Comm. Hum. Litt. Vol. 128 169 Military building techniques in Mauretania Tingitana: the use of mortar and rubble at Thamusida (Sidi Ali ben Ahmed, Morocco) Stefano Camporeale 1. IntroduCtIon Roman construction techniques in the territories of the empire and the role played by the military in the transmission of sophisticated technical and engineering skills are subjects traditionally studied by specialists in the architecture of the provinces. Even in the most recent studies of Roman construction 1 , military building projects are of primary importance as they represent the highest level of organisation, and military craftsmen probably exerted great inluence on workers, especially masons and stone-cutters. 2 The objective of this article is to analyze the mechanisms by which the military worked in a provincial site, in order to understand the organisational principles of military construction in relation to available natural resources, techniques of construction employed and degrees of specialisation of the work. These aspects will be examined through a quantitative analysis of the materials and labour needed to complete a project, which in turn gives an idea of the technological complexity as well as of the organisation of the construction process. I will concentrate on the site of Sidi Ali ben Ahmed/Thamusida (Kénitra, Morocco), where there are military structures in a good state of preservation whose chronology is well known from recent investigation 3 . Moreover, the data collected so far through excavation, geo-archaeological survey and archaeometric analyses all shed light on the role of mortar 1 These studies look at buildings from the point of view of the construction process. Quantitative analyses are employed to buildings in order to understand how they were constructed in terms of quantities of materials, work-force and times of construction. The new methodology was irst proposed in J. delaIne, The Baths of Caracalla: a study in design, construction and economics of large-scale building projects in imperial Rome (Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement 25), Portsmouth, RI, 1997. For the study of worksites, ‘Cantieri antichi. Giornata di studio tenuta il 25 ottobre 2001’, Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 109 (2002) 337-429; S. Camporeale – H. deSSaleS – a. pIzzo (ed.), Arqueología de la construcción, 1. Los procesos constructivos en el mundo romano: Italia y provincias occidentales (Mérida, 25-26 de Octubre de 2007) (Anejos de Archivo Español de Arqueología 50), Mérida. 2 For the importance of military worksites and para-military organisations, see J. delaIne, ‘Conclusions’, in Camporeale et al., cit. n. 1, 321-28. The only previous study which applied quantitative analyses to military buildings is e. SHIrley, Building a Roman legionary fortress, Stroud 2001. 3 The Department of Archaeology and History of Arts of the University of Siena and the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine of Rabat have been working in Thamusida from 1999 to 2009. On the Italian-Moroccan archaeological missions, see A. akerraz – e. papI (ed.), Sidi Ali ben Ahmed – Thamusida 1. I contesti, Roma 2008; e. GlIozzo – I. turbantI memmI, a. akerraz, e. papI – (ed.), Sidi Ali ben Ahmed – Thamusida, 2. L’archeometria, Roma 2009. On the earlier French missions, see J.p. Callu – J.p. morel– r. rebuffat – G. HallIer, Thamusida. Fouilles du Service des Antiquité du Maroc, 1, Roma 1965; G. HallIer – J. marIon – r. rebuffat,