Christopher F Motz
I am a Roman archaeologist and a specialist in digital technologies and methods. My work explores physical, social, and conceptual infrastructures—both those that guided ancient life and those that continue to shape our engagement with the past.
With regard to the ancient world, I have written on the urban industry, water management, and drainage infrastructure of a sub-elite neighborhood in Pompeii, as well as on the networks of knowledge that underpinned the design, construction, and operation of workshops in the Roman fish-salting (food production) and fulling (cloth treatment) industries.
Much of my work is rooted in nuanced analyses of complex data sets, which connects with my other primary focus: developing new and better ways—often digital ones—to record, analyze, publish, and preserve cultural heritage data. In the field, I currently serve as Head of Data for projects at the coastal Punic/Roman city of Tharros, Sardinia (Tharros Archaeological Research Project) and at Pompeii’s Porta Stabia neighborhood (Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia). I have previously conducted fieldwork in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, France, Greece, Turkey, and Belize.
Supervisors: Dissertation advisor: Steven Ellis
Address: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
University of Michigan
434 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
cmotz@umich.edu
With regard to the ancient world, I have written on the urban industry, water management, and drainage infrastructure of a sub-elite neighborhood in Pompeii, as well as on the networks of knowledge that underpinned the design, construction, and operation of workshops in the Roman fish-salting (food production) and fulling (cloth treatment) industries.
Much of my work is rooted in nuanced analyses of complex data sets, which connects with my other primary focus: developing new and better ways—often digital ones—to record, analyze, publish, and preserve cultural heritage data. In the field, I currently serve as Head of Data for projects at the coastal Punic/Roman city of Tharros, Sardinia (Tharros Archaeological Research Project) and at Pompeii’s Porta Stabia neighborhood (Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia). I have previously conducted fieldwork in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, France, Greece, Turkey, and Belize.
Supervisors: Dissertation advisor: Steven Ellis
Address: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
University of Michigan
434 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
cmotz@umich.edu
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Dissertation by Christopher F Motz
Due to size limits, the file on Academia.edu only has 150 dpi images; the file on OhioLINK is 300 dpi.
In the Augustan period, a group of workers built a series of fish-salting vats in Tuscany using virtually identical techniques as the team that installed a set of vats in southwest Spain a few generations earlier. How did this happen? The builders surely never met, so the resemblance between their constructions is remarkable. But even more striking is how common this phenomenon was among the countless ordinary, mundane structures found throughout the Roman world. The basic explanation for these similarities is simple: the knowledge that underpinned their design and construction spread from person to person and place to place. This, however, leaves many questions about the intricacies of the process unanswered.
In this dissertation I examine how the movement of knowledge among sub-elite communities shaped the construction of ancient industrial buildings. I introduce a “knowledge network analysis” framework—an analytical approach that I developed to focus attention on how knowledge moves through communities, setting people and the social ties that bind them at the forefront of my investigation. I critically examine ancient literary, epigraphic, iconographic, and archaeological evidence, complemented by comparative anthropological and sociological studies, to reconstruct who designed and built Roman workshops, how the requisite knowledge moved among them, and what socio-cultural factors shaped the links between them. I then apply this model to the archaeological remains of two Roman industries—fish-salting (food production) and fulling (cloth treatment)—which together encompass 405 workshops containing 2,829 pieces of equipment. I analyze patterns in their design and construction to deduce the contours of the “toolkits” of knowledge that were used to create them, and to deduce who used these toolkits and how they spread.
I determine that in each industry, both workshop managers and specialized builders contributed crucial know-how. As a result of the industries’ distributions and geospatial positions, however, their knowledge networks had distinct shapes. The workshops of the geographically concentrated fish-salting industry were similar and highly specialized; workshops in the scattered fulling industry were largely generic, but some specialized practices spread within social clusters. Finally, I show how the positions of these industries in their wider natural, social, cultural, and economic contexts further shaped the development of their knowledge networks. I explore aspects of the impact an industry’s processes and business model had on its distribution; the role of urbanism and the market economy in promoting knowledge transmission; the impact of intensive building activity on knowledge creation and movement; the reasons why specialized knowledge emerged; the limits of knowledge networks and the causes of regionalism; and the evolution of knowledge during periods of social, political, and economic upheaval.
By investigating systems of knowledge that were essential to the creation and use of spaces and objects, this study reveals part of the intellectual infrastructure of the Roman world. In doing so, it presents a new framework for reconstructing the spread of craft knowledge—one not restricted to the ancient Mediterranean—while speaking to the study of the sub-elite, architecture and construction, crafts and industrial spaces, the economy, and the provinces.
NOTE: For the data set, see https://www.academia.edu/50109245/A_Dataset_of_Roman_Fish_Salting_and_Fulling_Workshops
Articles and Book Chapters by Christopher F Motz
NOTE: For the dissertation, see https://www.academia.edu/50137737/The_Knowledge_Networks_of_Workshop_Construction_in_the_Roman_World
Motz, Christopher F. “Sangro Valley and the Five (Paperless) Seasons: Lessons on Building Effective Digital Recording Workflows for Archaeological Fieldwork.” In Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology, edited by Erin Walcek Averett, Jody Michael Gordon, and Derek B. Counts, 77-109. Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2016.
La documentación arqueológica se encuentra en medio de un cambio tecnológico mediante el cual los sistemas de registro cambian del papel a formatos digitales. Los sistemas digitales replican de manera efectiva la información registrada en formularios de papel, y también ofrecen ventajas para los arqueólogos trabajando en el campo. Además de las contribuciones logísticas al trabajo arqueológico, la tecnología digital también puede transformar las formas de realizar la arqueología al cambiar la manera en que miramos los sitios, y cómo los documentamos a través de diversos tipos de datos. Con el objetivo de explorar este potencial, desarrollamos una base de datos relacional utilizando las computadoras tabletas, y el programa FileMaker, el cual ofrece la posibilidad de documentar simultáneamente características específicas de los artefactos y rasgos según dos perspectivas culturales, los entendimientos modernos de los arqueólogos y también los de los mayas clásicos. En este artículo se describe la base de datos y se discuten los resultados de la primera temporada de campo en que se utiliza la base de datos para registrar excavaciones en el sitio de Say Kah, Belice. Nuestras experiencias generan reflexiones sobre el impacto del uso de sistemas de registro digital tanto como ventajas prácticas y también para los cambios productivos en la percepción.
Field Reports by Christopher F Motz
Conference Presentations by Christopher F Motz
Our goals in this paper are twofold. First, we outline our efforts to organize our artifacts by traditional typologies while also analyzing groups of artifacts within the chronological, spatial, and formational characteristics of their find contexts. Second, we present two case studies to demonstrate how these efforts have aided our understanding of how assemblages came to be created and how we have applied that understanding toward broader historical questions. It is our hope that this model will encourage others to approach small finds contextually, in concert with the many other classes of evidence recovered by modern excavation projects.
* This paper is at the 1:08:00–1:32:30 marks in the video linked below.
Due to size limits, the file on Academia.edu only has 150 dpi images; the file on OhioLINK is 300 dpi.
In the Augustan period, a group of workers built a series of fish-salting vats in Tuscany using virtually identical techniques as the team that installed a set of vats in southwest Spain a few generations earlier. How did this happen? The builders surely never met, so the resemblance between their constructions is remarkable. But even more striking is how common this phenomenon was among the countless ordinary, mundane structures found throughout the Roman world. The basic explanation for these similarities is simple: the knowledge that underpinned their design and construction spread from person to person and place to place. This, however, leaves many questions about the intricacies of the process unanswered.
In this dissertation I examine how the movement of knowledge among sub-elite communities shaped the construction of ancient industrial buildings. I introduce a “knowledge network analysis” framework—an analytical approach that I developed to focus attention on how knowledge moves through communities, setting people and the social ties that bind them at the forefront of my investigation. I critically examine ancient literary, epigraphic, iconographic, and archaeological evidence, complemented by comparative anthropological and sociological studies, to reconstruct who designed and built Roman workshops, how the requisite knowledge moved among them, and what socio-cultural factors shaped the links between them. I then apply this model to the archaeological remains of two Roman industries—fish-salting (food production) and fulling (cloth treatment)—which together encompass 405 workshops containing 2,829 pieces of equipment. I analyze patterns in their design and construction to deduce the contours of the “toolkits” of knowledge that were used to create them, and to deduce who used these toolkits and how they spread.
I determine that in each industry, both workshop managers and specialized builders contributed crucial know-how. As a result of the industries’ distributions and geospatial positions, however, their knowledge networks had distinct shapes. The workshops of the geographically concentrated fish-salting industry were similar and highly specialized; workshops in the scattered fulling industry were largely generic, but some specialized practices spread within social clusters. Finally, I show how the positions of these industries in their wider natural, social, cultural, and economic contexts further shaped the development of their knowledge networks. I explore aspects of the impact an industry’s processes and business model had on its distribution; the role of urbanism and the market economy in promoting knowledge transmission; the impact of intensive building activity on knowledge creation and movement; the reasons why specialized knowledge emerged; the limits of knowledge networks and the causes of regionalism; and the evolution of knowledge during periods of social, political, and economic upheaval.
By investigating systems of knowledge that were essential to the creation and use of spaces and objects, this study reveals part of the intellectual infrastructure of the Roman world. In doing so, it presents a new framework for reconstructing the spread of craft knowledge—one not restricted to the ancient Mediterranean—while speaking to the study of the sub-elite, architecture and construction, crafts and industrial spaces, the economy, and the provinces.
NOTE: For the data set, see https://www.academia.edu/50109245/A_Dataset_of_Roman_Fish_Salting_and_Fulling_Workshops
NOTE: For the dissertation, see https://www.academia.edu/50137737/The_Knowledge_Networks_of_Workshop_Construction_in_the_Roman_World
Motz, Christopher F. “Sangro Valley and the Five (Paperless) Seasons: Lessons on Building Effective Digital Recording Workflows for Archaeological Fieldwork.” In Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology, edited by Erin Walcek Averett, Jody Michael Gordon, and Derek B. Counts, 77-109. Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2016.
La documentación arqueológica se encuentra en medio de un cambio tecnológico mediante el cual los sistemas de registro cambian del papel a formatos digitales. Los sistemas digitales replican de manera efectiva la información registrada en formularios de papel, y también ofrecen ventajas para los arqueólogos trabajando en el campo. Además de las contribuciones logísticas al trabajo arqueológico, la tecnología digital también puede transformar las formas de realizar la arqueología al cambiar la manera en que miramos los sitios, y cómo los documentamos a través de diversos tipos de datos. Con el objetivo de explorar este potencial, desarrollamos una base de datos relacional utilizando las computadoras tabletas, y el programa FileMaker, el cual ofrece la posibilidad de documentar simultáneamente características específicas de los artefactos y rasgos según dos perspectivas culturales, los entendimientos modernos de los arqueólogos y también los de los mayas clásicos. En este artículo se describe la base de datos y se discuten los resultados de la primera temporada de campo en que se utiliza la base de datos para registrar excavaciones en el sitio de Say Kah, Belice. Nuestras experiencias generan reflexiones sobre el impacto del uso de sistemas de registro digital tanto como ventajas prácticas y también para los cambios productivos en la percepción.
Our goals in this paper are twofold. First, we outline our efforts to organize our artifacts by traditional typologies while also analyzing groups of artifacts within the chronological, spatial, and formational characteristics of their find contexts. Second, we present two case studies to demonstrate how these efforts have aided our understanding of how assemblages came to be created and how we have applied that understanding toward broader historical questions. It is our hope that this model will encourage others to approach small finds contextually, in concert with the many other classes of evidence recovered by modern excavation projects.
* This paper is at the 1:08:00–1:32:30 marks in the video linked below.
Read the publication here: https://www.academia.edu/6432193/Paperless_Recording_at_the_Sangro_Valley_Project
.
Individual chapters are available for free download, here:
http://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/
https://thedigitalpress.org/mobilizing-the-past-for-a-digital-future/
Mobilizing the Past is a collection of 20 articles that explore the use and impact of mobile digital technology in archaeological field practice. The detailed case studies present in this volume range from drones in the Andes to iPads at Pompeii, digital workflows in the American Southwest, and examples of how bespoke, DIY, and commercial software provide solutions and craft novel challenges for field archaeologist. The range of projects and contexts ensures that Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future is far more than a state-of-the-field manual or technical handbook. Instead, the contributors embrace the growing spirit of critique present in digital archaeology. This critical edge, backed by real projects, systems, and experiences, gives the book lasting value as both a glimpse into present practices as well as the anxieties and enthusiasm associated with the most recent generation of mobile digital tools.