Ancient Roman Mining and Quarrying Techniques
Read this article about Roman mining to learn how ancient Romans solved its technical problems. They even had mechanical devices for removing modest amounts of water from mineshafts.
The Market for Stones
Figure 20: Exposed brick, Herculaneum column
The rapid expansion of Rome during its Late Republic put a large demand on quarrying stones for building materials and decoration. Romans saw stone buildings as a proper way of building, following the Greeks. Decorating these buildings with marble and granite was costly. To get around this, many cities used economic construction methods. For example, it was common practice to build a column's cylindrical core out of cheap bricks and then finish it with an aesthetically pleasing material. I observed this in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum where construction was brought to a halt after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 76 A.D.
Figure 21: Brick core construction, Pompeii
Figure 22: Ostia Antica domus with mismatched marble panels
I also learned from my visit to Ostia Antica that marble was scavenged as the Roman Empire was falling to supply the material needs of decorated houses called domuses. People did not care if the color matched, but only that it was marble. We saw at least three of these houses that had mismatched marble to decorate the interior.