Roman fulling and other industries

[Caballo]

Great poster from the Oxford University Roman Economy project. The scale and the organisation of Roman industry was truly impressive and very modern- today in a lecture, they illustrated a wheat processing centre in North Africa with 16 watermills in two series of 8, powered by an aqueduct. In Tripolitania, 17 olive presses in a row- with economic growth made possible by strong state spending on public trade and a great increase in long distance trade.

Heres the poster

http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/new/docs/...poster.pdf

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Interesting Poster, Paul.
The idea of rome being in a league of it's own is not so surprising!
But, a question!?
How do you polish clothing?

[Epictetus]

Thanks; that is a good poster. I wonder how many large centres like this there were spread around the empire. I suspect they were common in more populated areas.

[Eleatic Guest]

Interesting Poster, Paul.
The idea of rome being in a league of it's own is not so surprising!

The idea that the ancient world was industrially quite powerful, perhaps even exceptional, has been emerging for over a decade now and represents an almost 180 degree turnaround from the primitivistic school of thought of the 1950s-80s which interpreted Greece and Rome's economy consistently as almost impotent through a self-injected 'overdose of slavery'.

But I find classicists still being too defensive and too much pussyfooting about their new findings. There are a lot of studies which warrant merit, but what is still lacking is this kind of lighthouse book which redefines the whole field and makes extra-field scholars aware of the new change in paradigm. Like Lynn White's 1962 Medieval Technology and Social Change brought attention to the technological prowess of the Middle Ages.

Some useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy#Industry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills

[Robert Vermaat]

The idea that the ancient world was industrially quite powerful, perhaps even exceptional, has been emerging for over a decade now and represents an almost 180 degree turnaround from the primitivistic school of thought of the 1950s-80s which interpreted Greece and Rome's economy consistently as almost impotent through a self-injected 'overdose of slavery'.

Times are changing: only last week I came across a statement that it took Europe until the later 16th or indeed 17th century to regain the volume of industrial production reached by the Roman Empire at its peak. Already a few years ago there a comparison of the number of tiled roofs, which was only reached again during the 17th c. (after the sharp decline during the 5th c.).

[Caballo]

Absolutely- and a decline in tiled houses to almost zero , where from a situation where cowsheds were routinely tiled, most houses were made from perishable material (Ward-Perkins). Tiling needs a factory to make the tiles and secure roads to distribute them in slow moving carts. These secure roads and economic infrastructure disappeared in the with barabarian incursions, local revolts, and civil wars in the West- and the disappearance of the simple tile is a very powerful piece of evidence to this economic and political decline.

[Eleatic Guest]

Already a few years ago there a comparison of the number of tiled roofs, which was only reached again during the 17th c. (after the sharp decline during the 5th c.)

Where did you read this comparison? With Ward-Perkins or Andrew Wilson from Oxford?

[Caballo]

Roberts reference certainly ties in perfectly with a lecture from Andrew Wilson that I went to last week. The general theme was that the level of organisational and agrarian technology was greater than than realised in earlier analyses, and that level of sophistication was not reached again until much later. Also some very interesting charts showing severe climatic variations in the late 4th and 5th century. I think this is a really interesting area for more research.

[Eleatic Guest]

I've read one of Wilson's articles on the quasi-industrial production mode of bricks, but I wonder on what data basis a quantitative comparison between the ancient and medieval "number of tiled roofs" was drawn.

One flagship of Roman technological prowess is btw the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierapolis_sawmill

[Lepidina]

Interesting Poster, Paul.
The idea of rome being in a league of it's own is not so surprising!
But, a question!?
How do you polish clothing?

Well dang, I just did a presentation on fulling at a high school Latin conference and could have used this poster.

But to answer your question, I believe cloth was polished by scraping it and rubbing chalk into it to give it a shine after it was cleaned. Pressing it also helped to give it a polish. They did other things to cloth to whiten it like stretch it over frames and burn sulfur under it and various bleaching techniques. I learned a lot about urine for this presentation too. I'll spare you those details. :mrgreen: