[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This collection of essays brings together scholars of a variety of ancient sciences and technologies, each of whom applies the concept of “anchoring” to their own specializations. This volume joins a growing body of scholarship on science, technology, and innovation in the ancient world, which includes both single-authored books such as Serafina Cuomo’s Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity (2007), and edited handbooks such as John P. Oleson’s Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (2007). Miko Flohr’s, Stephan Mols’s, and Teun Tieleman’s project offers a middle ground between these two types of work: it operates with a specific conceptual lens not suited for a handbook, but is able to cover a greater variety of material, regions, and periods than a single-authored monograph. In this way, it offers a novel dimension and analytic tool for scholars interested in ancient craft production, history of science, and technological development.
The term anchoring was first adapted by Ineke Sluiter from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economy, and science and technology studies.[1] The term describes how novel concepts stand a better chance of individual and societal uptake if they are connected, or anchored, to already familiar ideas or skills. Readers of Cuomo’s Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity may recognize parallels to her concept of blocage, which addressed similar issues of technological uptake, but the exact connection between the two projects is not addressed.[2] Whereas Cuomo’s blocage describes how ancient technological progress is prevented, anchoring allows for it. With the concept of anchoring, the editors and authors aim to move away from a view of ancient technological progress that is compared against modern benchmarks and instead aim to contextualize ancient innovations in the contexts in which they arose. This path, they argue, offers a better understanding of the social forces of innovation and technology, and an explanation for why certain inventions or innovations became commonplace, and why others died out. Because this anchoring operates on the level of cognition, it is potentially useful to the study of many different areas of the ancient world.
The book begins with an introduction that explains the premise and stakes of their enterprise. The editors draw explicit connections to previous engagements with ancient science and technology, which either likened ancient progress to phenomena in the modern world,[3] or emphasized the failure of ancient societies to innovate in contrast to modern progress. [4] The authors argue that both perspectives are anachronistic because ancient science and technology is seen only through a modern lens, rather than appreciated and understood it for what it was in an ancient context. By contrast, the editors suggest the concept of anchoring as a way to put the “practice and process” of innovation over specific achievement, thereby avoiding unproductive comparisons with other periods of history. Anchoring offers a way to study the impact and progress of science and technology in the socio-cultural sphere and may both be used as a heuristic tool for modern scholars, as well as directing attention to the cognitive practices of ancient individuals and societies. Although each chapter in the volume deals with the intricacies of technologies and scientific practices, the human element is ever-present. It is from this social focus that the authors form original perspectives on both their specific topics as well as the broader field of ancient innovation and technology.
The volume is divided into four sections: Anchoring, Innovation, Technology, and Science. The chapters are varied both in their source material (textual, archaeological, etc.) and in their focus on either single examples or broad categories of technologies. Part 1: Anchoring (James McAllister, Wiebe Bijker, Lorraine Daston, Sluiter) lays the conceptual groundwork for the rest of the book. McAllister’s chapter succinctly presents the difference between an invention and innovation, using the dichotomy of outer and inner experiences. Natural phenomena are grasped through sense perception—outer experience—whereas human creative acts are interpreted through one’s mental state and beliefs—inner experience. Using this framework, McAllister argues that an innovation can be grounded in previous knowledge (inner experience), whereas an invention is a wholly new encounter (an outer experience). Bjiker’s chapter introduces the additional Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework, illustrating it with cases studies from other chapters in the book. The first section is more theoretical and conceptual than the subsequent sections of the volume, yet each chapter makes excellent use of concrete examples to demonstrate its points, such as the Hero of Alexandria’s automata in McAllister’s chapter, or the case of a door as socio-technological assemblage in Sluiter’s chapter. The reader never feels separated from the concrete material of the volume.
Part 2: Innovation concerns the use of innovative techniques in the fields of construction work (Jeanne Vanden-Broeck Parant; Flohr), glass production (Serena Connolly) and manuscript production (Mark de Kreij). Vanden Broeck-Parant examines the case of a single building, the Theban Treasury at Delphi, whereas Flohr approaches categories of ashlar and brick masonry found across Republican and Imperial Italy. Both demonstrate how innovation in the inherently conservative construction industry took place by anchoring new developments in existing structural knowledge that allowed builders confidence that the innovation would be structurally sound. Connolly offers a meta-commentary on the perception of innovation and invention in the ancient world. As with McAllister’s use of Hero of Alexandria, Connolly demonstrates how the appearance of an invention without a familiar reference point makes it difficult for a person to understand and adopt it. In the case of unbreakable glass, a singular craftsman offers this astounding technology to the Roman emperor Tiberius and is killed because he intentionally presented his invention without having first anchored it, frightening the emperor. Connolly is clear that these anecdotes shouldn’t be read as part of the history of innovation, but they may shed light, in exaggerated fashion, on how innovations without proper anchoring may be received. In the final chapter of this section, de Kreij combines the SCOT framework outlined by Bijiker with social semiotics, to explore the use and proliferation of codices and book rolls in ancient manuscript studies. In each of the chapters of this section, the authors demonstrate the interplay between local and global networks of innovation that supported the uptake and spread of innovations.
Part 3: Technology (Jill Baker, Maria Gerolemou, Anna Soifer, Rabun Taylor, Michiel Meeusen) addresses the difficulties that may arise as new technologies are adopted. Baker’s chapter approaches several broad categories of knowledge systems in the ancient Near East, including urban planning, domestic architecture, and military and cooking technologies, arguing that these served as precursor anchors for later Hellenistic and Roman innovators who drew on the repositories developed in the Near East. In contrast, Gerolemou examines the specific technology of hand-bow and torsion artillery devices, couching their development in societal values of masculinity and combat that slowed or accelerated the shift from hand-bow to torsion artillery. Soifer discusses the inherent risk of invention and innovation, and how anchoring allows glass and terra sigillata producers to adopt new technologies while tempering the risk of collapsing their fragile business ventures. In a similar vein, Taylor explores the use of models and modelling in ancient technology and architecture as another possible path to mitigating the risk of untested inventions and innovations in activities where failure could result in serious loss of life or finances. Lastly, Meeusen argues that Hero of Alexandria used mythology to anchor his inventions and offer a sense of cultural familiarity, while also working to incite marvel or astonishment in the audience. Each of these chapters highlights the socio-cultural contexts in which technological change is occurring, demonstrating that social or economic constraints can affect the uptake of innovation, even when there are clear advantages to be had.
In Part 4: Science (Marianne Govers Hopman; Giovanni Fanfani, Ellen Harlizius-Klück, and Annapurna Mamidipudi; Courtney Roby; Tieleman), the contributors examine anchoring through ancient texts from authors such as Aeschylus, Hippocrates, Plato, Hero of Alexandria, and Galen. Both Hopman’s and Tieleman’s subject matter relates to medical sciences, with the former arguing that the protagonist in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound anchors the language of divination in terms related to medical prognosis, casting him as a Hippocratic doctor. In turn, Tieleman argues that Galen employs references to Hippocrates’ medical authority to support his own claims, thereby using past experts as an anchor for his innovations in medical science. Whereas Hopman’s and Tieleman’s chapters offer examples of scientific knowledge anchored in a historical/mythical figure, Fanfani et al. and Roby offer case studies in which scientific knowledge is anchored in the metaphor of other knowledge systems. Roby demonstrates that the mathematical treatise of Hero of Alexandria uses borrowed language from Greek texts on geometry, while Fanfani et al. demonstrate how Plato employs metaphors of textual production in his philosophic treatises. In both these cases, the ancient author used terminology from other fields as a foundation for their own arguments.
The authors of this volume consistently engage with the concept of anchoring, but the chapters are also remarkable for how much they productively reference each other. This cross-referencing has the effect of drawing the reader into the entire volume and helps link the arguments of individual chapters to the overall project. Bijker, for example, draws explicitly on Soifer’s and Gerolemou’s chapters for her analysis. The repeated use of the inventions of Hero of Alexandria and Philo of Byzantium offer a further through-line that connects the chapters to one another. The volume therefore has a both a coherent strength when read in its entirety, as well as in its individual chapters. Because of this overall coherence, one may be then tempted to read further chapters after beginning with a specific one.
The repeated and varied applications of anchoring also help the reader understand the meaning of the concept and demonstrate its wide-ranging usefulness. Although readers familiar with the contributors’ other scholarship may recognize the case studies used here—Taylor’s modelling of the Pantheon dome, or Sluiter’s revolving door, for example—the arguments and conclusions still feel novel, and as a whole this volume offers a productive lens for advancing the field of ancient science and technology. The volume and its contents are equally accessible both for specialists and for classroom teaching. The opening chapters do an excellent job of explaining the stakes and theoretical concepts of the book in a clear and straightforward manner that would be understandable to students. The chapters are well-illustrated, and the inclusion of color images allows the authors to demonstrate their arguments visually, which is crucial for these discussions of complex technologies. Even if a reader is already familiar with the material or arguments in a given chapter, the concept of anchoring provides a thought-provoking lens that can be easily carried over into other areas of one’s own research. This volume is both varied and yet coherent in its content and can serve a variety of uses to scholars of the ancient world.
Bibliography
Cuomo, S. 2007. Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Finley, M.I. 1965. “Technical Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World.” The Economic History Review 18.1: 29–45.
Greene, K. 2000. “Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World: M.I. Finley Re-Considered.” The Economic History Review 53.1: 29–59.
Oleson, J.P. 2008. Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scheidel, W. 2009. “In Search of Roman Economic Growth.” Journal of Roman Archaeology: An International Journal 22: 46–70.
Sluiter, I. 2017. “Anchoring Innovation: A Classical Research Agenda.” European Review 25.1: 20–38.
Terpstra, T. 2020. “Roman Technological Progress in Comparative Context: The Roman Empire, Medieval Europe and Imperial China.” Explorations in Economic History 75.
Wilson, A. 2002. “Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy.” The Journal of Roman Studies 92: 1–32.
Authors and Titles
- ‘Anchoring, Science and Technology in Greco-Roman Antiquity—an Introduction’ – Miko Flohr, Teun Tieleman, and Stephan Mols
Part 1: Anchoring
- ‘How the Romans Conceived Their Roads: Inner Experience in the Anchoring of Technological Innovation’ – James W. McAllister
- ‘Anchoring Innovation as a Form of Social Construction of Technology’ – Wiebe E. Bijker
- ‘Beyond Innovation: Early Modern European Technological Values’ – Lorraine Daston
- ‘Ancient Greek Doors and Their Humans’ – Ineke Sluiter
Part 2: Innovation
- ‘The Reinforcement System of the Theban Treasury in Delphi’ – Jean Vanden Broeck-Parant
- ‘From Ashlar to Brick: Anchoring and Innovation in Roman Building Practice’ – Miko Flohr
- ‘Tiberius and the Threat of Innovation’ – Serena Connolly
- ‘Functional Innovation in Bookcraft in Roman Egypt’ – Mark de Kreij
Part 3: Technology
- ‘Anchoring, Innovation, and Ancient Near Eastern Technology’ – Jill L. Baker
- ‘From Hand-Bow to Torsion Artillery Devices: Technological Innovation and the Human Factor’ – Maria Gerolemou
- ‘Risky Business: Anchoring Blown Glass and terra sigillata Production in the Face of Risk’ – Anna Soifer
- ‘Models and Modeling in Roman Technology’ – Rabun Taylor
- ‘Of Myths and Machines: Anchoring Technology in Mythology in Imperial Rome’ – Michiel Meeusen
Part 4: Science
- ‘Authorizing Prognosis in Prometheus Bound’ – Marianne Govers Hopman
- ‘Anchoring in tekhnê. Weaving and Plato’s Distinction of Pure and Applied Knowledge’ – Giovanni Fanfani, Ellen Harlizius-Klück, and Annapurna Mamidipudi
- ‘Cultural and Cognitive Anchoring in Hero of Alexandria’s Metrica’ – Courtney Roby
- ‘Galen’s Use of Hippocrates as an Anchor for Medical Innovation’ – Teun Tieleman
Notes
[1] See Sluiter 2017. As the volume editors describe it, “‘Anchoring’ … emerged in the 2010s as the central focus of a nation-wide research effort by classicists, archaeologists and ancient historians in the Netherlands, and the conference from which this volume originates was part of this collective effort.”
[2] Cuomo 2007, 3-5.
[3] E.g. Greene 2000, Wilson 2002.
[4] Beginning with Moses Finley (1965), the editors also cite Scheidel (2009) and Terpstra (2020) as examples of this pessimistic view.