Ancient and Early Medieval Building Techniques in the Mediterranean Area: From East to West, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Centre Max Weber, Nanterre, December 12–14, 2018
The workshop "Ancient and Early Medieval building techniques in the mediterranean area: from East to West" is part of the Marie Skłodowska Curie European ACTECH project (G.A.703829), devoted to the study of the ancient construction techniques in the Near East from the Roman period to the Early Islamic era and on the transmission and diffusion of these techniques in the Mediterranean basin.
The study of building techniques leads to a complex analysis of historical buildings from different points of view. Characterizing a wall structure and defining different building techniques in order to determine the construction history of buildings means overturning the accepted “style-analytical” approach in order to understand the architecture. This workshop aims to address the theme of building techniques and technologies in the ancient Mediterranean basin, starting in the Hawran region where Roman-Byzantine construction know-how came into contact with much older building technologies, and here the first examples of Islamic architecture were developed—a sort of “natural bridge” between East and West. In this fertile basin of local experiences new building techniques and architectural typologies developed and from there spread throughout the Mediterranean basin.