Natural Science in Archaeology

Chapter 11
Building, Monumental, and Statuary Materials
11.1 Introduction
Materials for construction are many and varied, as are their purposes and products.
This chapter includes a survey of the major rocks and other earth materials used
for the construction of buildings, monuments, and large statues. Not included is
any discussion of the raw material needs for ancient roads, dams, or what is now
called rip rap. Rock names applied to many building and monument stones are
not related to mineralogy or petrology of the rock, e.g., serpentines called “green
marble” and gabbro called “black granite”.
11.2 Building Stone
Humans have occupied rock shelters, caves, and grottoes since early prehistory.
Early in their cultural evolution, humans turned to rocks for building shelters, first
to improve a cave or rock shelter and later to construct dwellings. Before the advent
of metal tools, people constructed buildings from loose rocks and boulders. Constructed
stone structures began with the earliest settled communities. In the Near
East, walls of stone are more than 7000 years old. For example, stone was incorporated
into the walls found at Tell es-Sultan, near Jericho, dating from 6000 BCE
(Prentice 1990). After the invention of metal tools, quarry techniques were developed
for removing blocks of stone from geologic formations. In some instances, the
quarry itself became the architecture, and the building was carved into the face of a
cliff or rock outcrop. Naturally occurring caves and grottoes were also adapted and
incorporated into man-made architecture. The Pueblo cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde
in the southwestern USA are an example of this.
The nature of the building materials employed by any society depends on what
is available. It was no accident that the great tells of the Middle East formed from
the disintegration of mud-brick buildings. Neither hard rock outcrops nor trees
were available as construction material for hundreds of kilometers around many
Near Eastern habitation sites. At Çatal Höyük in Anatolia, walls and even built-in
G. Rapp, Archaeomineralogy, 2nd ed., Natural Science in Archaeology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-78594-1_11, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009
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