The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World

by John Peter Oleson

Nearly every aspect of daily life in the Mediterranean world and Europe during the florescence of the Greek and Roman cultures is relevant to the topics of engineering and technology. This volume highlights both the accomplishments of the ancient societies and the remaining research problems, and stimulates further progress in the history of ancient technology. The subject matter of the book is the technological framework of the Greek and Roman cultures from ca. 800 B.C. through ca. A.D. 500 in the circum-Mediterranean world and Northern Europe. Each chapter discusses a technology or family of technologies from an analytical rather than descriptive point of view, providing a critical summation of our present knowledge of the Greek and Roman accomplishments in the technology concerned and the evolution of their technical capabilities over the chronological period. Each presentation reviews the issues and recent contributions, and defines the capacities and accomplishments of the
technology in the context of the society that used it, the available "technological shelf," and the resources consumed. These studies introduce and synthesize the results of excavation or specialized studies. The chapters are organized in sections progressing from sources (written and representational) to primary (e.g., mining, metallurgy, agriculture) and secondary (e.g., woodworking, glass production, food preparation, textile production and leather-working) production, to technologies of social organization and interaction (e.g., roads, bridges, ships, harbors, warfare and fortification), and finally to studies of general social issues (e.g., writing, timekeeping, measurement, scientific instruments, attitudes toward technology and innovation) and the relevance of ethnographic methods to the study of classical technology. The unrivalled breadth and depth of this volume make it the definitive reference work for students and academics across the spectrum of classical studies.

Genres: History, Ancient History, Greece, Technology, Architecture, Science

896 pages, Hardcover

First published December 19, 2006

Reviews

[Iset · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit, I own this book more for reference purposes than as an enjoyable cover-to-cover read. Engineering and technology is not my specialism or a particular area of interest for me, so you may fairly assume that I found the technical jargon trying and the text dry at times. It also doesn’t exactly help that the Kindle formatting on this book is rather awkward and not optimised. However, the book is incredibly useful. Sometimes you just really need to know “how did the ancient Greeks do that?” or “would the Romans have had access to this material in order to make that, or would they have used a substitute?” That kind of thing. That’s where having this book in my library comes in handy.

[Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is, some old book, I read, many moons ago. RIP.

[Vasil Kolev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but had the wrong type of depth and it could've used a lot more illustrations.