School architects, Roman brick has proven difficult to obtain. Ancient Roman brick stamps Around the middle of the 1st century BC Roman brick makers began using unique identifying stamps on their bricks. The first of these brick stamps were simple and included minimal information such as, the name of a person and sometimes the name of the brickyard the brick was produced in. These earliest Roman brick stamps were emblazoned into the wet clay using a hardwood or metal mold prior to the firing of the brick. As the early Roman Empire progressed, fired brick became the primary building material and the number of brick producers increased dramatically as more and more wealthy land owners began to exploit clay deposits on their land for brick-making. Brick stamps began to become more complex and the number of distinguished names multiplied on the brick stamps . In 110, the stamps included, for the first time, the name of the consuls for the year of production, which allows modern observers to pinpoint the year a brick was created. These brick stamps, once viewed more as a curiosity than archaeological artefacts, allow scholars to learn about the demand for bricks in Ancient Rome because through the dates on the stamps they provide a chronology. Today, brick stamp discoveries are carefully documented and that documentation, combined with the use of architectural context, has helped provide a reliable method of dating Ancient Roman construction. In addition, brick stamps have proved helpful in determining general Ancient Roman chronology. Ancient Roman brickyards Most of the Roman bricks were created at brickyards. These brickyards were typically at large estates owned by a wealthy family that had access to clay deposits. There was a hierarchy in the brick production: the domini were the owners of the estate and were typically aristocrats, the officinatores, typically of lower middle class, supervised the brick making process and manufacturing of them, and the figlinae, typically slaves, were those who made the bricks. Men, women, and children all served in varying degrees as members of the landowners, supervisors, and makers. The brick stamps gave recognition to the domini, officinatores, the brickyard it was created at, and consuls serving at the time. Regulations were made on the number of bricks that could be produced in a day and past that limit, bricks became a public entity. A Roman brickyard owned by Domitia Calvilla, the mother of