The Origins of Concrete in Rome and Pompeii.

Abstract

This dissertation presents an analysis of early concrete architecture in Rome and Pompeii. In the past, scholars of Roman building techniques have looked to these sites to date the introduction of concrete in the third c. BCE, on the basis of false ideas of evolutionary progress in the development of the technology. Pointing out the circularity of the arguments with which types of wall-facing, wall-painting, and decorated floors have been used to support the proposed chronology, I suggest that reliable dates can only be derived from ceramic assemblages collected from construction and occupation levels. The analysis concentrates on buildings for which stratigraphic data are available. The sample size in both Rome and Pompeii has dramatically increased in recent years, thanks to a new wave of excavations. While the archaeological record for the Middle Republican period (late fourth/third c. BCE) remains elusive, the evidence demonstrates that concrete first appeared around the middle of the second c. BCE. The implementation of the technique in public construction seems to have followed a phase of experimentation in the private context, for the refashioning of élite houses. Because the organization of public building in both Rome and Pompeii was in the hands of a small number of aristocratic families, who commissioned the work to private builders, this phase was probably not too long. Indeed the earliest public monuments at both Rome and Pompeii can be dated to the period from 150 to 125 BCE. The massive spread of concrete, however, can be more clearly seen only in the final decades of the second c. BCE. The new chronology demonstrates that the technological change was not a symptom of the Roman conquest of Italy, as previously thought. Concrete architecture emerged at a time when Rome’s socio-economic foundations had already developed. Furthermore, the simultaneous adoption of the new technique in Rome, Pompeii and Campania undermines the idea that Rome had a direct role in its diffusion. The impetus came from local élites, often of non-Roman origin, in the context of broader changes in self-representation, which eventually brought about what we refer to as Roman Republican Architecture.