Roman Era

The transformation of grain into malt, malt sugars and ale is a three step process. First, the controlled germination (malting), then ‘mashing in’ and collecting a sweet liquid known as wort and finally, the fermentation by pitching the yeast which converts the sugary wort into an alcoholic beverage. Each step requires different conditions for the process to work. They cannot be combined...

Annual Proceedings of the EXAR Tagung
***The 19th issue of the periodical includes 19 essays over 231 pages which present the contributions of the EXAR conference held in 2019. The annual report (Jahresbericht, p.225) and the instructions for authors (Autorenrichtlinien, p.229) of Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa can be found at the end...

#EAC12 World Tour 2021
***This paper provides the details of a Roman minting experiment, which used a bronze mould to cast debased silver blanks typical of the third century A.D. The investigation follows the paper ''Experiments reproducing Roman debased alloys" (George, 2020) which studied the manufacturing methods used...

The reconstruction of a First Century AD Roman cavalry saddle has not been investigated since Peter Connolly introduced his ideas of a wooden tree saddle in 1984, based on the evidence and dimensions provided by archaeological finds of leather saddle covers and bronze saddle horn reinforcers. This alternative reconstruction, not using wood, was designed to...

Heavy, doughnut-shaped, loom weights made of refractory clay are often found in excavations of Roman and Late Roman settlements in North Piedmont. Unfortunately, they are not found in situ with a weaving loom. We have interpreted them as having been specifically designed for use on a warp weighted loom with a lower mobile beam which is weighed down by a few heavy loom weights...

Butser Ancient Farm has been at the forefront of experimental archaeology in Britain1. for more than 45 years. The pioneering work of its first director Dr Peter Reynolds in the evaluation of Iron Age structures and agriculture demonstrated beyond doubt the importance of experiment in archaeology in the UK and international experimental archaeology work...

This article deals with the daily technology of ceramic oil lamps from the period of the 1st century AD until the first half of the 7th century AD. The questions underlying in this article include the following: How long did combustion take and what was its intensity? Were wicks pulled and when? Was the oil poured into an already-burning lamp...

The vertical crushing mill turns the olives into pulp by combining the rotational and rolling motion of a heavy upright stone wheel that moves with continuous contact along a circular horizontal trajectory on a stationary base which forms the system's frame of reference. It was devised during the Hellenistic period and served as one of the most important and impressive means of production in the pre-industrial olive mills of Crete and the Mediterranean in general, until more advanced mill types gradually started replacing it from the mid-19th century onwards.

Bottle gourds, which are thought to have originated in Africa, have been collected and cultivated in Italy since antiquity for the making of vessels and utensils, as well as food, musical instruments, and fishing buoys. Columella and Pliny the Elder both write extensively about the uses of bottle gourds, yet the importance of this vegetable in antiquity is notably absent from modern scholarship...

Most of the population of Roman Italy was poor, whether they were the poor who were constantly in search for food and shelter, or the temporarily poor who were artisans or shopkeepers but could fall into poverty at times. In classical literature, pleasures of the mind were favoured over pleasures of the body. Epictetus wrote that only stupid men spent time dwelling on matters of the body such as eating...