ACTECH · Ancient ConstructionTECHniques between East and West. Building traditions, technological innovations and workmanship circulation: from Roman Arabia to Medieval Europe.

Ancient ConstructionTECHniques between East and West. Building traditions, technological innovations and workmanship circulation: from Roman Arabia to Medieval Europe.

Building techniques are an expression of mankind’s knowledge and capacities under the influence of the cultural, economic, and environmental context of the territory inhabited in a given historical period. The study of building techniques therefore means the possibility of acquiring raw data about ancient societies, especially where written sources are scarce or even completely absent. As an expression of human activity they can evolve, change and be transmitted via direct contact and exchange between different cultures. Starting from this premise the ACTECH Project has explored the evolution and the distribution of specific building techniques (walls and arches) in the Near East. The main objective of the research is to attempt to fill a void in the history of architecture, contributing to the debate on the transmission of building knowledge between antiquity and the early Middle Ages (II – X) in the Mediterranean and trying to understand how and to what extent eastern building techniques contributed to the development of their western equivalents. In order to reach this objective the ACTECH Project has analysed building processes starting from a specific geographic context: northern Jordan, where the ancient architecture, especially of the Byzantine and Islamic periods, is so well-preserved that a detailed study of the materials and the methods of traditional construction can be undertaken, with special attention given to rural architecture. The research subsequently expanded to other Mediterranean contexts in order to reflect more broadly on the issues under consideration. The project had the following Research Objectives (RO): RO1. To identify the main traditional building techniques in northern Jordan with particular reference to techniques for the construction of walls and arches; RO2. To identify and isolate the elements of continuity and discontinuity in the building techniques and supplement these data with other available sources in order to understand the probable contribution of new features/differences from distinct cultural and technological contexts. Therefore to organize chronologically the different types of techniques identified in a table of chronotypes; RO3. To extend the analysis of building knowledge to other geographic and cultural contexts, in particular the Iberian Peninsula; RO4. To test and implement a protocol for the recording of material remains as well as for the management and organization of the data for future projects of restoration and enhancement of the built heritage; RO5. To communicate this knowledge of the Near Eastern built heritage to a wider audience beyond experts in the field.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union