Promotional Information

From the Palaeolithic age to the height of the Roman Empire, this concise reference source takes a closer look at six ancient technological events and their effects on civilization.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Bella Vivante Preface Historical and Technological Overview Food and Clothing Water Shelter and Security Transportation and Coinage Recordkeeping and Timekeeping Crafts Conclusions Biographies Glossary Bibliography

About the Author

JOHN W. HUMPHREY is a Roman historian and archaeologist at the University of Calgary. He is co-author of Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook (1998), a volume of translated and annotated ancient texts that describe the technical history of the Greeks and Romans. He has excavated at four sites in Greece and Turkey, and has traveled extensively throughout the Mediterranean, studying and photographing contemporary examples of ancient technologies.

Reviews

Roman historian and archaeologist Humphrey surveys both physical and ideological/linguistic inventions of the ancient Mediterranean societies in this volume. Illustrations accompany text explaining the context and use of technologies in the categories of food and clothing, water, shelter and security, transportation and coinage, recordkeeping and timekeeping, and crafts that developed between the Archaic era in Greece and the height of the Roman Empire. Additionally, one section provides brief biographies of known inventors of the time, and another contains 54 topical primary documents, including instructions for constructing a plow and building a Roman aqueduct.
*SciTech Book News//Art Book News Annual 2007*