L'organizzazione dell'industria delle costruzioni nell'Atene di età classica

Abstract

The goal of this article is to question the traditional viewpoint that in Classical Athens the demand for the services of construction workers was as low and sporadic as to prevent the development of a regularly organized construction industry. My investigation rests on the analysis of the Erechtheum building accounts (IG I³ 476-475) and the Eleusinian accounts (I.Eleusis 177), which provide crucial evidence concerning the profession and level of specialization of construction workers, their civic status, and the pattern of slave ownership. On this basis, I argue instead that, in Athens, the demand for the services of construction workers was consistently substantial. Therefore, the labor market in this sector was mostly made up not of travelling craftsmen and occasional workers, but of local, specialized craftsmen, who made their living from their professional skills and were often owners of actual workshops.