Lifting and transport by sea of great stone columns: evidence of traditional methods used in 18th and 19th century building programs as a clue to reconstructing Roman marble transport processes

Aim of this paper is to investigate the traditional technologies of lifting and sea transport of large stone blocks (time spent for sea transport, ways of charging and stewing large stone pieces, number of people engaged) with evidence from 18th and 19th century Italy, as a key to understand ancient Roman practices. I shall use data from reconstruction of the 5th century Christian basilica of St. Paul at Rome, burnt in 1823, where new granite shafts, mainly from Italian quarries, replaced the Roman ones. Other documentary sources help to understand some details related to heavy transport, otherwise unknown for Roman period. It should be obviously dangerous to induce directly that the same technologies used for lifting and transport of columns in 18th or 19th century were in use also in Roman Imperial age, but the study of such processes can help us to put in the right view our reconstruction of ancient reality.