Stonemasonry
   HOME



picture info

Stonemasonry
Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using rock (geology), stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with Mortar (masonry), mortar and even the ancient lime mortar, to wall or cover formed structures. The basic tools, methods and skills of the banker mason have existed as a trade for thousands of years. It is one of the oldest activities and professions in human history. Many of the long-lasting, ancient Shelter (building), shelters, temples, monuments, artifact (archaeology), artifacts, fortifications, roads, bridges, and entire city, cities were built of stone. Famous works of stonemasonry include Göbekli Tepe, the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Cusco's Incan Wall, Taq-e Bostan, Taqwesan, Easter Island's Moai, statues, Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Tihuanaco, Tenochtitlan, Persepolis, the Parthenon, Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, the Mesoamerican pyramids, Chart ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Stonemason At Guedelon
Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with mortar and even the ancient lime mortar, to wall or cover formed structures. The basic tools, methods and skills of the banker mason have existed as a trade for thousands of years. It is one of the oldest activities and professions in human history. Many of the long-lasting, ancient shelters, temples, monuments, artifacts, fortifications, roads, bridges, and entire cities were built of stone. Famous works of stonemasonry include Göbekli Tepe, the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Cusco's Incan Wall, Taqwesan, Easter Island's statues, Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Tihuanaco, Tenochtitlan, Persepolis, the Parthenon, Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, the Mesoamerican pyramids, Chartres Cathedral, and the Stari Most. While stone was important traditionally, it fell out of use ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mortar (masonry)
Mortar is a workable paste which hardens to bind building blocks such as stones, bricks, and concrete masonry units, to fill and seal the irregular gaps between them, spread the weight of them evenly, and sometimes to add decorative colours or patterns to masonry walls. In its broadest sense, mortar includes pitch, asphalt, and soft clay, as those used between bricks, as well as cement mortar. The word "mortar" comes from the Old French word ''mortier'', "builder's mortar, plaster; bowl for mixing." (13c.). Cement mortar becomes hard when it cures, resulting in a rigid aggregate (composite) , aggregate structure; however, the mortar functions as a weaker component than the building blocks and serves as the sacrificial element in the masonry, because mortar is easier and less expensive to repair than the building blocks. Bricklayers typically make mortars using a mixture of sand, a binder, and water. The most common binder since the early 20th century is Portland cement, but ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Fortification
A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ("strong") and ("to make"). From very early history to modern times, defensive walls have often been necessary for cities to survive in an ever-changing world of invasion and conquest. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were the first small cities to be fortified. In ancient Greece, large cyclopean stone walls fitted without mortar had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae. A Greek ''Towns of ancient Greece#Military settlements, phrourion'' was a fortified collection of buildings used as a military garrison, and is the equivalent of the ancient Roman, Roman castellum or fortress. These constructions mainly served the purpose of a watch tower, to guard certain roads, passes, and borders. Th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lime Mortar
Lime mortar or torching is a masonry mortar (masonry), mortar composed of lime (material), lime and an construction aggregate, aggregate such as sand, mixed with water. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar, used in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, Greece, when it largely replaced the clay and gypsum mortars common to ancient Egyptian construction. With the introduction of Portland cement during the 19th century, the use of lime mortar in new constructions gradually declined. This was largely due to the ease of use of Portland cement, its quick setting, and high compressive strength. However, the soft and porous properties of lime mortar provide certain advantages when working with softer building materials such as natural stone and terracotta. For this reason, while Portland cement continues to be commonly used in new brick and concrete construction, its use is not recommended in the repair and Building restoration, restoration of brick and stone-built structures origin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Marseille - La Tourette (16411596305)
Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the Provence region, it is located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the mouth of the Rhône river. Marseille is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, second-most populous city proper in France, after Paris, with 873,076 inhabitants in 2021. Marseille with its suburbs and exurbs create the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, with a population of 1,911,311 at the 2021 census. Founded by Greek settlers from Phocaea, Marseille is the oldest city in France, as well as one of Europe's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited settlements. It was known to the ancient Greeks as ''Massalia'' and to ancient Romans, Romans as ''Massilia''. Marseille has been a trading port since ancient ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal ( ; ; ) is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was commissioned in 1631 by the fifth Mughal Empire, Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall. Construction of the mausoleum was completed in 1648, but work continued on other phases of the project for another five years. The first ceremony held at the mausoleum was an observance by Shah Jahan, on 6 February 1643, of the 12th anniversary of the death of Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million, which in 2015 would be approximately 52.8 billion (827 million). The building complex incorporates ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Cusco
Cusco or Cuzco (; or , ) is a city in southeastern Peru, near the Sacred Valley of the Andes mountain range and the Huatanay river. It is the capital of the eponymous Cusco Province, province and Cusco Region, department. The city was the capital of the Inca Empire until the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Peru, Spanish conquest. In 1983, Cusco was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO with the title "Historic Centre of Cusco, City of Cusco". It has become a major tourist destination, hosting over 2 million visitors a year and providing passage to numerous Incan ruins, such as Machu Picchu, one of the Seven modern wonders of the world and many others. The Constitution of Peru (1993) designates the city as the Historical Capital of Peru. Cusco is the list of cities in Peru, seventh-most populous city in Peru; in 2017, it had a population of 428,450. It is also the largest city in the Peruvian Andes and the region is the seventh-most populous List of metropolitan areas ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Taq-e Bostan
Taq-e Bostan (, ) is a site with a series of large rock reliefs in Kermanshah, Iran, carved around the 4th century CE during the Sasanian era. This example of Sasanian art is located 5 km from the city center of Kermanshah. It is located in the heart of the Zagros Mountains, where it has endured almost 1,700 years of wind and rain. Originally, several natural springs were visible next to and below the reliefs and arches, some of which are now covered. Springs next to the reliefs still feed a large basin in front of the rock. The site has been turned into an archaeological park and a series of late Sasanian and Islamic column capitals have been brought together (some found at Taq Bostan, others at Mount Behistun and Kermanshah). The carvings, some of the finest and best-preserved examples of Persian sculpture under the Sassanids, include representations of the investitures of Ardashir II (379–383) and Shapur III (383–388). Like other Sassanid symbols, Taq-e Bosta ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Easter Island
Easter Island (, ; , ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called ''moai'', which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Experts differ on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. While many in the research community cited evidence that they arrived around the year 800, a 2007 study provided compelling evidence suggesting their arrival was closer to 1200. The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone ''moai'' and other artifacts. Land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the i ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Moai
Moai or moʻai ( ; ; ) are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called Ahu (Easter Island), ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads, which account for three-eighths of the size of the whole statue. They also have no legs. The moai are chiefly the living faces (''aringa ora'') of deified ancestors (''aringa ora ata tepuna''). The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands History of Easter Island#European contacts, when Europeans first visited the island in 1722, but all of them had fallen by the latter part of the 19th century. The moai were toppled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, possibly as a result of European contact or endemic warfare, internecine tribal wars. The production and tr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Göbekli Tepe
Göbekli Tepe (, ; Kurdish: or , 'Wish Hill') is a Neolithic archaeological site in Upper Mesopotamia (''al-Jazira'') in modern-day Turkey. The settlement was inhabited from around to at least , during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. It is famous for its large circular structures that contain massive stone pillarsamong the world's oldest known megaliths. Many of these pillars are decorated with anthropomorphic details, clothing, and sculptural reliefs of wild animals, providing archaeologists rare insights into prehistoric religion and the particular iconography of the period. The high, tell is densely covered with ancient domestic structures and other small buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns from the Neolithic, as well as some traces of activity from later periods. The site was first used at the dawn of the southwest Asian Neolithic period, which marked the appearance of the oldest permanent human settlements anywhere in the world. Prehistorians link this Neolith ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat (; , "City/Capital of Wat, Temples") is a Buddhism and Hinduism, Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia. Located on a site measuring within the ancient Khmer Empire, Khmer capital city of Angkor, it was originally constructed in 1150 CE as a Hindu temple dedicated to the deity Vishnu. It was later gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century. Considered by some experts to be the List of largest Hindu temples, largest religious structure in the world, it is regarded as one of the best examples of Khmer architecture and a symbol of Cambodia, depicted as a part of the Flag of Cambodia, Cambodian national flag. Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the Khmer architecture#Temple mountain, temple-moun ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]