Impronte e reperti lignei negli edifici a rudere dall’Antichità al Medioevo in area romana

Wood has always been used in construction; it has good mechanical resistance, is easy to work with, has elastic properties, and was economical and readily available in Italy in general, and particularly in the Roman area, both in ancient times and during the Middle Ages.The vast expanse of forests and woodlands (the selvaticum) around Rome was the basis of a highly export-oriented sector and supplied the city and other regional locations from ancient times.We must also remember the presence of swampy areas in the Roman countryside and the Agro Pontino, which could offer a large quantity of reeds, also used in various stages of construction.Wood was frequently used for temporary elements during the building’s construction phase, which were entirely or partially removed once the building was completed.An example of these temporary structures is the scaffolding for building elevated walls: the putlog holes, which represent its ‘trace,’ are useful elements for understanding the construction site, its organization, the availability of resources, and the techniques employed, all aspects that can be understood by investigating their distribution, whether more or less regular, as well as their shape and size. Other temporary structures include centering, used in the construction of arches and vaults.These too have often left the ‘imprints’ of wooden planks or woven cane mats, placed between the centering structure and the vaults.Also preserved are the imprints of various types of formworks and the bracing of cementitious foundations.the wooden floors are among the elements intended to remain part of the construction but that are sometimes missing due to degradation. Understanding a building in ruins also involves understanding the levels it consisted of, which can be inferred, in the absence of horizontal planes, through the traces of beam housing holes.The thickness of the wooden deck can also be determined through the imprint it may have left on the surrounding walls.The traces described represent what remains of the work of the lignaroli, secatores or sectores, and the carpentarii materiarum, the long wood sawyers. Among the case studies chosen to illustrate some traces of wood found in Rome and Lazio, from antiquity to the Middle Ages, are the walls of imperial Rome, with subsequent expansions and modifications, for the ancient and medieval periods, and the abandoned city of Ninfa, in the province of Latina, for the medieval period in southern Lazio.