Household crafts, health and well-being, and workshop production

This chapter presents texts concerned with metalworking, woodworking, production and processing of textiles and leather, ceramics and glass, applied chemistry, technologies of health and well-being, and large-scale production. In the Bronze Age, metalworkers discovered that the basic combination of copper and tin produced bronze, an alloy that was not only harder than copper, but also melted at a lower temperature (important for casting). Casting in moulds remained the main technique for shaping bronze, but the Greeks and Romans also hammered thin sheets that could be shaped into various forms or hammered from behind with repoussé decoration, riveted, soldered, and treated with inlay, or chasing. These techniques were all within the repertory of the metalworker. While the production of hollow-cast bronze statues was a particularly complex process, wire could be simply produced either by twisting thin strips of bronze or drawing thin sections through a swage-block. Gold and silver were worked similarly, but brass was cast. Lead, too, was cast into moulds, or rolled, soldered, and riveted. Tin plating was done by dipping or by splashing the liquid tin onto the base surface. Gold leaf was applied by using mercury to help the amalgamation (Chapter 6). Since iron could not be cast in antiquity, it was shaped by hammering, and complex iron objects were produced by joining separate sections with rivets or by hammer welding.

Woodworking is a more ancient technology than metalworking. Much of the information in the classical texts about types of wood, their applications, and the methods of harvesting originated in the Bronze Age or earlier. The introduction of iron tools had little effect on the techniques of working wood other than speeding up the procedures and allowing greater precision – particularly in sawing. Bronze Age, Greek, and Roman carpentry tools are virtually identical in function, while change in shape is usually a response to the way iron had to be worked differently from bronze. One tool apparently new to the Roman period was the plane, which required a very hard, sharp blade to function properly. Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder provide long and detailed discussions of types of wood, their functions, and methods for harvesting and working. Chapter 2 discusses woods used for charcoal or fire-sticks.

Protecting the body from the elements with coverings was one of the earliest human needs that required technological innovation. In the Greek and Roman periods, textiles and leathers were by far the most common. The most important textiles were produced from two animal fibres (wool and silk) and two plant fibres (cotton and linen); other sources played minor roles (hemp, asbestos, reed, hair from various animals). Similarly, the majority of leather was supplied by cattle, sheep, and pigs, although hides from other animals continued to be used. The production of raw materials is mostly covered in the chapter on agriculture and animal husbandry (Chapter 3). Once harvested, the raw materials underwent a variety of treatments to make the finished fabric suitable for use. Textile production began with cleaning and softening, then mordanting and dyeing in order to ready the fibres for spinning and weaving into cloth. In leather production, the tanning of hides and skins required the removal of residual flesh and fat and of the epidermis from the hide in order for the middle corium to receive the tanning agent, which preserved the corium layer and made it waterproof. The leather treatment was completed by rolling, applying grease to help with pliability and water-resistance, dyeing, and other processes to improve the appearance of the leather. Finally, the leather could be cut and processed into clothing, shoes, weaponry, and a multitude of other products.

The humble character of ceramics changed in the Bronze Age when evidence for large-scale production indicates the presence of professionals. After the fast wheel appeared in Greece in the ninth century bc, production speed increased once more, and more precise shapes appeared. Advances in the procedures for preparing clays, decorating with slips and glazes, and firing ceramics in kilns during the seventh and sixth centuries bc laid the groundwork for the magnificent black- and red-figure pottery of the sixth and fifth centuries. Mould-made vessels with relief were popular from the Hellenistic period into the Late Roman Empire. Vitreous lead glazes were known from the first century bc but were never widely used. In every period, however, the most common ceramics were heavy, undecorated wares used for cooking, eating, or storing food.

The technique of making glass was discovered probably as a by-product of the high temperatures involved in smelting copper in the Early Bronze Age, but although glassmaking is much later than ceramic production, the two technologies are similar, involving the alteration of common natural substances – in the case of glass, pure quartz sand and potash (potassium carbonate) or soda (sodium carbonate) by employing the heat of a kiln. Early glass products were granular or opaque, but in the Iron Age the techniques for producing brightly-coloured objects by dipping, hand-moulding, or winding threads of glass were well understood. In the Hellenistic period, perhaps influenced by ceramic techniques, glass bowls were created by pressing disks of translucent, coloured glass into moulds. The invention of glass-blowing in the first century bc, which stimulated the production of elaborate shapes and transparent glass, made glass relatively inexpensive and common throughout the Roman Empire. During the Imperial period vessels were also decorated by cutting with an abrasive lap wheel.

Applied or practical chemistry is the chemistry of use, rather than the chemistry of theory, which has no immediate application. Applied chemistry was characterised by misinformation and guesswork, largely because of a lack of understanding of the qualities of materials that were utilised. In ancient Greece and Rome applied chemistry was based on observation of changes that, most often, were introduced by heat. Although of great impact on many aspects of technology (metallurgy, perfumes, glass, ceramics, painting, and food production), the superficial observations and empirical methods used in antiquity to acquire knowledge resulted in much uncertainty and misinformation. Nevertheless, progress was made in the preparation of pitch, soaps, inks, dyes and pigments, cleaning agents, cosmetics, and perfumes.

Greek and Roman medical knowledge and practice initiated, in many ways, the transformation of Western understanding of diseases and injuries and the treatment of patients. Notions and methods of the Greeks and Romans were commonly employed, for good or ill, throughout the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern Period. The technological aspect of ancient medicine resulted in the creation of medical instruments made of various materials (iron, bronze, steel, ivory, wood, bone, stone, gold) and in a staggering variety of sizes and shapes for specific procedures. The sources provide evidence for simple personal hygiene (strigil), methods to improve one’s speaking or singing, simple skin treatments (pimples), prosthetics (feet, hand, wigs, teeth), drugs (for pain, sleep, antidotes), and the tools for simple (nose fractures) and complex (dislocations and fractures to trepanation) surgical procedures. In several instances, specific instruments (a traction table, called Hippocrates’ Bench; the Spoon of Diocles) were created to deal with injuries. All were intended to improve lifestyle and enhance enjoyment of life as much as possible. The chapter also presents texts dealing with dissection and vivisection, procedures developed from other technologies but applied to medical purposes, and concludes with a section on the methods of preservation (mummification, immersion in honey, use of herbs and spices) and the treatment of the body after death (trophies, entombment, cremation, and deification).

In the Greek and Roman world, specialised labour and the need for vast quantities of raw materials and products resulted in large numbers of people organised into groups for manufacturing. The demand for larger volumes and products of superior quality led to further specialisation of labour and to piecework, where individuals could more quickly produce separate components that would later be assembled by other workers, a process viable only in urban or palatial settings. The texts provide only general evidence for large-scale, organized production, but documentation of individuals’ sources of wealth indicates its existence. A few texts also imply a factory-like manufacturing system or the presence of large workforces assembled to create products such as bricks, pots, and buildings. Some archaeological evidence, like the bakery reliefs on the Tomb of Eurysaces, and remains of similar facilities at Pompeii, provides additional clues, but evidence for such production in other contexts (fulling or tanning) is meagre. Large numbers of workers are documented also in the chapters on food production, quarrying and mining, construction, and textile production.