Singer Charles etc (eds). A History of Technology. Volume II. The Mediterranean Civilizations and the Middle Ages e. 700 B.C. to c. A.D. 1500

Singer Charles, Holmyard E. J., Hall A. R., Williams Trevor I. (editors). — New York, London: Oxford University Press, 1956. — 916 p.; il.For the first volume of this work the authors had necessarily to rely almost entirely on evidence derived from material recovered by excavation. This provides practically the only available information on the use of tools and on the sources and nature of the substances employed in the period treated. Though the Ancient Empires possessed their literatures, the fragments of them as yet available contain very few accounts of technical methods. This second volume deals with the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean together with the cultures that arose in barbarian Europe, and especially in its north-west. The techniques of the latter developed from those of the Mediterranean, much as the Mediterranean techniques had drawn on those of the Ancient Empires. For the period and area with which this volume deals there is much more contemporary documentary evidence than was available for Volume I, but one must still rely largely, though to a diminishing extent as the centuries advance, on archaeological findings. Nevertheless for Volume II - and even more for Volume III - the literary evidence is of considerable bulk, though works of a specifically technological character remain comparatively few. Elements that we can reasonably call scientific begin to be traceable in both the literature and the methods of technology, though science does not yet occupy a recognized and independent position in them. For that we must wait until the sixteenth century. A much longer period was to elapse before technology gained formal academic or educational acceptance. Technological instruction, so far as Volumes II and III are concerned, was essentially and almost wholly a matter of apprenticeship.