Carpentry · Stonework

Carpentry

The faber tignarius was the craftsman who worked wood, with no distinction, as there is today, between carpenters and cabinetmakers; only the manufacture of carts and boats gave rise to distinct professional designations, such as cisarii and fabri navales.

Given the nature of the soil, no wooden objects survived in Conimbriga, but there are some tools that were undoubtedly used to work wood: chisels, gouges, adzes, hammers, and files.

Stonework

The word marmorarius or the expression faber marmorarius was used indiscriminately for the stonemason, marble worker, sculptor, and gem cutter, and only from the 4th century AD do literary and epigraphic texts record the name sculptor used in its current sense. This concentration of functions under the same designation shows how slight the theoretical distinction between artists and artisans was in Roman antiquity.