From Concept to Monument: Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World

Papers in Honour of Janet DeLaine

Simon J. Barker, Christopher Courault, Javier Á. Domingo, Dominik Maschek, Simon J. Barker, Christopher Courault, Javier Á. Domingo, Dominik Maschek

• Publisher: Archaeopress Archaeology
• Year: 2023
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789694239
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: History

From Concept to Monument: Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World celebrates Janet DeLaine's seminal work on Roman architecture and construction. One of the foremost scholars of the last decades, her pioneering research has offered important insights not only into individual structures in central Italy but also into the processes involved in creating ancient buildings. Her approach has provided important conceptual frameworks that have allowed scholars to understand Roman buildings in their proper social and economic contexts. The volume collects papers from an international conference held in Janet's honour at Wolfson College, Oxford, in January 2020. The various contributions focus on modelling the costs of construction over the course of 2,500 years, from Bronze Age Greece to the early Middle Ages. They discuss both broader issues of methodology and particular case studies, with particular attention to the effort needed in the different steps of architectural creation, such as the exploitation of raw materials (e.g. quarries), transport, and the construction processes on building sites. The papers not only cover a wide chronological and geographical area of the ancient world but also take up many of the themes explored by Janet throughout her career on Roman architecture, urbanism, building technologies, materials, and the principles of design. The wide range of papers reflects the scope and vibrancy of Janet's scholarship on Roman architecture and her enormous contribution to the discipline.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Contributors
• Preface. Visionary and Pragmatic: Studying the Nuts and Bolts of Roman Architecture
• 1. From Tenney Frank to Janet DeLaine: Roman Architecture and Economic History
• 2. Beyond Labour Figures: The ‘Hidden’ Costs of Stoneworking and Their Application...
• 3. Reconstructing the Construction Process in Hispania: Epigraphy as a Source
• 4. Issues Arising from Inheritance Tax Applied to Testamentary Legacies: Legal Aspects of Estimating
• 5. Demolitions, Collapses, and the Control of the Housing Market in Rome
• 6. Recursos, costes y ciclo productivo arquitectónico de Madīnat al-Zahrā’
• 7. How to Define the ‘Status’ of Stonemasons Employed in a Rock-Hewn Worksite in the Medieval Period
• 8. The Energetics of Earth and Turf Construction in the Roman World
• 9. Quarrying Megaliths in Heliopolis (Baalbek, Lebanon): The Jupiter Temple
• 10. Quarrying at Mons Claudianus: Costs and Time as Organisational Concerns (?)
• 11. From Extraction to Transport: Technical and Management Aspects of Quarries of Building Stone
• 12. L’evoluzione costruttiva della “parte alta” di Tarraco in epoca romana
• 13. Labour and its Cost During the Aegean Late Bronze Age
• 14. Building Accounts, Monumental Construction Projects, and Labour Rates
• 15. On Toolmarks, Sequence of Carving, and Labour Quantification in Roman Stone Carving
• 16. Il Peristilio Inferiore della Domus Augustana sul Palatino: organizzazione del lavoro
• 17. Quantifying the Forum of Pompeii: Building Economics, Material, and Labour
• 18. Pompeian Wall Painting in Figures: Labour and Materials
• 19. The Amphitheatres of Regio X – Venetia et Histria: The Impact of Stone Supplying Cost
• 20. Templi romani giganteschi in Asia Minore: Problemi di costi e di finanziamento
• 21. Diocletian’s Mausoleum in the Imperial Palace of Split: A Review of its Architecture
• Back Cover