"Studies in Ancient Technology," forms a series of books, each containing a number of essays on ancient technology, covering both the preclassical and classical period and demonstrating the continuity and the divergence throughout the ages. The volumes describe certain phases of ancient technology, point out the gaps in our knowledge and try to use modern technology, philological and archaeological evidence to sketch ancient technology in such a way that it may be of some use to inform historians, archaeologists and philologists on the skill and the material world of the ancients.

Distillation is an art. And even an ancient one. It is strange to find that the history of this oldest and still most important method of producing chemically pure substances has ever been written. The reader looking at the bibliography appended to this book might object that many data existed. This may be true but the proper history of the art from the origin up to the present time was lacking.