There are many medieval illustrations (drawings and paintings) that show masons lifting stones using using wooden booms equipped with ropes or cables and windlasses. The windlasses in the pictures are turned by people, but they could also have been turned by horses or oxen. One illustration shows a large treadwheel windlass with a boy walking inside it, like a hamster in an exercise wheel. In some pictures the booms are shown at some distance from the place where the stones are being set. My grandfather used a boom with a pulley to load logs on a wagon -- mules provided the power.