Of Knowledge and Skills. Anchoring Innovation in Everyday Technical Practice

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This is a talk recorded for the OIKOS Conference on Anchoring Technology in Greco-Roman Antiquity. It discusses the role of 'anchoring' in our understanding of everyday technical practice - and the role of everyday technical practice in our understanding of 'anchoring'. Within the realm of everyday technical practice, this talk focuses on three (related) innovations in building practice in Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial Italy: the emergence of concrete, the invention of opus reticulatum, and the spread of brick. It argues that that looking at these innovations through the lens of ‘anchoring’ helps us to focus on the actual why and how of their origin more than we have been doing in the past. At the same time, they highlight an aspect of anchoring that perhaps could be considered more explicitly in the future.

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