What we learn of course is that the rich could import all the
skills needed to build monumental work in large stone in even the early days of
Rome. We are perhaps hypnotized by the extant
concrete work and its apparent longevity to surmise that little stone work was
carried out. The problem with that is
that stone in inevitably recycled. Had
the coliseum been stone, it would have simply disappeared into roman tenements.
The mobility of skills is often forgotten and the desire of the
rich to display wealth is underestimated.
It is enough that we have this example.
A nice reworking of our anticipations.
Archaeological
discovery offers new insights into ancient Rome
Discoveries at the dig east of Rome may
challenge the self-perceptions of the ancient Romans.
WEDNESDAY,
AUGUST 21, 2013
Archeologists digging
in Italy have unearthed a structure unlike anything the Romans were known to
have built in the era 350 to 250 years before Christ. The Roman monument, which
is as large as a football field and dates some 300 years before the
well-known Colisseum of Rome, has two terraces connected by a huge
staircase. It is also notable for a massive stone retaining wall and beautiful
and geometrically patterned floors.
The monument also dates 100 years before the Romans'
invention of mortar - development that gave wings to their architectural
ambitions that had its nascence in the period in which the newly discovered
structure was built. Archaeologists dug up the site known
as Gabii, which is built with giant stone blocks in a fashion familiar to
anyone who has built with Lego blocks. According Professor
Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan, it may be the
earliest public building ever found. Terrenato is a professor of
classics who leads the project. It is the biggest such project led by Americans
in 50 years. Some 60 researchers and students from several universities
participated in the summer dig. Sponsored by the University of Michigan, the
dig is slated to end in 2014.
The complex
at Gabii, which may have been an exceptionally lavish private residence,
holds a stone retaining wall, geometrically patterned floors and two terraces
connected by a grand staircase. It's unlike anything the Romans were thought to
be building at the time, Terrenatosaid, according to a release from the
university.
Terrenato said
"There are a lot of constructive details that are beautiful to look at and
they tell us more about how the Romans were building at that stage,"
adding."This shows us they were beginning to experiment with modifying
their natural environments—cutting back the natural slope and creating a
retaining wall, for example— about a quarter of a millennium earlier than we
thought."
"This is at least
300 years before the Colosseum, and it represents a crucial, formative step in
the process that leads to it."
The size of the blocks
in the retaining wall each weighed thousands of pounds, which is unusual for
the period. The size of the blocks was the only way the residents could keep
such a structure stable because mortar had yet to be invented. "This
is like Lego construction,"Terrenato said. "They stacked them
one on top of each other without any glue binding them together. This is the
only technique they had access to and it must have been the desire for this
kind of grand construction that drove them to the invention of mortar about 125
years later."
The discovery offers
insights into the Romans of the time, who thought of themselves as modest and
conservative. Historians such as Cicero claimed that the Romans only became
lavish after the soldiers returning from the conquest of Greece brought home a
taste for extravagance. However, the newly discovered monument predates that by
one or two centuries.
"Rome conquered
Greece in the 140s BCE. Roman historians said the soldiers came back
and wanted Greek luxury, which is way of trying to shift
blame," Terrenato said. "We now know that long before they
conquered Greece, the Romans were already thinking big. This tears apart the
view of Romans in this period as being very modest and inconspicuous."
Gabii is situated
on undeveloped land in modern-day Lazio, ancient Latium, east of
Rome. Once a major city, it waned by the third century as the Roman Empire
grew. The goal of the Gabii Project is to show what a city in the
region looked like before Rome's great development. Because the site is outside
Rome, archaeologists are able to explore its deepest levels—something
that's impossible to do within city limits because of later construction piled
on top.
"Even though we
could not observe the complex in its entire extent, we know we are dealing with
a monument without parallels in the region, including Rome," said
Marcello Mogetta, project managing director and a U-M doctoral student in
classical art and archaeology. "My bet is that this will become a
benchmark in future surveys of Roman architecture."
Assistant Professor
Andrew Johnston of Yale University, the director of the program's field school,
hailed the education impact of the dig. "In the longer term, this is a
discovery that we expect will radically change our understanding of Roman
Republican history and archaeology," he said. "But more
immediately, our students are returning from the field to the classrooms of
their home institutions—Michigan, Yale and over a dozen others—with a new set
of skills, methodologies, approaches and questions that we hope will enrich and
inform their studies in various academic disciplines in manifold ways."
In 2009, the dig
unearthed an unusual Imperial Roman lead sarcophagus at Gabii. Weighing
about 1000 pounds, the sarcophagus was made from sheets of lead that were
folded over the human remains. What made it unusual what that it did not in the
usual pattern for sarcophagi, of which only several hundred imperial lead
sarcophagi are known. The sarcophagus at Gabii was formed by wrapping
sheets of lead around the dead, and then crimping the 'head' end and leaving
the 'foot' end open and exposed. The sarcophagus was sent to the American
Academy in Rome to be examined. According to a blog entry by Mellon Professor
T. Corey Brennan, the sarcophagus contained the remains of someone of elevated
social rank.
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