Mudbrick
A mudbrick is a brick, made of a mixture of loam, mud, sand and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. Brickmakers use a stiff mixture and let them dry in the sun for 25 days.[citation needed]
In warm regions with very little timber available to fuel a kiln, bricks were generally sun dried. In some cases brickmakers extended the life of mud bricks by putting fired bricks on top or covering them with stucco.
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Banco [edit]
The Great Mosque of Djenné, in central Mali, is the world's largest mudbrick structure. It, like much Sahelian architecture, is built with a mudbrick called Banco: a recipe of mud and grain husks, fermented, and either formed into bricks or applied on surfaces as a plaster like paste in broad strokes. This plaster must be reapplied annually.[2]
Ancient world [edit]
The South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh constructed, and lived in, mud brick houses between 7000–3300 BCE.[3] Mudbricks were in use in the Near East during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. The Mesopotamians used sun-dried bricks in their city construction;[4] typically these bricks were flat on the plano-convex mudbricks. Some bricks were formed in a square mould and rounded so that the middle was thicker than the ends.
In Minoan Crete at the Knossos site there is archaeological evidence that sun-dried bricks were used in the Neolithic period (e.g. prior to 3400 BC).[5]
Mudbricks were used to some extent in pre-Roman Egypt, and mudbrick use increased at the time of Roman influence.[6]
Mudbrick architecture worldwide [edit]
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Production of mudbricks for construction in Niger, 2007.
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Mudbrick is still used today, as seen here in the Romania Danube River Delta.
See also [edit]
Notes [edit]
- ^ Roman Ghirshman, La ziggourat de Tchoga-Zanbil (Susiane), Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, vol. 98 lien Issue 2, pp. 233-238, 1954
- ^ Bradbury, Dominic (30 October 2008). "Timbuktu: Mud, mud, glorious mud". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
- ^ Possehl, Gregory L. (1996)
- ^ Mogens Herman Hansen, A Comparative Study of Six City-state Cultures, Københavns universitet Polis centret (2002) Videnskabernes Selskab, 144 pages ISBN 87-7876-316-9
- ^ C. Michael Hogan, Knossos fieldnotes, Modern Antiquarian (2007)
- ^ Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, 1999, Routledge, 938 pages ISBN 0-415-18589-0
References [edit]
- Possehl, Gregory L. (1996). Mehrgarh in Oxford Companion to Archaeology, edited by Brian Fagan. Oxford University Press.
External links [edit]
- Earth Architecture, website whose focus is contemporary issues in earth architecture.
- EARTHA: Earth Architecture and Conservation in East Anglia, British organisation that focuses on the proper maintenance and conservation of earth buildings in a region of the UK that has a long history of building with mud. Very experienced experts are contactable and there are regular demonstrations in the area.
- Video showing mud brick making, mud brick building and biolytic sewerage in South Africa.
- CRAterre: Centre de recherche architectural en terre, French university research organisation dedicated to unfired earth construction
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