Mud brick (adobe)
Adobe (ladrillo de barro secado al sol)
- Date
- c. 9000 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Jericho (Tell es-Sultan), West Bank
- Credited to
- PPNA communities of Jericho and Mureybet
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
Hand-moulded loaf-shaped mud bricks with straw, bearing finger impressions, and sun-dried, replacing stone and wood as a building material. Cheap, insulating and available on any alluvial plain.
Bricks moulded in wooden forms (standardised) appear around 7000 BCE; kiln-fired brick dates from the 4th millennium.
What it led to
- Durable, dense houses that made permanent settlement, and later the city, possible
- Architecture rebuilt upon itself, forming the tells of the Near East
- Specialised masonry work and standardisation of measurements
Built on
- Mud-and-wattle huts (pisé)
- Mud plaster
Made possible
- Rectangular house with stone foundationsc. 8600 BCE
- Burnt lime and gypsum plasterc. 8000 BCE
- Stone wall and tower of Jerichoc. 8000 BCE
- Platform temple (proto-ziggurat)c. 5300 BCE
- City and urbanismc. 3700 BCE
- Mould-made and fired brickc. 3500 BCE
- Monumental mud-brick architecture of Kerma (deffufa)c. 2000 BCE
- Nubian vault (centring-free mud-brick vault)c. 1250 BCE
- Fired ceramic roof tilec. 1000 BCE
- Mud-brick skyscrapers of Shibamc. century XVI
- CINVA-Ram press for compressed earth blocks1957
- Wall and tower of Jericho
- Moulded brick and fired brick
- Urban platform temple