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Building and Rebuilding Rome

Katja Piesker

Kommentar

As the capital of the Roman Empire, the city of Rome was embellished by large-scale building projects by the emperors from the time of Augustus until the 4th century. The ruins of these buildings impress even today with their size and durability. Their construction had been made possible by the introduction and rapid distribution of opus caementicium which utilized the local pozzolanic ash as a binder and by the establishment of a remarkably efficient building sector. The seminar aims to discuss a number of these large-scale projects and, in doing so, the question of how to reconstruct ancient building processes and building sites and, based on that, how to approach questions of the economic, societal, and environmental impact of building and rebuilding processes – tackling concepts such as the archaeology of construction and architectural energetics. It also aims to discuss how an intimate knowledge of the site-specific construction process based on a careful and thorough study of the building finds using Bauforschung (building archaeology) can improve our understanding of the sourcing and transport of building materials (including demolished and/or reused materials) as well as the construction process itself. Finally, it aims to discuss how to counterbalance the effect of the visibility of durable materials and the invisibility of perishable materials in the ancient record and how to include practices of reuse and recycling. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Literaturhinweise: E. Bukowiecki – R. Volpe – U. Wulf-Rheidt (eds.), Il laterizio nei cantieri imperiali Roma e il Mediterraneo. Atti del I workshop "Laterizio", Roma, 27–28 novembre 2014, Archeologia dell’architettura 20, 2015; E. Bukowiecki – R. Volpe – A. Pizzo (eds.), Demolire, riciclare, reinventare. La lunga vita del laterizio romano nella storia dell'architettura: III convegno internazionale "Laterizio", Roma, 6–8 marzo 2019 (Rome 2021); D. Maschek – M. Trümper (eds.), Architecture and the Ancient Economy. Proceedings of a Conference held at Berlin, 26–28 September 2019, Analysis Archaeologica. Monograph Series 5 (Rome 2022); S. Barker – Chr. Courault – J. Domingo Magaña – D. Maschek (eds.), From concept to monument. Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World. Papers in Honour of Janet Delaine (Oxford 2023) Schließen