate methods, such as isotopic analysis, trace element analysis, as well as more traditional petrological methods, all of which are revealing much about the origins and movement of volcanic ash, marble, and terracotta building materials around the Mediterranean. Tree ring analysis has even provided a means of pinpointing sources of building timber revealing hitherto unknown patterns of distribution. Literary, inscriptional, and legal sources then yield insight into management of public and private forests for supplying the timber. Written sources also contribute evidence for the infrastructure that allowed such medium- and long-distance trade to develop. Papyri document the means used by the imperial administration for the extraction and transport of precious colored stone from the Eastern Desert of Egypt and reveal a complex interplay between the administration, the military, and local governments. Taken together with quarry marks, such documents allow a deeper understanding of the nature of the imperial stone supply system in this corner of the Empire. Finally, the Marzamemi "Church Wreck" provides a glimpse into the provision of stone building elements as the priorities of the imperial administration shifted with the rise of Christianity. The cargo raises new questions about the organization of the building industry during this period of transition. By employing a variety of sources of evidence relating to different types of building materials, the papers in this session set the stage for a broader discussion of the changing role of the distribution and transport networks within the areas of the Roman Empire bordering the Mediterranean and of their relevance for the broader economy.

1. Elizabeth Jane Shepherd (Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo)

Selling tiles by the thousands. Roman CBM cargoes in the Mediterranean
I have stressed, in the past years, how different technical overlapping devices in Roman plain tiles point to different geographical and cultural areas of production in the Mediterranean countries (Shepherd 2015), also possibily answering problems posed to builders by changing climatic factors (Shepherd 2016). It is now time to apply these patterns to the “closed context” BCM loads preserved in shipwrecks, analysing the results in order to determine their possible provenance and also their final use. Many of the shipwrecked cargoes are in fact specialized consignments for specific building programs, and not simply return cargoes, as was commonly thought in the past decades. This is clear also from an important addition to the number of known BCM shipwrecks: a new, well preserved wreck recently found off Sardinia, carrying a whole cargo of tiles.
These are some of the results to be gained by this research: a) identification of new patterns in this particular kind of commerce; b) identification of likely production areas; c) identification of the people behind it (brickmakers, traders, builders, patrons).

Shepherd 2015
E. J. Shepherd, Tegole piane di età romana: una tipologia influenzata dalle culture “locali”, una diffusione stimolata dal’espansione militare, in E. Bukowiecki, R. Volpe, U. Wulf-Rheidt (a c.), Il laterizio nei cantieri imperiali. Roma e il Mediterraneo, atti del II workshop “Laterizio”, Roma 27-28 nov. 2014, Archeologia dell’architettura, 20, Firenze, 2015, pp. 120-132.
Shepherd 2016
E. J. Shepherd, Tegole di copertura in età romana: questioni di forma, posa in opera e impiego, Costruire in laterizio, 168, Roma, 2016, pp. 54-59.

2. Francesca Diosono (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Timber transport and trade in roman Italy
Studying wood as an element of the culture and economy of the ancient world means almost trying to materialize a ghost. This statement is not only due to its high perishability (it literally disappears in most cases virtually within a short period of time), but also from the fact that today wood and timber are materials with a limited use, now replaced in many fields by other raw materials and techniques. In order to understand the fundamental importance of wood in Roman times, it should be recalled that it was the main source of energy and heating, one of the fundamental materials for built structures, roofs, fortifications and means of transport, for making furniture, tools and utensils, the most popular object for writing on, one of the most appreciated agricultural products, one of the most important elements present in domestic and everyday life but also a luxury good.
Given that timber, because of his organic nature, is not very resistant to the passing of time, it is natural that the archaeological data seldom provide information about it from the material point of view; that is why it is necessary to carefully analyze the literary sources and compare them, when possible, with archeometric data. The purpose of this paper is to compare for the first time two different disciplinary approaches: the historical one and the one based on the results of the archeobotanical disciplines (especially anthracology and dendrocronology). Concrete examples will be considered in Italy and also Eastern Mediterranean, in which historical sources are confirmed or denied by archaeological data. It will thus be seen that the timber trading and transport situation (both large- and small- scale) in Roman times was much more complex and multi-faceted than is traditionally considered, and it was not solely based on principles of speed and affordability.

3. Lynne Lancaster (Ohio University)

Transport and Trade of Volcanic Building Materials in the Mediterranean: State of the Question
In recent years, scholars using new methods for determining rock provenance, such as trace element analysis, have broadened our understanding of transport and trade of volcanic building stones in the Mediterranean. The newly published ROMACONS project focused on trade in volcanic ash for hydraulic mortar in harbor construction, the results of which indicate that by the late 1st c. BC volcanic ash from Campania was the gold standard. Nevertheless, for terrestrial structures volcanic ash from other sources (Sicily Channel, Aegean Islands) was also traded for making mortar. Moreover, pumice and volcanic scoria were in demand as lightweight materials for concrete vaults as shown by the Campanian materials employed in vaults in prestigious structures in Rome from the mid 1st century BC and later. Africa Proconsularis was supplied with scoria from nearby volcanic islands, Sardinia and Pantelleria. These building materials may well have been secondary cargo that traveled with the grain mills of volcanic stone exported from both islands. Further east, scoria from Cilicia had a regional distribution by both land and sea. These new results suggest that different factors were at play according to location and purpose. Possible influences include the role of the imperial administration (e.g., Rome, harbor works) the presence of pre-existing networks for other goods (e.g., Sicily Channel, Aegean Islands), and the efficacy (real or perceived) of such specialized building materials.

4. Justin Leidwanger (Stanford University)

Contextualizing the Late Antique Stone Trade: The Marzamemi “Church Wreck” Reconsidered
Since 2013, investigations of the famous Marzamemi “church wreck” have aimed to shed new light on this monumental 6th-century CE assemblage off the Sicilian coast. With a load of more than one hundred tons of prefabricated religious and decorative architectural elements, the site has long been associated with the massive building program that followed Justinian’s brief re-conquest of the late Roman west. Five fieldwork campaigns to date, however, have raised critical questions about the longstanding narrative of an imperially sponsored “flat-pack” structure designed for rote assembly at a single destination. Alongside re-evaluation of the major architectural elements, analysis of the shipboard assemblage, secondary cargo, and broader historical context provides new clues about private commercial and directed exchange, local and imperial patronage and propaganda, and maritime connectivity more generally. From cooking pots, iron fasteners and tools, to transport amphora lids, mineral pigments, and stone and glass “samples,” recent finds offer a window into the logistics and mechanisms of stone transport that were fundamental to massive late antique elite urban building programs. At the same time, a more holistic view of the shipwreck assemblage demonstrates the complexity of interrelated processes that fostered and sustained socioeconomic connectivity more generally through these final years of large-scale trans-Mediterranean exchange.