From Concept to Monument: Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World: Papers in Honour of Janet DeLaine

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:
Preface. Visionary and Pragmatic: Studying the Nuts and Bolts of Roman Architecture – Simon Barker and Dominik Maschek ; 1. From Tenney Frank to Janet DeLaine: Roman Architecture and Economic History – Dominik Maschek ; 2. Beyond Labour Figures: The ‘Hidden’ Costs of Stoneworking and their Application in Architectural Energetics – Simon J. Barker and Ben Russell ; 3. Reconstructing the Construction Process in Hispania: Epigraphy as a Source – Santiago Sánchez de la Parra Pérez ; 4. Issues Arising from Inheritance Tax Applied to Testamentary Legacies: Legal Aspects of Estimating the Value of Roman Construction Projects – Grzegorz Jan Blicharz ; 5. Demolitions, Collapses, and the Control of the Housing Market in Rome – Marguerite Ronin ; 6. La construcción del poder omeya. Recursos, costes y ciclo productivo arquitectónico de Madīnat al-Zahrā’ (The Construction of the Umayyad Power. Resources, Costs and Architectural Production Cycle of Madīnat al-Zahrā’) – Eneko Lopez-Marigorta and Christopher Courault ; 7. How to Define the ‘Status’ of Stonemasons Employed in a Rock-Hewn Worksite in the Medieval Period: Reflexions and Hypotheses – Anaïs Lamesa and Michael Gervers ; 8. The Energetics of Earth and Turf Construction in the Roman World – J. Riley Snyder, Ben Russell, Tanja Romankiewicz, Christopher T.S. Beckett ; 9. Quarrying Megaliths in Heliopolis Baalbek (Lebanon) The Jupiter Temple and the Hajjar al Hibla Quarry – Jeanine Abdul Massih ; 10. Quarrying at Mons Claudianus Costs and Time as Organisational Concerns (?) – Alfred M. Hirt ; 11. From Extraction to Transport: Technical and Management Aspects of Quarries of Building Stone – Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-M. ; 12. L’evoluzione costruttiva della “parte alta” di Tarraco in epoca romana: alcune osservazioni sulla costruzione del cosiddetto Foro Provinciale – Maria Serena Vinci ; 13. Labouring and Its Costs During the Aegean Late Bronze Age – Ann Brysbaert ; 14. Building Accounts, Monumental Construction Projects and Labour Rates in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods – Jari Pakkanen ; 15. On Toolmarks, Sequence of Carving and Labour Quantification in Roman Stone Carving: The Case of Heroon III at Miletus – Natalia Toma ; 16. Il Peristilio Inferiore della oDomus Augustanao sul Palatino: organizzazione del lavoro e calcolo dei costi di un’impresa imperiale – Francesca Caprioli, Alessandro Mortera, Patrizio Pensabene, Javier Á. Domingo ; 17. Quantifying the Forum of Pompeii: Building Economics, Material, and Labour – Cathalin Recko ; 18. Pompeian Wall Painting in Figures: Labour and Materials – Francesca Bologna ; 19. The Amphitheatres of Regio X –Venetia et Histria: The Impact of Stone Supplying Cost on Ancient Construction Processes – Caterina Previato ; 20. Templi romani giganteschi in Asia Minore: Problemi di costi e di finanziamento – Paolo Barresi ; 21. Diocletian’s Mausoleum in the Imperial Palace of Split. A Review of Its Architecture and an Estimate of Its Financial Cost. – Javier Á. Domingo and Daniela Matetić Poljak

About the Author :
Simon J. Barker is a specialist in many aspects of the ancient world, including Roman architecture and the building industry, late antique urbanism, and recycling practices. An additional focus is the application of architectural energetics to questions of construction and the economy, with emphasis on the labour of stone-working and the cost of stone architectural decoration. Christopher Courault holds a PhD from the University of Cordoba (Spain) with international mention (University of Edinburgh). He is a member of the research group Ciudades de Andalucía, and from 2017 he has been an associate researcher at the University of Geneva. His primary interest lies in the construction of city walls from the Republican to Islamic period. Javier Á. Domingo holds a PhD in Archaeology from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona and has taught Christian Archaeology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome since 2014. His research and publications have focused on Roman and late Roman architectural decoration. Dominik Maschek has published widely on Roman archaeology, architecture and construction, including three monographs, four edited volumes and numerous peer-reviewed papers and book-chapters. He is the director of excavations at the Roman site of Carnuntum (Austria) and of a battlefield archaeology project at Fregellae (Italy).

Review :
‘In conclusione, questo volume, … raccoglie una serie di contributi che, affondando le proprie radici metodologiche nei lavori di Janet DeLaine … ne propongono l’applicazione in ambiti territoriali, contesti edilizi e cronologie molto diversificati. Si apprezzano, in particolar modo, la ricchezza e la qualità dell’apparato fotografico e la scelta … di proporre tabelle di sintesi e di confronto, che facilitano la comprensione dei dati proposti.’ [translated: In conclusion, this volume … gathers a series of contributions that, rooted in the methodological work of Janet DeLaine … propose their application in a variety of territorial areas, architectural contexts, and time periods. Special appreciation goes to the richness and quality of the photographic apparatus and the choice … to present summary and comparison tables that facilitate the understanding of the data provided.] – Silvia Gazzoli (2024): MARMORA 20