[DrK (OP)]

David asks,

In modern towns and cities we have building contractors with their yards of equipment, and also DIY stores. It's only in building works where building is carried out. Has archaeology found similar in the ancient world?

Can anybody help?

[alancalverd]

Stonehenge is surrounded by the remains of the contractors' camp - evidence of large-scale cooking (mostly pig bones) precedes the later building works and it is reasonable to presume that the pigs were purchased from elsewhere (lower, more fertile ground - probably forest) and not raised ad hoc (or "bring your own sandwiches") on a fairly barren site.   

Clearly somebody was in charge of specifying at least the size of the stones and organising a formal tender.  Nearby Avebury henge was built from local materials but nobody is going to  schlep 20 ton rocks 150 miles up a hill unless they won a contract to supply them for a good price, and nobody is going to source material from distant places unless the quarriers' price is competitive and the hauliers really know their business.

I'm intrigued by the accuracy of the geometry: the horizontal top stones are keyed onto the uprights and fit neatly around the circumference, so either one bloke did all the work from quarry to presentation (most unlikely), or the architects, masons and erectors must have had a common standard of measurement and a drawing convention that preceded any known written language. There's very little spoil, so the materials must have arrived part-fabricated.

Given that the whole job took over 1000 years to complete, there must have been serial contracts to ensure the later bits fitted the purpose and aesthetics of the original plan.

And the appearance of similar structures, similarly aligned to the midsummer dawn, clearly implies a standard specification subject to availability of local materials (wood in the east, small stones in Ireland and Orkney, etc).

Interestingly the oldest known written document is a builder's invoice for materials and labor. Civilisation is specialisation, and simply by looking at a couple of structures we have already deduced the need at least for design specs, supply contracts, farms, quarries and hauliers' yards (they must have taken the trucks and cranes home - a 20 tonner is quite an investment, so you'd want to use it again) in 3000 BC. Knowing that all big contracts generate arguments, one must presume a cadre of independent surveyors to adjudicate when bits don't fit, and an accountant to make sure that the contractors get paid their agreed sum (whether in gold or goats) when the bits do fit, but their temporary offices will have been cleared  before handover.

[charles1948]

The reasons for constructing Stonehenge, remain mysterious.

The explanation that it was built to track the movements of the Sun, doesn't sound plausible.  The Sun's movements could've been tracked by erecting simple, compact, frameworks of wood.  These small light-weight wooden "instruments" would enable precise positional measurements of solar positions to be obtained.  Using easily available local materials, ie trees.

What was the need to expend energy dragging absurdly huge, heavy, masses of stone for hundreds of miles. to accomplish a job that could've been done locally with wood?

Doesn't the "Stonehenge Project" slightly remind you, as it does me, of the "Mission Impossible" TV series.
 
In which Jim Phelps' IMF went into ludicrously complicated schemes to carry out their missions?

 

[alancalverd]

The reason so many henges and cairns align with the midsummer sun is pretty obvious. If you are going to do business with somebody at the other end of the country - or even another country (there are similar structures in Ireland and France) you need a calendar to synchronise your meetings until someone invents the telephone. It also helps with fishing and farming. All that stuff about religion is pure vanity put about by latterday priests - it's a business tool.

Now if you have a contract to build a public clock and a marketplace, it makes sense to build an impressive one, so visitors can see the quality of your handiwork and give you other jobs. So hauling stones from Wales to Wiltshire was in the same vein as Skoda making the hub bearing for the London Eye: showing off.  Result? Dai and Owen (neolithic quarrymen and hauliers) picked up loads of contracts and Skoda changed from a schoolboy joke to the taxi driver's  first choice.

Apropos wood henges in Suffolk, IIRC there is one with a mature oak tree buried upside down in the middle. Just like the Prescili bluestones at Stonehenge, I think this is a salesman's demo sample of engineering competence, like a fancy mechanical watch with phases of the Moon - pointless, but damned impressive. But despite the invention of the internet and JCBs, can I get a contractor to plant a small tree the right way up this week? Not for another 6 months!
 

[Hayseed]

David asks,

In modern towns and cities we have building contractors with their yards of equipment, and also DIY stores. It's only in building works where building is carried out. Has archaeology found similar in the ancient world?

Can anybody help?

Indeed there is.  We have thousands of archeological sites and written records, every since writing has started.  Not only contractors, but store owners, shippers and traders, farmers, households, miners, roads and bridges, government records, armies,.......everything imaginable. 

[charles1948]

Boring!  Can't you imagine an ancient aeroplane, or car -  or computer, being discovered in an archaeological dig?

That really would be exciting!

[Bored chemist]

Boring!  Can't you imagine an ancient aeroplane, or car -  or computer, being discovered in an archaeological dig?

That really would be exciting!

It was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

[coxdenis32]

This is a real technological solution of the ancient Greeks. I think we can find the first prototypes of solar panels

[alancalverd]

And wind power. The curved aerofoil (which still baffles some of our contributors) has appeared on boats in various places but a static windmill is much rarer in the ancient world.

[Bored chemist]

a static windmill is much rarer in the ancient world.

They much preferred windmills which moved.

[alancalverd]

Don Quixote rides again, eh?