Natural Science in Archaeology

10 1 Introduction and History
practices, not only in the design and construction of buildings, but also in what is
thought of today as engineering disciplines. His books include such varied topics as
the manufacture of building materials, pozzolanic cement, and dyes (material science);
machines for heating water for public baths (chemical engineering); amplification in
amphitheaters (acoustics); and the design of roads, bridges, and harbors (civil engineering).
His mineralogical research is interspersed throughout his works. For example, the
main part of Book 2 concerns mineral materials used in architecture such as bricks, sand,
lime, pozzolanic cement, kinds of stone, and varieties of stone masonry, while Book 7
contains a discussion on the preparation of walls and the execution of wall paintings and
frescoes, the use of lime, stucco, and the preparation of plaster, the use of quicksilver
in gilding, and the source and color of natural and artificial pigments. His writing is
prescriptive and gives direct advice: “I have drawn up definite rules to enable you, by
observing them, to have personal knowledge of the quality both of existing buildings
and of those which are yet to be constructed.” As a handbook, De Architectura was
widely read, and Vitruvius’s advice was followed for centuries (see Morgan 1960).
1.3.1.5 Diodorus of Sicily (fl . ca. 58–30 BCE)
Diodorus was born in Agyrium in Sicily, hence the appellation Diodorus Siculus
(Diodorus of Sicily). He was the author of the Bibliotheke, a 40-book history of the
known world Diodorus (1950). Of these, only Books 1 through 5 and 11 through 20
are complete; the others are fragmentary. While Diodorus was primarily an historian,
he mentions engineering feats in passing, and is the source for the description
of gold mining techniques used in Egypt during the Hellenistic Period (first century
BCE). In Book 3.12 he cites four principal steps in gold production. Fires were first
set to shatter the rock, following this stone was quarried, the ore was worked, and
finally the gold was washed and refined.
1.3.2 Medieval Authors
1.3.2.1 Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636)
A prolific writer who lived in Visigothic Spain, Isidore of Seville was long associated
with the schools of modern-day Seville. He continually tried to bring them
up to the standard of earlier Roman schools, and for this purpose he gathered the
fragments of late Roman education so that they could be the basis of his educational
program. Published in a work called the Etymologies (Etymologiarum Sive
Originum Libri XX) – a kind of “Encyclopedia Britannica” for the early Medieval
Period – it presented a universal history of all known learning from classical sources
through the ecclesiastical writers and commentators.
In this work he discusses the derivation of mineral names. A section of Book 16 discusses
stones and metals with descriptions frequently copied verbatim from classical