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The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (Oxford Handbooks) 1st Edition

by John Peter Oleson (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 22 ratings
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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.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0199734852
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0199734856
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    December 30, 2009
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    1.6 x 6.7 x 9.7 inches
  8. Print length
    896 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The various survey and analytical essays in this volume provide specific answers to questions relating to ancient technology and engineering in classical antiquity and serve as an excellent starting point for further investigation by providing current bibliographies of major scholarship on the subjects covered. The embracing purpose of this series, I believe, is to make the Oxford Handbooks the acknowledged first place to go to gain entry into an unfamiliar aspect of the ancient world. If such is the aspiration for this new series, Oleson's volume meets and exceeds the goal and, in doing so, sets the gold standard for other handbook volumes now in preparation for publication by the Oxford University Press and other publishing houses." -- Robert L. Hohlfelder, American Journal of Archaeology

"The finished product represents a new milestone for Oxford and for the field. Each of the eight parts to the book is a stand-alone tour de force that deserves enormous praise for its organization, its comprehensiveness, and its promise for impacting future studies." -- Technology and Culture

"One may make it clear, right from the start, that this is a superb production, ably edited by John Oleson, full and comprehensive, and, being devoted to technology, filling a long-felt gap." -- Classical Review

"It can be said at once that this is an excellent book that will serve classicists reliably as a basic work of reference. The level of scholarship is very high, the writing generally clear, the breadth of coverage impressive." -- Journal of Roman Archaeology

Book Description

A comprehensive survey of technology in Greek and Roman cultures from ca. 800 B.C. through ca. A.D. 500

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (December 30, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 896 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199734852
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199734856
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.51 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1.6 x 6.7 x 9.7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 22 ratings

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
22 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kenneth Peters
5.0 out of 5 stars Expensive, but Comprehensive
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2009
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This book is expensive, but it represents the state-of-the-art in Roman technical studies. It does not necessarily supplant older works, such as KD White's 'Greek and Roman Technology' or Brown and Strong's 'Roman Crafts' but it certainly casts them in a different light - especially with the new information regarding Roman industrial capability, and new outlooks on classical attitudes towards technology. The various contributors are well respected in their fields, and the massive amounts of citation will keep you busy for months on any particular subject.

Although it is very comprehensive, it does not cover every aspect of classical technology, and I would HIGHLY recommend you pick up Humphrey, Oleson, and Sherwood's 'Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook' as a companion. Also, keep in mind that this book does not deal with specific nuts and bolts of technologies: you will not find discussions of how much a Roman wagon weighed, efficiencies of harness techniques, mining yields, and other such data points.

If you have an interest in technology and industry in the classical world and want a book you can crack open to any page and go "Wow, I didn't know that!", get this.
7 people found this helpful
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Eric Kondratieff
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2014
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Great book!
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John Bugnolo
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book on the Classical World technological feats
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2013
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This book covers most of the inventions of Classical world used to extract from the world's resources to fulfill the needs of their societies. It shows that man prior to the industrial revolution was just as smart in the classical world as he is today. These inventions and methods are the underlying foundations of today's technological advancements.
2 people found this helpful
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Lorraine Bog
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2012
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This was required for an elective. This book is easy to read/follow. This was an interesting class. Also, the book was thorough in explaining as much detail that was known of a process or machine.
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Lundr
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2014
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This is a MUST read book for historians. You must not ignore what the past knew.
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Jordan Bell
4.0 out of 5 stars Some useful bibliographic essays on Greek and Roman technology
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2016
This is a collection of short essays about engineering technology in the Greco-Roman world. None of the articles is by itself an authoritative account, but the ones I have read give well chosen citations to authoritative works. Indeed, watching some videos on bronze and iron making using ancient techniques has given me a much more solid sense of ancient metallurgy than reading an essay can, and to fully understand any technical process or tool one either needs to work with it or have many precise diagrams, which is impossible for a short essay. Perhaps we can get a big picture sense of some topics by reading an essay, but ancient processes and tools that we have no hands on experience with today are not such a topic.

There are only passing discussions of Egyptian and Near Eastern technology in these essays. It is a shame that there is no single authoritative book on technology in the ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Levant, including societies like the Sumerians, Akkadians, Hittites, Persians, etc.). There are plenty of books about Egyptian technology, probably because the pyramids are part of popular knowledge. Indeed, there seem to be dozens of bad books about Egyptian technology written by dilettantes; any book whose title uses any of the words “unexplained”, “mysteries”, “secret”, “revealed”, etc. should be ignored unless you have a good reason to trust it. But if one wants to know about Hittite metallurgy or Akkadian masonry, there is only the scholarly periodical literature, which usually closes the subject to outsiders because to read specialized articles requires long training.

Some of the decent looking books on Egyptian technology I've come across:  Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture (Dover Books on Architecture)  and  Ancient Egyptian Technology and Innovation (BCP Egyptology) . The only book I've found on Mesopotamian technology that seems both accessible and reliable is  Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence .
2 people found this helpful
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Michael M. Curtis
2.0 out of 5 stars Content Origin
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2013
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I've been burned by these definitively titled, multi-authored books before. Perusing the index, prior to purchase, made it appear as if the brief articles were general in nature with names like "Greek and Roman Agriculture," or "Roman Engineering and Construction,", but they read like brief descriptions of dissertations, lengthy abstracts of specific works, or the text of a particular powerpoint presentation. The provenance of only three articles is given in the acknowledgements, the rest are simply called contributors.

Articles deal only with one or two very specific aspects related to the chapter title,and due to their extreme brevity, the information if of no value to a researcher. For example, "Greek Quarrying and Stoneworking" in "Quarrying and Stoneworking" by Fant gives a two-page description of the trenching technique used by the Greeks followed by a one page description of stone transport before moving on to Roman quarrying.

The salient problem with this volume is the flowery language used to disguise the lack of content. One example from "Greek and Roman Agriculture" is "Mediterranean ecosystems are characterized by abrupt topography and marked seasonality, features that have the effect of fragmenting the accessibility of natural resources and partitioning them across space and time." After reading it three times, the author appears to be saying the Mediterranean has a varied climate and topography.
48 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Chad in Alberta
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Reviewed in Canada on April 29, 2024
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A great volume to reveal very little.
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MICHAEL WYMAN
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read, easy to understand, lots of bredth occasionally lacking depth
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2016
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A fantastic read, easy to understand and has a great section on waterwheels. I felt it lacked a bit of depth at times but this was made up for by the easy language and diagrams, a good complimentary book to Greek an Roman Technologgy: a sourcebook
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S.R.Tarling
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2018
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I would have preferred more explanatory drawings.
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