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Article

Astronomical Diaries  

Kathryn Stevens

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
18 September 2024
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek History and Historiography
  3. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  4. Near East

The Astronomical Diaries are Akkadian texts from Babylon which contain observations of astronomical phenomena and selected events on earth. They are written in the cuneiform script and preserved on several hundred clay tablets, most of which are today in the British Museum.

Very few of the tablets are complete, and some are in an extremely fragmentary state. Where no date formula survives, it is often possible to date them based on the astronomical observations recorded. The surviving tablets range in date from the mid-7th to the 1st century bce, but the vast majority date between 400 and 60 bce.

Diaries usually cover periods of four to six months, divided into monthly sections. Daily astronomical observations form the bulk of each section. At the end of each month, the Diaries report the river level of the Euphrates; the market exchange values of several commodities in Babylon, and sometimes selected historical events such as warfare, disease outbreaks, visits from kings or officials, and cultic activities. The Diaries contain no explicit indications of purpose, but since they exhibit significant parallelism with prognostic material, it is likely that they were connected to some extent with divination. There are also parallels in content and phrasing between the Diaries and the Late Babylonian Chronicles.

Article

baking, Roman  

Jared T. Benton

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 November 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  3. Roman Material Culture
The earliest Roman bakers almost certainly made bread for their own households, but not for sale to the public. Pliny the Elder tells us in his Natural History (18.28) that among the quirites of Rome’s past, women baked the family’s bread, an observation he bases on comparisons with contemporary non-Roman peoples. Yet modes of domestic production were probably as diverse as the families themselves; early terracotta figurines from the eastern Mediterranean show women, men, and children all participating in the production of bread (Fig. 1).Moreover, the figurine shows both milling and baking, processes that remained interlinked until the end of antiquity. Even later commercial bakers seem also to have been millers. Medieval bakers, however, rarely milled their own grain. To some extent, this resulted from the advent of new technologies such as watermills and windmills, but the watermill, at least, was available from the 1st century bce onward (Vitr.

Article

glass  

Frederick Norman Pryce and Michael Vickers

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  3. Roman Material Culture
Glass (ὕαλος (also 'rock crystal'), vitrum). The art of producing a vitreous surface on stone, powdered quartz (faience), or clay was known in pre-dynastic Egypt and passed to Crete during the second millennium bce. Glazed objects are common on Greek sites of the Archaic period, some of them Egyptian imports, others probably made locally. In Hellenistic and Roman times Egypt and Asia Minor were centres of fabrication of glazed wares, which often imitated bronze.Objects composed entirely of glass paste begin to appear in Egypt about 1500 bce, when two allied processes seem to have been in use: modelling molten glass about a core of sand, and pressing it into an open mould. The chief Mycenaean glass is dark blue imitating lapis lazuli, used for beads, inlays, and architectural ornaments. In the 6th cent. small vases made by the sand-core process became known in Greece; they have opaque blue, brown, or white bodies and a marbled effect was produced on their surface by means of a comb or spike. In the Hellenistic period mould-made bowls come into fashion; these were produced mainly in Egypt. Here the tradition of opaque polychrome glass was continued into Roman times with millefiori bowls, in which marbled and other polychrome patterns were formed by fusing glass canes of various colours and pressing them into moulds.

Article

Greek metrology, Bronze Age  

Robert Schon

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 November 2021
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
During the Bronze Age, people living in the Aegean region began adopting standardized measures. Aegean metrology took numerous forms and included measurements of weight, volume, length, area, and time. Some metrological units are depicted on Linear B (and some earlier Linear A) texts of the Late Bronze Age. In a few cases, archaeological remains, such as weights and scales, provide further insights into Aegean Bronze Age metrology.Ancient weights have been identified in numerous ways, some more reliable than others. A few weights appear in proportional sets or are marked with their unit designation, making their identification straightforward. In other cases, archaeologists rely on context or reasonable deduction (e.g., “What else could they be?”). Certain spool-shaped stones found in Early Bronze Age (c. 2500bce) contexts, most notably at Tiryns, may be weights.1 If so, these would be the earliest confirmed balance weights in the Aegean. Eleven haematite and two similarly hard stone weights were discovered by Valmin in various strata at Malthi, a Bronze Age site in .

Article

metrology, Roman  

Andrew M. Riggsby

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 August 2021
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  3. Roman History and Historiography

There is a large body of evidence for Roman use of weights and measures. In theory, they would have been able to measure a variety of quantities with great precision, given the variety of different-sized units at their disposal and an elaborate system of fractional subdivisions of those units. Moreover, those measurements could have been accurate with respect to a shared system because of publicly available exemplary standards, a theoretical connection between the definitions of the most important measurements, and the existence of state officials who could enforce the standards. As a result, Romans could, in principle, have conveyed very specific metrological information across a great deal of space and time. In practice, measurement was considerably less predictable and less precise. Actual measurement did not necessarily avail itself of the full resources of the theoretical system, and sometimes did not appeal to any general system. Moreover, overtly competing systems coexisted with the “official” ones at all times. Finally, it is not clear how coherent that official system was, nor were the actual systems of enforcement particularly robust. As a result, measurement was often imprecise and/or tightly localized (which probably generated weak expectations of being able to replicate measurement across different contexts).

Article

mines and mining, Roman  

Linda R. Gosner

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
Rome came into possession of a wide variety of mineral resources as a result of imperial expansion. Large mines were opened up in many provinces, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, Britain, the Danubian provinces, and Asia Minor. Pollution records show that the scale of mining in antiquity peaked during the Roman period and was not matched again until the Industrial Revolution. The main minerals exploited were gold, silver, copper, and tin, which were used to mint coinage. Lead was mined for pipes and other utilitarian purposes, while iron was used often for tools. The techniques and organization of mining varied by period and geological conditions. The most common techniques included opencast (open air) mining, underground (shaft-and-gallery) mining, and placer (alluvial) mining. While individuals and municipalities could own mines, mining districts (metalla) increasingly came under the control of the state. Concessions to work state-owned mines could be leased out to individuals, small associations, or larger societates who worked the mines and turned over a portion of their profit to the state.

Article

silver  

Frederick Norman Pryce, John Boardman, and Michael Vickers

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
While *gold could be easily obtained from alluvial deposits by washing, silver had to be extracted by regular mining processes. The *Phoenicians are said to have been the first to bring silver into general use; several of the silver objects mentioned in *Homer have Sidonian associations (see sidon). The main sources for classical Greece were Mt. *Pangaeus in *Thrace, *Lydia, *Colchis, *Bactria, Siphnos, and *Laurium which provided abundant supplies for *Athens. In the western Mediterranean *Spain was the most prolific source of supply, with *Sardinia, Gaul, and Britain as minor sources. The conquests of Spain and Asia made silver plentiful at Rome, where it had previously been rare.Silver was worked with a hammer into plates which were soldered or riveted together and then decorated with repoussé work (ἐμπαιστική), stamping, chasing, or engraving. Vases might be hammered or cast from a mould and were often adorned with reliefs (emblemata) let into the body of the vessel or crustae soldered upon the surface.

Article

zooarchaeology  

Michael MacKinnon

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
19 July 2023
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  4. Roman Material Culture

Zooarchaeology/archaeozoology focuses on the investigation of animals in the past through analysis of recovered faunal remains, largely teeth and bones, from archaeological sites. As such zooarchaeological analyses can disclose much about the animals themselves, the environmental and ecological parameters in which they existed, as well as the cultures that kept, herded, controlled, hunted, manipulated, killed, ate, valued, symbolized, treated, and exploited them. The historical development of zooarchaeological study within classical archaeology showcases its expansion from earlier studies (in the 1970s and 1980s) that concentrated on reconstructing the core economic and ecological roles of animals in antiquity to its current state, which emphasizes more diversified, multidimensional investigations of animals across all spectra and components of ancient life. Key topics of interest in the discipline include ancient husbandry operations; the interaction between animals and ecological settings; the input of meat and other animal foodstuffs in ancient diets; the exploitation of non-consumable animal products, such as bones, hides, and wool in antiquity; breeding regimes and their effects on animals during Greek and Roman times; and the roles and characteristics of work, pet, and sacrificial animals in the past.