Abstract:

Mortar has for a long time been seen as a secondary product of monuments, domestic houses, and water management etc. Over the last few decades, methods to studying mortar have become more advanced, and we are now in a position where we can study the very small details of a surprisingly complex building material. Great research has been done on core Roman sites throughout the Mediterranean, but we are still in unknown territories ones we reach the outskirts of the Roman Empire.

This lecture will take its point of departure in mortar material from Late Roman contexts from the Northwest Quarter in Jerash, Jordan. Here we find three areas that are all connected to water management in and out of the city where large amounts of mortar have been sampled. The results are surprising both due to the many similarities, but indeed also because of the many differences.