Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (19.2007(2010))

TELL QARAMEL

SYRIA

towards the wall faces. These walls are the
strongest of the described mud brick walls
and reach up to 1 m in width.
EXAMPLES OF EARLY
MUD BRICK USE
The invention of sun-dried mud bricks
during the PPNA was a revolutionary step in
the development of architecture in the Near
East. Similarly as in the case of the pise
technique, the largest number of examples of
mud brick buildings is known from the
Levant and northern Mesopotamia. This
distribution can be directly connected with
the origins of the earliest mud bricks. As
O. Aurenche suggested, the invention of the
first mud brick was the effect of long term

experience with the pise technique (Aurenche
1981:60-70).
In the Levant, the oldest evidence for the
use of this technique comes from the PPNA
site of Jericho in Palestine. Walls of houses
discovered there were built of sun-dried mud
bricks laid mostly in the parallel arrange-
ment, in three rows. The transversal arrange-
ment is very rare there (Kenyon, Piolland
1981). Bricks were bonded in clay mortar in
the same way as were the stones in the stone
walls from Jerf el-Ahmar or Mureybet. Apart
from Jericho, mud bricks in the southern
Levant were discovered on such PPNA sites
as Gesher, Netiv Hagdud (Bar-Yosef, Gopher
1997: 249-253) and Dhra in the Jordan
Valley (Kujit and Mahasneh 1998: 157).


Fig. 7. Example of modern stone wall with superstructure made of mud bricks. Qaramel village
(Photo M. Bialowarczuk)

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Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 19, Reports 2007