Roman bricks and tiles came in standard sizes stamped with the date and place they were made, so archaeologists can trace exactly where a piece was fired. Some clay pits employed several hundred workers and turned out bricks by the tens of thousands, and the goods travelled as far as North Africa. At Monte Testaccio in Rome lie more than 50 million oil amphorae imported from Spain 🏺
Roman brick industry: stamped tiles, clay pits of hundreds of workers, 50M amphorae at Testaccio
Site mentioned
📍 Monte Testaccio🌍 Show on the globe
Key facts
- Roman brick and tile production used standard sizes stamped with a date and place of manufacture
- Some clay pits employed several hundred workers and produced bricks by the tens of thousands
- Brick products were shipped as far as North Africa
- Rome's Monte Testaccio holds more than 50 million oil amphorae imported from Spain
- From the reign of Septimius Severus onward, Rome's grain dole fed 200,000 people with bread distributed from state-run bakeries
- Emperors built a network of mills powered by aqueducts and overflow water for grain processing
- The late Republican businessman Crassus organized brigades of enslaved firemen, builders and artisans
Sources
Roman Brick Stamps in the Kelsey Museum | John Bodelpress.umich.edu
A catalogue of the largest known collection of brick stamps outside Italy.
The Roman Brick Industryunrv.com
Brick stamps served multiple purposes in ancient Roman construction. They indicated the producer or workshop responsible for manufacturing the bricks, helping ...
Brickstamps, Roman - Oxford Classical Dictionaryoxfordre.com
by H Bloch · 2015 · Cited by 1 — From the mid-1st cent. ce the content of the stamps becomes more exact and more complex, indicating the praedia or figlinae where the bricks were produced, and ...
Roman bricken.wikipedia.org
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 Roman Brick Stamps from Trierleiza.de
So far, at least 4,000 Roman brick stamps have been found in Trier, representing one of the most extensive inventories from the provinces of the Roman Empire.
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