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+--- Thread: Recreating Roman Building Materials (/showthread.php?tid=15263)
Recreating Roman Building Materials - Nemonius Agricola - 06-05-2009
I wanted to create a little display for the public on a small section of what the Roman builders had to work with. So I made a couple of items to show that.
The first picture is a Tubulus (box flue tiles) with a combed design and makers mark. This is a single piece of clay that was formed around a mold and is in the process of drying out in this picture. The comb mark was made with my wooden markers mark that has four teeth after a find in Alfoldean.
The second picture is of a clay pipe. The mouth of the pipe is one inch smaller then the back section of the pipe so that can be fitted into the next pipe. Works well and has no links!!
The third picture is of an Antifix of Legio IX HISP. No antifix of Legio IX has been found but an Antifix of Legio XX has been found and has the Legion's boar on it. So I used a Bull for our design with the shield of Mars and Neptune's trident coming from the shield. Thank you Matt Amt for the research and picture of Legio XX's antifix.
The fourth picture is a Imbrex, or tegula imbricata. This is to cover the seam of the tegula. Its basically just half of a pipe that tapers down.
The fifth picture is the tegulae and imbrex together. Some tiles have been found with nail holes in them in Britain and I decided to show them on these pieces. The tiles fit snug when placed in a vertical line and gravity holds them up in place. The tiles began to slide after a 30% angle of the roof. I wish I permant place to put these so I can mortar them together. Or just more of them.
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Robert Vermaat - 06-05-2009
Quote:I wish I permant place to put these so I can mortar them together. Or just more of them.Yeah yeah - and in a few centuries the schoolkids will learn that Romans reached the Americas because Roman building material was found by the archaeologists!
Well done, Jeremy. :wink:
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - jvrjenivs - 06-06-2009
Indeed wonderful education materials! Well done.
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Nemonius Agricola - 06-06-2009
It's hard to see on the picture of the tegula but one of them has the imprints of my dog walking across it.
The study of imprints of Roman tiles in Britain shows that animals and small children would have stepped on the tiles in the first stages of drying on the other hand the imprints of adults seem to be in the later stages of drying. They figure this by seeing deeper imprints with the animals and kids over the adult prints that are less deep. Maybe the adults knew to stay away from the tiles and the kids didn't or kids just being kids.
Of the one's they have found it's been prints of cows,sheep, goat, birds,cats, dogs and of course one set of horse prints. Of all the animal prints on the tiles the vast number of the prints are animals that are young ,domesticated and maybe a couple months old. This could mean that tile production was a seasonal thing in which you weather your clay in the winter, collect fire wood for the kilns, possible farm since they do find animal prints of domesticated animals and have found imprints of wheat and other grains on the bottoms of the tegula. Spring comes around, the sun is shining and you start making tiles, your baby goat or cat is just born in spring as well and walks across your freshly made tiles. You work all summer then stop in Fall when the rains return. Then start it all over again.
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - M. Demetrius - 06-06-2009
Very nice work. I made a couple of floor tiles for tabletop displays. We bisque fired them in a modern kiln, then pit fired them for color. These are 7 x 7 x 1 inches, before drying (they shrunk around a quarter of an inch). Made from "longhorn orange" terra cotta.
How sturdy is the top of your "box"? That's for a rain drain, right? Are you planning to make more tiles? I thought about how long it would take to make a floor for say, a kitchen, and how much store-bought clay, and realized that the prices for ceramic tiles at Home Depot are not so bad after all.
Here's some + karma for your good work!
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Hibernicus - 06-06-2009
Some tegula do break...
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Nemonius Agricola - 06-07-2009
The box is very strong after being fired. The clay is moist in this picture and I had just pulled out the form for this picture and to be on the safe side I added newspaper to support it just in case. The clay of most box flue tiles were thin. The cut away was to facilitate lateral movement of air. In a survey of complete box flue tiles in five sites 83 percent of the tiles had cut outs in them. The commonest size of the cut average is 77.5 mm tall by 43 mm wide. The other shapes that have been found are circular, and diamond shape.
These are basically a square form of pipe which can be affixed to the wall to form a continuous battery. Their purpose was to more readily facilitate the transference of heat through the thin tile and plaster to the room, not only saving fuel, but also preventing condensation. They were used to replace the old dark and narrow bath-houses, allowing bathers to enjoy the luxury of large unglazed windows and sunshine.
As far as making more I might make more down the road. I have other shapes I want to do such as Tegula Mammata and hold them in place with some cramps or T-shaped nails.
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Nemonius Agricola - 06-07-2009
As far as the question of the form for the box flue tile. The size is 330 mm width by 280 mm depth by 470 mm height. The clay was rolled out with wooden guides. Examination of Roman box flue tile sections shows that there was only one join, usally on the wide side of the tile and near the middle. This suggested that tiles were made by wrapping a single piece of clay around a suitable former. In this case I used a wood form that had been wetted with water and then covered with sand. I used a lap joint in the center of the wide side. When the tile was turned over on to a flat surface to smooth the corners I found that the clay stretched sufficiently to allow the form to be removed easily leaving the finshed wet tile standing vetically.
In these pictures you can see the examples of fragments of a box flue tile from Heckington and Cirencester showing air bubble flow lines and sections of a join.
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Nemonius Agricola - 06-07-2009
Here is a picture of a tile from Verulamium in which a dog has walked on a tile and one can only conclude that someone threw a stone at the dog to get the dog off.
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - M. Demetrius - 06-07-2009
Now that's a cool piece of history! Canem exi !
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Gaius Julius Caesar - 06-07-2009
Right guys, once you've made enough, pack them up and head over here. I have a villa to build!! :mrgreen:
Nice work on them gents!
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - M. Demetrius - 06-07-2009
We're gonna need a bigger boat....
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Viventius - 06-07-2009
Fantastic stuff guys :-) )
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Nemonius Agricola - 06-07-2009
Gaius Julius Caesar\\n[quote]Right guys, once you've made enough, pack them up and head over here. I have a villa to build!!
They is a find of Roman roof tiles that came from Gaul. So it is possible for me to ship mass amounts of tiles across the ocean to Britain. So if you see a bunch of carts showing up on your land with these boxes dont be shocked!!!!
hock: Saw dust included!!! No extra charge!
Just for your information the average wieght of one tegula is 13.6 pounds and the average wieght of a imbrices is 5.6 pounds. Maybe you will need 104.5 tons of materials to be shipped across the ocean or 12,000 tegulae, 12,000 imbrix and maybe 1,500 antifixes?
Re: Recreating Roman Building Materials - Viventius - 06-07-2009
Tegulae/Imbrice, etc, come in lots of different sizes. The military stuff tends to be massive in size. Meanwhile, the tiles used in villas tend to be rather daintier. Initially, I recorded tile from excavations a Roman villa in the south of England. Then got 'culture shock' when I moved to York and started looking at the Roman military tile up there - it's so much bigger than the villa stuff.
If you want to know more about Roman military tile from York, you can download Ian Betts' Phd (A scientific investigation of the brick and tile industry of York to the mid-eighteenth century) from Ethos http://ethos.bl.uk/ It's already been scanned in, so is available as as PDF soon as you've ordered it. It's free, btw, but you do have to agree to online copyright forms and the like.
I like the transportation box for the tiles. Alas most of the ones I see are already in pieces :roll: