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Concrete

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Stone made to order: aggregate bound by a cement that cures hard, poured into any form a mold can hold. Roman builders, mixing lime with volcanic pozzolana, used it for harbors, vaults and the dome of the Pantheon, and some of their marine concrete has outlasted two millennia of surf; the material was then largely lost to Europe until the modern cement industry revived it in the nineteenth century.

Facts
Element Kind
Material 1
First Used Era
Roman; revived industrially in the nineteenth century 1
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Roman Architecture, Styles and Movements

Roman builders were the first to exploit concrete structurally at scale, which is what let them span and vault spaces the trabeated Greek system could not.

Source Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of ArchitectureBanister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition)

Seen In

The Colosseum, Buildings and Structures
Source Encyclopedia Britannica
The Pantheon, Buildings and Structures

Still the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built.

Source Encyclopedia Britannica
Sources
1. Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source
Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture
Banister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition), Architectural Press, 1996Roman construction
Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture
Banister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition), Architectural Press, 1996Associated With: Roman Architecture, General history, Roman construction chapter, on concrete
Open Questions (1 open question)
Why has Roman concrete endured two thousand years, in surf and weather, while modern concrete structures decay within decades?

Recent materials research has produced strong partial answers, including reactions between seawater and volcanic ash that grow reinforcing minerals in Roman marine concrete, and lime fragments that may reseal cracks as they open, but the full recipe and practice remain incompletely understood, translation of the findings into modern durable and low-carbon concretes is unfinished work, and the research groups involved continue to publish competing accounts of which mechanisms matter most.

What would resolve this A validated account of the Roman mix and curing practice sufficient to reproduce its durability in modern test structures, monitored over decades rather than inferred from laboratory samples.
Materials Science, Archaeology, Civil EngineeringEncyclopedia Britannica
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