Part 4 (sorry for the break)

Farming/Agriculture
Ok, so this might be the broadest theme complex you are interested in. As the Roman Empirecovered such a large area, the conditions for farming are quite diverse and cover a wide range of products and specialisations due to local manners, different climate zones and
economic traditions. It is just not possible to sweep over farming near thedesert in todays‘ Libya or along the Nile in Egypt, raising cattle near the North Sea in the Netherlands and harvesting olives in Spain in one consistent arc of generalization. This is especially true as the Romans were present in certain parts of this large area several hundred years and farming methods did develop over time. So it might happen this chapter especially raises additional
questions and offers more general information and not the deeper understanding
you were looking for in the first place.
The first step are sources. For Roman times, we have on of the oldest Latin Prosa texts written by Cato the Elder, „de agri cultura“.(Latin edition with english transcript here: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/home.html)The text was written around 150 BC and is compiling different methods of farming looking fort he best possible profit. So there are comparisons between a business planting olives or wine or using land as pasture, discussing different soil types and the decision which type of farming should occur where and the necessity of near city markets for selling fruit and vegetables. When reading this today you have to keep in mind that Cato is referring to farming methods in Mid- to South Italy used during his time of life.
Later on, another Roman author to be considered is Columella with his 13 books „de re rustica“, designed tob e an encyclopedia on how to grow wine (Latin edition online: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10171882?page=5). Columella lived in the first century AD and a few changes in the management of farms can be observed.
An overview literature might be found in David B. Hollander, Farmers and Agriculture in the Roman Economy,2019.
When Romans started to branch out their Empire towards areas outside of Italy, they met other traditions of farms and farmers. Archaeologically, this can be visible in the layout of farmstead, which can look very different from a layout described by Vitruvius (to switch back to part 1 of my answer). Also, the range of products in those farmsteads varied.
When looking at the NorthWest provinces of Rome more particularly the Rhineland, which I am most familiar with, before the Romans we have landscapes already cultivated. But excavation show a rather self sufficient economy based on small farmsteads equipped to
feed the family who lived there. The main change in agriculture the Romans brought with them is turning agriculture into a system where a surplus mainly in grain is provided, that could be traded to feed people in the cities and in all the military installations. The land is very fertile and we can see many socalled „villae rusticae“ emerge in a high density. The archaeological evidence for this area is actually quite good. The reason for this ist he extensive lignite mining in opencast method with a lot of axcavations taking place directly before the big maschines do their work. This provided an immense amount of data that allows to reconstruct settlement patterns, to define the size of area farmed from one farmstead, recognize the density of roads and so on. Publication of this is ongoing, and mostly covers excavations of single farmstead sites, their layout, buildings, cemeteries etc. I sure can provide further literature for these if you are interested.
The layout of a Roman Villa rustica in the Provinces of Germany, the Netherlands, North France and the Roman parts of Britain is different from Vitruvs descriptions relevant for
Italy. In parts, the development of indigenous buildings to a „Roman“ style that nevertheless still features indigenous elements is remarkable. When you change the system of cultivation to produce a surplus in grain to trade, there is storage room needed. We do have descriptions for military sites how granaries should be built and we can identify theses structures in civilian
context as well. Similar buildings come to light in farmsteads. (Tobias Schubert, Pars fructuaria. Studie zu Nebengebäuden mit Speicherfunktion auf
römerzeitlichen Villae im Tagebaugebiet Hambacher Forst – Mit Vergleichen aus
den germanischen und britannischen Provinzen, Hamburg 2016 focussing on storage
buildings. More generally, you might look into K. D. White: Agricultural
Implements of the Roman World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1967)
So, let’s switch to tools, because you were asking for these directly. Apart from the sources I mentioned above, more references to faming can be found. In the Naturalis historia of
Pliny (18, 72), he mentions a kind of harvester, a vallum. This is a kind of cart, drawn by an animal, with spikes on one end, which pull the corn ears from the straw. It is similarly mentioned by Palladius, de re rustica 7,2. There are relief illustrations from Trier, and another from Belgiuum, where such a maschine is depicted. Up to now, I am not aware that one of them indeed has been excavated, but is seems we have enough notice of them to assume their actual existence.
Much more impressive in a small hoard of metal objects found in Cologne next to a Villa. It is an assemblage of miniature tools for faming cast in bronze (mentioned in Ursula Heimberg, Villa Rustica, Leben und Arbeiten auf römischen Landgütern, 2012). The tools shown are a four-wheeled cart, a team of oxen with a yoke and a plow, a board with four handles used for bringing dung on fields, a fork with two and one with three prongs, a ladder, a scythe, a rake, a spade, a dolabra, scissors, several axes and adzes and a flat basket. Those were used to separate wheat from the chaff, and one original of those was found in a well in a Roman villa inJüchen-Garzweiler and could be reconstructed.
Apart from these, a few bigger installations can be found throughout the Roman Empire. Traces of Water mills (described also by Vitruvius) have been unearthed in Switzerland, France, Great Britain and Germany. Smokers and oasts are important installations in areas
North oft he Alps because the more humid climate and lower temperatures needed
extra effort to make harvest more durable. Several types simple as well as more elaborated, can be found through Northern parts of the Roman Empire. In the Mediterranean area, more traces can be found of olive presses and installations for the processing of olives and grapes.

And part 5

Tools
Apart from the tools mentioned above, we do know lots of tools from a variesty of different sources. Of course some are depicted on reliefs, especially in combinations with actions oft he Roman Army as depicted in the Column of Trajan or Marc Aurel. But we also di know of
tombstones from craftsmen where their tools are depicted. But there are also
finds of actual tools. An important book for those will be Wolfgang Gaitzsch, Eiserne
römische Werkzeuge Studien zur römischen Werkzeugkunde in Italien und den nördlichen Provinzen des Imperium Romanum, 1979 with lots of drawings and pictures oft he finds. Another one is Wolfgang Gaitzsch, Eisenfunde aus Pergamon. Geräte, Werkzeuge und Waffen, 2005. Both are very useful.
When looking through these, you will notice that you are able to recognize quite a few of them by sight. This is true especially for tools used for woodworking and smithing. These were developed tools that did not change much througout the centuries and which can
still be bought today in a modern hardware store. Today, the quality oft he metal parts is different, and you will find plastic handles, but, the essential parts are still basically the same. This tells us a lot about the specifications of woodworking and smithing, when tools don't change.
When we shift to Stonemasons, parts of their work can be analysed by the traces on stones itself, and when looking at the remains of quarries, where often half-finished blocks are left,
because something went wrong during the process. (Javier Atienza Fuente, The
tools of the Roman Stone craftsman: the marks left on marble decorative
elements in Valeria 2021, available on academia.edu) But even here, bigger
tools are known to have existed. A stone saw known from Ephesos was reconstructed a few years ago in the laboratory for experimental archaeology at Mayen in Germany.
In this part of Germany there once were lots of volcanos, which provided a good source for building material in Roman Times, namely tuff. Another stone was basalt, which was used mainly for millstones. There are several quarries known to have been used in Roman times and lots of research is going on around these with sections available for visitors who can
even try out a reconstructed Roman crane (Bergwerk Meurin).
Very special tools which we know relatively well are doctors‘ tools, as we have several good collections oft hem unburied and interpreted for example from Augst in Switzerland or from the Roman city of Balsa in Portugal (Maria S. Barroso, Medicine, surgery, pharmacy, toilet and other health care tools from the Roman city of Balsa (Tavira, Portugal) from the 1st to the 3rd centuryAD, 2014, E. Riha, Römisches Toilettgerät und medizinische Instrumente aus
Augst und Kaiseraugst, 1986). Often they are published together with the Roman
beauty tools, because there were overlaps in their daily use.

You are welcome to ask further questions. Not all of the topics touch my field of work, but a few do, and I am happy to help you out and explain more.

Answer, part 1.

Ok, so you asked for a lot of themes at once. I will try to sort through them one by one.
Generally spoken, if you want to look more into aspects of „how to“ in archaeological contexts, you are travelling in the direction of experimental or reconstructing archaeology. In Europe, there is an „association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment“ (EXAR). The range of themes goes from Stone Age to Medieval, a variety of different crafts and also covers the
aspect of communicating results to the public. It may surprise you, but there is actually a bunch of techniques for which we today don‘t know ecactly how they worked. The proceedings of EXAR are not yet published online, but the registers are and some contributors put their essays online on academia.edu which is a research gate where scientists can republish their essays online.
 
Architecture: When you want to look into sources, of course there is good old Vitruvius. He was a Roman architect, lived roughly around Caesars‘ time in the First Century BC and he wrote „de architectura libri decem“. These books all survived and are the only complete work on ancient architecture. Vitruvius states in his books that this ist he first Latin work on architecture. As far as I know, none other such thing has surfaced, so he may have been right.
What is important is, that Vitruvius not only worked as an architect, but he was in the army of Caesar and Augustus and was also responsible for the development and construction of war machines. In book one he writes about his training, and we can glimpse at the fact that this involved tasks we today would rather assign to an engineer. The ten books deal with the
topics of training of architects, basic terms and general layout of cities (1),
bulding materials (2), builing temples (3-4), official buildings (5), private
houses (6), the interior of private houses including colour schemes (7), water
supply (8), astronomy and builing clocks (9) and finally the construction of machines
(10).
Nonetheless it would be wise to keep in mind that he wrote for the City of Rome. Though his laws of architecture, proportions and so on are very general and apply to official buildings throughout the Roman Empire, private houses on the edges oft he Roman world could have looked completelydifferent, dependant on the availability of building materials.
Especially in the Northwestern part oft he Roman World, archaeologists found lots of structures erected with a timber frame. This applies to private houses as well as military installations. Two examples follow below.
In the Netherlands, there are a few spots where today the
water level is higher than in antiquity. One of them is Valkenburg. So part oft
he wooden foundations of a Roman Camp survived in waterlogged conditions. This
of course allows reconstruction of timber structures and their building process.
An indroduction on these excavations with further literature can be found
online (https://the-past.com/feature/a-legionary-fortress-at-valkenburg-discovering-a-springboard-for-the-conquest-of-britannia/)
Furthermore, at Vindonissa, a Roman legionary fortress in Switzerland, there are a few accomodations for soldiers reconstructed for visitors. These timber structures are quite durable, but still could be erected very quick with a skilled team and good working organisation – a kind of lightweight construction. An essay on the reconstruction of these is published in the EXAR magazine of 2013 (Christian Maise,Römische Schnellbauweise im
Experiment. Die Contubernia auf dem Legionärspfad in Windisch, EXAR proceedings
2013, 92-103) . It is in German with a summary in English and a few remarkable
pictures.

If you are interested in certain more detailed aspects of architecture don't hesitate asking, but your range of themes is wide, so this is a first sweep.

Part 2

Clothing:
Usually the clothes were made of linen and wool. In the First Century BC, the citizens of Rome got into contact with silk also. In sources, there are a few mentions on how to best keep sheep when their wool should be used by Pliny, Naturalis historia and Columella also (The exact
citation you can find in the blog article referred to further on).
There is a really good book in German on the Roman Tunic and its development (Matthias Pausch, Die römische Tunika, 2003) Although it is in German, there is a large appendix with pictures from Tunics, preserved originals as well as reconstructions and depicted clothing on reliefs, mosaics and so on. Moreover, there of course is a list of all ancient sources on tunics
he used and referred to.
As fabric is an organic material, it needs special conditions to survive till today. The two possibilities are a very dry climate or a preservation is possible under waterlogged conditions without oxygen. So, the main source of original preserved tunics comes from Egypt, a few others are from Palmyra in Syria (I am referring to Pausch here). When fabric is preserved, an anlysis with a microscope is possible and then it is possible to detangle the structures oft he fabric and reconstruct how it was woven.
From the loom itself, often only the weaving weights can be documented in archaeological finding contexts, but there are sources on ancient looms. ( Peter Wild, The Roman Horizontal Loom, American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 91 Nr. 3, pp 459-471.)
What actually blowed my mind was that often Roman tunics were designed on the loom and woven specifically fort he person. You can find a summary on ancient clothmaking in a blog (https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/lucius-romans/2016/12/15/dressmaking-the-roman-way/) also providing further literature there. I also would like to recommend Barbara Thomas, née Köstner. She has a range of essays on textiles and their reconstruction on academia.edu.
We do know there were socks in Roman Times. Apart from finds from Egypt, there is a Roman Fort on Hadrians Wall called Vindolanda, today Chesterholm in Northumberland. They had to rebuild their camp because of a high waterlevel. The history of excavations there is long, fascinating and complicated, but the important point is, that they unearthed hundreds of wooden writing tablets with the writing still preserved. The content ranges from formal lists and official messages to private letters. One oft hem is from a soldier who thanked another person for warm socks. You can browse through the writing tablets online (http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/)
Because oft he very good conditions, Vindolanda is also a very good source for Roman shoes, as several examples were preserved there. A hoard of shoes was found a well in the German town of Welzheim. For literature on shoes I highly recommend the works of Carol van Driel-Murray. She has published lots on leather, reconstruction of leatherworking and shoes.
If you want to learn more on different style of clothing and fashion in different parts of the Roman Empire at different times and the incorporation of „foreign“ style you should look at brooches and metal small finds, though there is a lot of change in the interpretation of such things going on (G. Grabherr/T. Schierl (eds), Relations Abroad? Brooches and Other Elements of Dress as Sources for Reconstructing Interregional Movement and Group Boundaries from the Punic Wars to the Decline of the Western Empire. Proceedings of a Conference held 27th-29th April 2011 in Innsbruck)

Part 3

Cooking:
Before browsing through the archaeological evidence, we have a surviving book with original recipes of the Roman Empire. „De re coquinaria“ is a book on the art of cooking from a guy named Apicius. Today researchers believe that this book was actually not written by one person, but is rather a collection of recipes assembled over a longer period. The version that survived till today can be traced back tot he third/fourth century AD ( English Edition for example: Sally Grainger (Ed.), Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English Translation, 2006).
However, these receipts representa diverse approach on relatively simple dishes with a few very exotic ones involving dormouse or sow teat. They are despite this difficult to reproduce because they lack information about quantities of the ingredients and cooking times. It’s even not stated if you are supposed to sear something or cook. So they are written for a skilled
user who knows the basic techniques.

Apart from that, we have a wide archaeological knowledge of the ingredients available and the tools that were used, but it requires a lot of detail work with different sources.
The best archaeological sources for the „how to“ of cooking are actual hearths. Because oft he special circumstances in Herculaneum and Pompeji, we have a few kitchens preserved with
all their daily kitchen activity after the Vesuvio Volcano eruption. But private kitchens in cities were rare, in insulae with small apartments for whole families with rather cramped accomodations no kitchens were found. So hot meals were mostly provided from a variety of food stalls lining the streets (recent excavation of a beautifully decorated one here: https://antikewelt.de/2020/12/26/ein-vollstaendiges-thermopolium-in-pompeji/)
Hearths could be constructed either on the floor in a relatively simple way, which can often be documented in accomodations of the Roman army as well as in farmsteads or civilian
settlements in the Northwestern Provinces, or, more sophisticated with layered bricks up to a convenient height for cooking while standing. Heat was provided through wood or charcoal. An example for a sophisticated kitchen was unearthed in the Legionary Fortress of Vindonissa/Windisch in Switzerland in a house assigned to a military officer (Matthias Flück et al., Zu Gast bei Offizieren in Vindonissa – Von der spätlatènezeitlichen Befestigung zur Großküche eines Offiziersgebäudes. Auswertung der Ausgrabung Winsisch-Römerblick 2002-2004, 2022). The archaeological remains were incorporated in the museum presentation. The Romans also knew ovens for baking bread (examples can be found in Pompeji)
To gain more knowledge on food processing in Roman times, we have to look at the vessels. We know a variety of types which can be distinguished by their utilization. There are vessels used for storage, transport, cooking and eating. The materials used were pottery as
well as containers made of wood, glass and metal. As you asked specifically for cooking and food preparation, I will narrow it down on those for the moment.
Ceramic cooking vessels usually have a flat bottom and can be adressed as „coarse ware“. Usually, lots of very small quartz particles are integrated into the clay because they provide good heat conduction. The outside of these pots is often blackened because of contact with fire or rather embers. They exist in different sizes and can show a rim designed for a lid. Metal cooking vessels are kettles as well as pans and strainers. In Pomeji, on oft he kitchens unearthed has been redecorated with replica finds of kitchenware for visitors. (https://www.thelocal.it/20160802/refurbished-pompeii-kitchens-show-how-ancient-romans-cooked/) After the meals were prepared, they were moved to other dishes specialized for
serving food.
Two further types of special vessels I want to mention. First, we have cheese molds made from pottery. Usually they are round, with a high rim and relatively small diameter, and with holes in the bottom through which the whey could emerge during the process ( Look here for some examples from different spots: https://www.antike-tischkultur.de/kochtechnikkaeseformen.html)
The second is a special vessel called Mortarium. This is a deep bowl with a wide rim that can easily be handled. Inside the bowl, there are lots of small pebbles integrated in the clay, but sticking out to form a very gritted surface. These work as a kind of mortar and are usually thought to have been used to prepare food like a processor. They are exclusively Roman, and make their way into the newer territories with the Roman Army. So, when these vessels are appearing in the settlements of Roman provinces, it is thought to be one indication for the
acceptance of Roman behaviour.
A great website to browse through all the different types of pottery is http://potsherd.net/atlas/potsherd. The focus on the website are finds from Britain, but others are added.
To experience the materials that were used to compose meals we can of course look at decorative drawings in Roman houses, mosaics and relief depiction. Far more important ist he archaeological data. Tha analysis oft he animal bones recovered from settlement areas can not only provide data on the range of animals that were used as food, but also on
the age oft he animal when butchered. A thorough and meticolous analysation of
a whole insula in Augst in Switzerland can be an example for those. Generally,
I advise you to look into the works of Sabine Deschler-Erb. It is amazing what she can find out with analyzing bone.
Apart from animal bone, in wells and latrines there are good chances to find traces of fruit cores and husks to identify more parts oft he diet. In very special circumstances it is possible
to retrieve pollen as well. Fort he region of the Northwestern provinces, there
is Jutta Meurers-Balke. She is reconstructing whole ecosystems with looking at
pollen, and is able to show which plants were introduces by the Romans to the Rhineland,
but she also did look into Roman cooking (Jutta Meurers-Balke, Grenzenlose Gaumenfreuden:
Römische Küche in einer germanischen Provinz, Darmstadt 2010).