Roman Brick - Ancient Roman Brick Stamps

Ancient Roman Brick Stamps

Around the middle of the 1st century BC Roman brick makers began using unique identifying stamps on their bricks. The first of these brick stamps were simple and included minimal information such as, the name of a person and sometimes the name of the brickyard the brick was produced in. These earliest Roman brick stamps were emblazoned into the wet clay using a hardwood or metal mold prior to the firing of the brick. As the early Roman Empire progressed fired brick became the primary building material and the number of brick producers increased dramatically as more and more wealthy land owners began to exploit clay deposits on their land for brick-making. Brick stamps began to become more complex and include more and more information. In 110 the stamps included, for the first time, the name of the consuls for the year of production, which allows modern observers to pinpoint the year a brick was created.

These brick stamps, once viewed more as a curiosity than archaeological artifacts, allow scholars to learn about the demand for bricks in Ancient Rome because through the dates on the stamps they provide a chronology. Today, brick stamp discoveries are carefully documented and that documentation, combined with the use of architectural context, has helped provide a reliable method of dating Ancient Roman construction. In addition, brick stamps have proved helpful in determining general Ancient Roman chronology.