CLAS 540C (01) - Environment, Technology and Ancient Society: Tech, Tools and Engineering in the Ancient World

This course examines positive and negative impacts of ancient technological advances: engineering (fire, metallurgy), writing technology (scripts, including the alphabet, the emergence of papyrus and vellum), military technology (shipbuilding, defensive and offensive technologies, and navigation), artistic (invention of dyes, lost-wax methods of bronze casting), infrastructure (roads, bridges, and aqueducts), and monumentality (Stonehenge, Greek temples, and the Roman Colosseum). Focus on the ways in which societal and environmental factors influenced technological development and vice versa.