Under Pompeii’s Ashes:
Contesting Roman Identities Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol This week • Technology • Space • Material culture session/update questions research projects
Today: building Pompeii
• How did technological innovations work in the Roman world? • A network approach to technology • How concrete shaped Roman history Technology and society
Linear model technical innovation 15,000 BC
1879
3500 BC 1698 Social construction of technology
• The way technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context • Technology does not shape human action- Human action shapes technology • Social values determine ‘success’ or ‘failure’ Latour: technology and society
• Turn away from exclusive concern with social relationships and weave them into a fabric that includes non-human actants, actant that offer the possibility of society together as a whole • follow the development of innovation • The key • The camera
Actor Network Theory (ANT)
• Objects and techniques are part of a social network • Looking for relations between objects and concepts, processes and humans to understan innovation “What seems to be Technical, is partly Social; and what seems to be Social, is partly technical” – (Delukie 2009) • Bruno Latour en John Law • No distinction between human, object and technology
The Key
• Example of the hotel key in which innovation is a network of things • Movement which is neither linguistic, social, technological or pragmatic • Customers, keys, hotels, managers, manufacturers • Actants • networks The camera
• Building of new object (kodak camera) • Building of new market (mass market) • Trajectory? – Form or content/ social context or technical content/realistic or unrealistic/local or global/slow or fast
Building Pompeii
• Brick • Limestone – Marble – Travertine
• Vulcanic rock – Tufa – Lava stone
Villa san marco: building site of a bathhouse Roman industrial revolution
• Concrete -opus caementicium – around 200 BC Concrete: opus caementicium
• Opus caementicium was a new, composite material used in the city of rome by the second c. BC • Fine aggregate consisting of volcanic ash, mixed with lime to form mortar in which camenta were ladi- chunkcy pieces of stone or other building material. • Pozzolana • Needed to be set in wooden frames and dry for hours to be solid and months to be hard masonry
Concrete
• 2nd c BC irregularly laid small stones, opus incertum • Later diamond shaped stones- opus reticulatum • Second half 1st c BC tiles and bricks were used instead of stones. Opus testaceum or lateriticum • Opus incertum: small irregular stones. • Opus reticulatum: small squared tuff blocks laid in a diamond pattern. • Opus quadratum: regularly laid courses of ashlars. • Opus latericium: regularly laid courses of brick. • Opus spicatum: brick laid in a herringbone pattern. • Opus vittatum: square tuff blocks intersected by brick bands at regular and irregular distances. • Opus africanum: vertical chains of upright blocks with alternating horizontal blocks. • Opus testaceum: thick horizontal brick work • Opus reticulatum
• Opus spicatum (floors)
• Opus Africanum The Capitol of Dougga, Tunesia, 2nd c. AD
Central baths stylobath
Centra baths Pompeii
Lancaster
• The production of bricks in imperial Rome is a prime example of technological advance that resulted from increased organization rather than innovation.
Bricks
Odeion Pompeii (80 BC)- first use of brick
Lancaster: opus reticulatum
• development of opus reticulatum part of a move toward more efficient work practices that took advantage of the increased slave pool after military conquests during the mid-second century B.C. • a new division of labor • First use monument celebrating Octavian's victory over Mark Anthony at Actium in 31 B.C. • development of concrete • Pozzolana - strong hydraulic mortar • Development of brick • development of large-scale vaulted structures
• accumulated knowledge Vaults and concrete
• An advantage of concrete is that the weight of the material in different parts of the building can be controlled by regulating the type of caementa used Trajan’s Market 113 AD
Pantheon113 –125 AD
• Opus caementicium was a new, composite material used in the city of Rome by the second c. BC. • Fine aggregate consisting of volcanic ash, mixed with lime to form mortar in which camenta were ladi- chunkcy pieces of stone or other building material. • Opus caementicium has long been associated with a so-called architectural revolution in the first century AD. • New forms such as vaults, apses new building forms with wider open internal spaces
3 centuries after invention ? Concrete building
• Initially reproducing traditional architecture of the Roman republic • Augustan period concrete was used widely in building, but new forms, vaults, and domes remained limited in number, scale, and shape, especially in the public monuments in Rome itself • Julio-Claudian period that the forma architectural revolution of concrete building took off with Rome at its center. • Nero’s domus aurea Domus aurea 64-68 AD
Why two centuries?
• Passive, why did concrete not trigger a formal revolution earlier? • Material properties of concrete made certain kinds of architectural forms possible, but these forms did not develop automatically out of the mere use of the material. • The right context: cumulative over time actants
• Second half 1st c BC tiles and bricks • Material properties such as color, grain size or weight actively steered a process of standardization • Together with sequencing of workflow • Population growth, influx of slave labor, large scale building, broader Augustan cultural revolution • Nero’s taste for novelty (innovation will of individual design)
Nero’s historical footprint
• Nero would not have been possible without concrete, the possibilities of speed and shape it afforded • This emerged from concrete’s much longer material history of transformation • Material assemblages create differences to trace how concrete as a material was redefined-combined emphasis on physical transformations and its skilled engagement and on redefinitions, categorizations and the creation of differences is necessary for material histories to develop. • Physical transformation and social differentiation
Under Pompeii’s Ashes:
Contesting Roman Identities Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol This week • Technology • Space • Material culture session/update questions research projects
Today
• The archaeology of space • Pompeii, identity and space What can we learn from space?
• Cities are collections of buildings held together by a network of space: the street network • Space has: an architecture (certain geometry • A topology: a certain pattern of connections
What can we learn about identity through the study of urban space?
• The theatre of everyday activity • Underlying social structures • Shaping relationships between people • Use of space • communities
Parameters
• Access • Movement • Interaction • Public and private • activities What is public space?
• streets and sidewalks • open spaces directly connected to streets • streets and open spaces • Buildings
Seeing space
streets 1
1 1
1 2 2 2 2 Movement
• Spaitial structure of street netowk is determinant of mvemen • Movement vreates patterns of human contact
• To-movement (direction) • Through movement (selecting the route) Route and movement
Land use
• Accessibility and use of space • Land use locate on movement rich streets • Less movement sensitive streets different activities Accessibility
Roman towns
• Planned cities?
Cosa founded 273 BC
Ostia
Leptis Magna, Libya
Timgad, Algeria
• Do we see urban zoning? • Do we see class differentiation? • What was remote and what was accessible? • Movement
• Use of space • Religious/baths/forum/bars
Forum Neigborhoods in pompeii?
• Spatial division in Pompeii that formed the basis for a local identity • Augustan Rome: vici and the cult of the lares augusti Distribution street shrines
Public fountains
neighborhoods
POMPEII: HET LEVEN IN EEN ROMEINSE STAD Distribution shops Time!
• Temporal aspect of space • Concept of time for a Roman • Daylight and darkness • Sundials public
Temple of Apollo
Sundial private: casa del Menandro
Portable sundial
Time and activities
Time activity and social class
12th hour
1st hour
home forum bath