User:Smuse40/sandbox

Potential Topics: 1) Medicine in Ancient Rome

2) Education in Ancient Rome

3) Decided on Roman Brick

Draft Outline: 1) Expand on the "Ancient Rome" section of the wikipedia article. Include more on the importance of the bricks and expansion of Roman brick making. Also mention how it started out with individual people, but ultimately ended up as an imperial monopoly.

2) Expand upon the "Brick Stamps" section of the wiki article. Either expand upon what these stamps entailed or make a new section titled "Brickyards" and put an emphasis on what happened at the brickyards and incorporate aspects of the brick stamps into that.

Roman Brick Draft:

Ancient Rome Section:

The Romans only developed fired clay bricks under the Empire, but had previously used "mud brick", dried only by the sun and therefore much weaker and only suitable for smaller buildings. Development began under Augustus, using techniques developed by the Greeks, who had been using fired bricks much longer, and the earliest dated building in Rome to make use of fired brick is the Theatre of Marcellus, completed in 13 BC. The process of drying bricks in a kiln made it so these bricks would not have cracks in them when they dried ''. The "mud brick" took a very long time to dry and limited brick creation to certain seasons . The fire dried brick allowed the brick production to increase significantly, which created a mass production of bricks in Rome .''

The Romans perfected brick-making during the first century of their empire and used it ubiquitously, in public and private construction alike. The mass production of Roman bricks led to an increase in public building projects ''. Over time the public and private relationship diminished as the brick business turned into an imperial monopoly''. The Romans took their brickmaking skills everywhere they went, introducing the craft to the local populations. The Roman legions operated mobile kilns and introduced bricks to many parts of the empire. The bricks became time records and geographical pinpoints to where the Roman military was operating. Roman bricks are often stamped with the mark of the legion that supervised their production. Roman brick was used to construct famous architecture such as the Red Basilica in Pergamon, Domus Tiberiana in Rome, and the Basilica of Maxentius in Rome. The use of bricks in southern and western Germany, for example, can be traced back to traditions already described by the Roman architect Vitruvius, although he probably refers to mud brick. In the British Isles, the introduction of Roman brick by the Ancient Romans was followed by a 600–700 year gap in major brick production.

Ancient Roman brickyards
Most of the Roman bricks were created at brickyards. These brickyards were typically at large estates owned by a wealthy family that had access to clay deposits. There was a hierarchy in the brick production: the domini were the owners of the estate and were typically aristocrats, the officinatores, typically of lower middle class, supervised the brick making process and manufacturing of them, and the figlinae, typically slaves, were those who made the bricks. Men, women, and children all served in varying degrees as members of the landowners, supervisors, and makers. The brick stamps gave recognition to the domini, officinatores, the brickyard it was created at, and the name of the consuls. Regulations were made on the number of bricks that could be produced in a day and past that limit, bricks became a public entity.

Editor's Note: The italicized portion of the "Ancient Rome" section is what I added to that existing paragraph. The "Brickyard Section" is a whole new section that I intend to put below the "Brick Stamp" section of the wikipedia article.

References:

·       '''Cancik, Hubert, and Helmuth Schneider, eds. Brill's New Pauly. Vol. 2. Boston, MA: Brill, 2003.'''

·       '''Anderson, James C., Jr. Roman Architecture and Society. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.'''