• January 10, 2026 | 8:00 AM - 11:00 AM
• Continental 6, Ballroom Level

7H: Stories from the Worksite: Builders, Materials, Methods in Greek and Roman Architecture (Colloquium)

Join Zoom here:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87334067595?pwd=qpOa9TV2koLTqV4Gctep6b2MsIPeLr.1

Organizers:
Samuel Holzman, Princeton University, Phil Stinson, University of Kansas, and Alessandro Pierattini, University of Notre Dame

Overview Statement:
Studies of ancient architecture can often center elite patrons, the experience of buildings’ users, and treat the construction process in the abstract. This session shines a light on the ancient worksite, particularly the ways technical analysis of architecture reveal the human side of building. What can be recovered of the personal contribution of workers? What varied sources of evidence reveal the fingerprints of builders? This colloquium session takes a broad chronological and geographic perspective on the ancient world, stretching from archaic Sicily (sixth century B.C.E.) to late antique Constantinople (sixth century C.E.) and includes worksites in Achaemenid Persia, Roman Gaul, and North Africa. The methodology of architectural energetics analysis, which seeks to empirically convert quantities of materials into labor estimates, is taken up in multiple papers, both as a useful tool that aids our understanding of worksites and as a target for critique. Themes of the colloquium encompass craftsmanship and materials, worksite demography and women builders, transmission of structural and design principles, style and workshops, the dynamics of networks and itinerancy.

The session examines the mobility of architects and crews, showing how construction booms—such as in the post-Persian War era—stimulated itinerancy and stylistic exchange across the Mediterranean. In Achaemenid Persia, written records, masons’ marks, and technical features testify to a diverse, multinational workforce—including Greek and Anatolian builders—whose movements and workshop structures challenge Greek civic labor models. Votives to Asklepios dedicated by Greek masons attest the occupational hazards and health of builders. In Roman Gaul, building practices reveal regionally distinct labor organization: communal, ad hoc workforces collaborated on earthwork theaters, producing monuments that fostered local identity. A paper on the mausoleum at Thugga proposes that highly skilled, small teams—rather than vast structured guilds—shaped ancient projects, employing time-efficiency strategies that are archaeologically detectable. Finally, the case of Juliana Anicia in sixth-century Constantinople reminds us that knowledge of construction was not limited to male professionals. Iconography and textual sources, including the Vienna Dioscurides Codex, document women’s roles in overseeing building projects, celebrating them as patrons, planners, and managers of large work crews. The example illustrates a broader cultural recognition of women’s engagement in the processes of construction, before imperial centralization refocused attention on the completed architecture alone.

Together, these papers demonstrate how technical, textual, and material approaches to the ancient worksite reveal the creativity, labor, and lives of those too often left out of architectural history.