Rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular
courses. It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit
masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...
such as
brick
A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...
or
ashlar
Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...
. Analogously, some medieval cathedral walls are outer shells of ashlar with an inner backfill of mortarless rubble and dirt.
Square Rubble Masonry
Square Rubble Masonry is where face stones are dressed (squared on all joints and beds) before laying, set in
mortar and appear as the outer surface of a wall.
History
The sack masonry is born as an evolution of
embankment
Embankment may refer to:
Geology and geography
* A levee, an artificial bank raised above the immediately surrounding land to redirect or prevent flooding by a river, lake or sea
* Embankment (earthworks), a raised bank to carry a road, railwa ...
covered with boards, stones or bricks. The coating was used to give the embankment greater strength and make it more difficult for the enemies to climb. The
Sadd el-Khafara dam, 14 meters high and built in sacking masonry in Wadi Al-Garawi near
Helwan
Helwan ( ar, حلوان ', , cop, ϩⲁⲗⲟⲩⲁⲛ, Halouan) is a city in Egypt and part of Greater Cairo, on the bank of the Nile, opposite the ruins of Memphis. Originally a southern suburb of Cairo, it served as the capital of the now de ...
in Egypt, dates back to 2900 - 2600 BC
The Greeks called the brickwork
emplecton
Core-and-veneer, brick and rubble, wall and rubble, ashlar and rubble, and emplekton all refer to a building technique where two parallel walls are constructed and the core between them is filled with rubble or other infill, creating one thick wall ...
and made use of it in particular in the construction of the defensive walls of their
poleis
''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...
.
The Romans made extensive use of the sack masonry technique calling it
opus caementicium
Roman concrete, also called , is a material that was used in construction in ancient Rome. Roman concrete was based on a hydraulic-setting cement. It is durable due to its incorporation of pozzolanic ash, which prevents cracks from spreading. B ...
, because '' caementicium '' was the name given to the filling cast between the two vestments.
The masonry was used during the centuries up to our days, as evidenced by the medieval constructions of defensive walls and large works.
The "modern" brickwork is made with a concrete casting without any elements and with an internal steel reinforcement. This allows for greater elasticity, excellent static and seismic resistance and preserves the unity between shape and structure typical of buildings with external load-bearing walls. All the structural tasks can be assigned to the sack walls thus created, freeing the internal spaces from excessive constraints.
[A. Acocella, The architecture of brick facing, Rome 1989]
See also
*
Snecked masonry
Snecked masonry has a mixture of roughly squared stones of different sizes. It is laid in horizontal courses with rising stones projecting through the courses of smaller stones. Yet smaller fillers called snecks also occur in the courses. The mix ...
- Masonry made of mixed sizes of stone but in regular courses.
*
Wattle and daub
Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung a ...
- Conceptually analogous to rubble within ashlar in the sense that a frame is filled in with a filler material.
Gallery
File:The_Granary_and_Grave_Circle_A_in_Mycenae.jpg, The wall at Grave Circle A
Grave Circle A is a 16th-century BC royal cemetery situated to the south of the Lion Gate, the main entrance of the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae in southern Greece. This burial complex was initially constructed outside the walls of Mycenae and ...
, Helladic cemetery of Mycenae
Mycenae ( ; grc, Μυκῆναι or , ''Mykē̂nai'' or ''Mykḗnē'') is an archaeological site near Mykines in Argolis, north-eastern Peloponnese, Greece. It is located about south-west of Athens; north of Argos; and south of Corinth. Th ...
, Greece, 16th century BCE
File:Qutb Complex Alai Minar.JPG, Rubble masonry core of the unfinished ''Alai Minar'' in the Qutb complex
The Qutb Minar complex are monuments and buildings from the Delhi Sultanate at Mehrauli in Delhi, India. Construction of the Qutub Minar "victory tower" in the complex, named after the religious figure Sufi Saint Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, w ...
, India, c. 1316 CE
References
Stonemasonry
Building stone
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