Ancient Transportation

Reception is a term (often) used in classics when discussing literature, but it is not common in archaeology, at least not in Denmark. As archaeologists we are familiar with the term “experimental archaeology”, but I do believe a small part of this particular field can be categorized as “reception” because we are trying to reconstruct a past out of whatever material we can find in the present and hereby, e.g. relive the world of the Romans.

In Germany, and elsewhere, a tradition for living as Romans and having “roman festivals” is widespread in areas with roman remains and reconstructed fortresses. Here focus is on  communicating ideas to and entertaining visitors in a “historical way”. For these purposes reception or “use” of historical and archaeological material is valuable, but when it comes to research and knowledge of the roman world the experimental archaeology is exceptionally useful in questions of technology.

One area of interest in this field of research is the question of wagon-technology. Here researchers have the opportunities to reconstruct a piece of technology and to test the capabilities and different types of minor-technologies (the individual wagon parts) and thereby get an idea of the quality and durability of an area in roman technology. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this almost never happens. The reconstructions are often to expensive for the museums or research-institutions to “destroy” (use until some of the parts have to be renewed) and therefor the full-scale reconstructions is not much better, for a research purpose, than the much cheaper small-scale models. The reconstructions are valuable material in museum-communication, and therefor useful in the reception-part, but the full use of these wagons will not be determined until we start building wagons and use them as they where originally meant to. Then the experimental archaeology will help us answer the question of the usage and possibilities of wagon in the roman age. 

Most wagon-reconstructions that I know of in Denmark and Europe, have never or in a small degree been driven as they where originally meant to, and therefor, I think, they are a part of the field here called “reception” in Roman Archaeology. 

In more museums around Europe reconstructions of different types of roman wagons has been made. These wagons are often made in small-scale-models to give an idea of a certain wagon-type, but in some museums reconstructions has been made - full-scale!

Not all wagons are made due to archaeological finds of wagon-material, but the full-scale reconstructions has some original parts, most often iron-fittings or decorative bronze-items. Since the larger part of the wagon, the wooden part is normally missing in the archaeological finds, the roman wagons are reconstructed as the wagons found in the roman world of pictures (see my introducing post on the subject), and here especially the carvings are important evidence to the looks and constructions of the original wagons.

In the museum in Arlon, Belgium, they have, as mentioned in several posts a large collection of carvings with wagon-scenes and as an extra service they have made small-scale wooden models of most wagon-types to give the visitor an idea of what the carved wagons would have looked like in 3D. An other example of small-scale models of roman wagons are seen in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany. One of the the wagons exhibited are a model of the well-known carving from Maria-Saal, Austria, showing what is known as a Roman travel-wagon, a wagon for long-distance travelling (see photo right). These models are all useful in giving an impression of the types of wagon they represent, but they are less useful when discussing details in wagon-construction. Here the full-scale reconstructions are important.

Large-scale reconstructions are also known from more museums, especially popular in areas containing carved stones decorated with wagon-scenes, meaning the northern Roman provinces. In Hungary and Germany more carved wagon-scenes on tombstones are known and these countries happen to have some of the best known reconstructions of Roman wagons, and luckily for the wagon-researchers the (most) wagons are different in type. In the Hungarian National Museum a reconstructed roman cart (see photo right) is exhibited. This wagon is a two-wheeler and a type best known from the roman carvingsin this area, but there is archaeological evidence for the used metal-parts and wagon-decoration. In Germany more reconstructions of roman wagons has been made during the last 25 years; in Bonn a two-wheeled transportation cart is exhibited, but the most famous reconstruction is the often mentioned travel-wagon in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne. These wagons are also reconstructed in accordance the roman carvings, but some technological details still has to be documented in the archaeological material.

The wagon in Cologne is pictured on more websites and blogs and it will be treated separately in a later post on reconstructions.

One wagon-type seen in Volterra might be interesting to the research of roman travel-wagons.

As mentioned in the latest post some Etruscan ash-urns in Volterra has a certain type of wagon in their “front-scene”, a scene showing transportation into death.

The type of wagon on these urns is a covered wagon, Carpentum, (see photo right) in which the dead person is lying down, and it is most often shown with a cross on the wagon-side (only in one case is the wagon-side covered with what looks like a fish-scale-decoration). The fact that this wagon has something to do with the death-cult or ritual, is guarantied in the use of the wagon as decoration on ash-urns and since the wagon-type is (to my knowledge) only to be found in and around the Etruscan city of Volterra, we might deal with some kind of local ritual or at least wagon-type in the carvings found here.

The wagon-type, as it is seen on the Volterran ash-urns, is nowhere-else to be found in the Etruscan or Centraleuropean area on carvings, but in the “Kunsthistorisches Museum” in Vienna, Austria, an interesting ceramic-wagon is exhibited (see photo right). This wagon has the same characteristics as the Volterran carvings, but the cross on wagon-side is not to be seen in this model, which is why it might be difficult to conclude anything on the meaning and spread of this cross-ornament, if we only look at wagons of the exact same type as the ones in Volterra. Other wagons must be taken into discussion.

Here an interesting carving showing a type of cross-ornament on the wagon-side is one of the most famous carvings dealing with roman wagon-transportation; the carving from Maria-Saal, Austria, showing a roman travel-wagon (see photo left). This carving is used as an example of the roman travel-wagon and it is used in reconstructing models of this wagon-type, e.g. the heavy wagon on display in Cologne.

Whether the cross on this last wagon has anything to do with the ones from Volterra is not likely, but I do find it interesting that this particular ornament is deliberately showed on wagon-carvings from the later Etruscan period and the roman imperial times, and both representing some kind of death-transportation.

Not only roman sarcophagi has carvings on their front-side showing wagons.. this tradition is much older.

In the post on “ships and carvings” i launched some photos from the archaeological museum in Volterra, Tuscany, showing some ash-urns with ship-scenes on the side. Some of these scenes are made in the “same” mythical tradition as later the roman sarcophagi are, and therefore this kind of transportation-scenes might be of the kind showing the dead persons transport into afterlife.

Transportation-scenes on the Etruscan sarcophagi is not only represented in carvings concerned  with ships and sailing, but also in scenes showing the dead-transport in a wagon. In the Etruscan carvings, especially two types of wagon are seen; a two-wheeled triumphant-like wagon (see photo above) and a covered wagon, looking a bit like a house-wagon (see photo right). 

Of the first kind more examples are known since it is a standard motive in Etruscan and later in Roman art. The main person is transported on the wagon in a procession-like scene. Two sarcophagi, one from Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (above) and one from the Vatican museum (see photo below) are here set to represent this theme.

The second type of wagon is, as mentioned above, more like a house-wagon, where the travellers are (often) seen lying in the wagon. This particular wagon was put on the ash-urns in Volterra, Tuscany, and so far I haven’t found it anywhere else in Etruria. In my next post I will try to deal some more with this; the Volterran Dead-Wagon.