Supplying Rome with bricks and tiles: the case of Piammiano (Bomarzo, Viterbo) in the Tiber Valley

There are many questions still unanswered about the commercialisation of Roman building materials, in particular regarding issues of different scales of trade (local, regional and national), of defining routes (overseas, riverine or land), and of social and commercial dynamics over time. Though a catalogue of bricks and tiles exists for N Etruria (Regio VII), the reconstruction of production and commerce in this area rests largely on undated epigraphic types, illegible examples, unidentified production sites, and numerous unprovenanced finds held in private collections. It is even more difficult to reconstruct convincingly the production and commerce of stamped bricks from S Etruria (Regio VII), mainly because of the difficulties in locating production sites and the lack of a complete catalogue of dated finds. Systematic studies of Roman bricks by numerous researchers have led to the development of models that are useful working tools but are perhaps too rigid to convey the variety and dynamism of brick-making and commerce. The fact that bricks continue to be found at distribution sites sometimes hinders efforts to produce models, because new unsuspected connections between figlinae are constantly being made. Furthermore, information derived from texts does not lead to a satisfactory reconstruction of the relations within a single and/or among different figlinae.