Ever since the Neolithic (10,000 - 4500 BCE), mudbrick has been the main building material in warmer climates like Africa and the Middle East. The primary type of building material used in a civilisation depends on three main factors: how complex the civilisation was, what the weather and climate was like, and what natural resources were available. Since antiquity, mudbrick has been used as a simple way of creating building materials in dry climates. It most likely developed from the ‘wattle-and-daub’ technique - the earliest building material used in Egypt and the Middle East, where walls were woven out of twigs and plastered with a daub (a combination of clay and temper such as straw or sand). As civilizations evolved, a more sophisticated method was developed - making bricks out of clay. It is likely that, as clay had been used to plaster walls and the people knew how to use it, mudbrick was developed as a process that was somewhat familiar and easy to develop and learn.
Mudbrick production is attached to cultural information, that in many cases, reflect human choices, and each choice comes with additional information regarding the collective choice of a community and individual cultural practices. Thus, mudbrick production studies allow for the identification of shared recipies - much like the study of archaeological ceramics. However, mudbricks in their own right are one of the least studied architectural features in prehistory. This is mainly due to the fact that well-preserved mudbrick through excavation, i.e. in not still standing remains, is hard to find. As such, minimal research regarding mudbrick construction and technology exists. As mudbrick was the main building material, it contributed significantly to how ancient North Africa and the Middle East looked.
Just like with pottery or tools, a production chain can be observed in, for example, the choice of raw material, temper (a binding component to make the brick stronger) and how it was made. It is generally accepted that the most common temper in mudbrick is vegetal, but additional sand or crushed pottery was also used as temper.
As the production of the actual brick did not require much skill it was easy to learn the new technique, but on the other hand the knowledge of what “recipe” to use when mixing the clay required knowledge of the raw materials. The main raw materials that were used to produce mudbricks were clay, some organic temper like straw or organic waste, and sand or silt sediments. Considering the durability of clay, and how easily it can be manipulated through the addition of different components to mould it into a brick, it was the main building material in North Africa and the Middle East. It is still used today without much alteration to the process.
In Egypt, the archaeological evidence of the actual making of the mudbrick exists, although sparse; e.g. some wood moulds have been found (like the brick mould accession no. 31.3.66 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and some literary evidence like the writing about ‘mnw-stone’ (transl. mudstone) in Papyrus Reisner I. Papyrus Reisner I contains information about the transaction of construction material and the construction of religious buildings and detailed architectural elements. From this, we know that different types of mudbrick existed: normal -or brown mudbrick, and white mudbrick. These various types were used in different kinds of structure. From a study made of Middle Egyptian Forts, two distinctly different recipes could be found. The brown mudbrick is made from a micaceous alluvial sediment, i.e. clay from the Nile that contains a lot of the mineral mica. The white mudbrick is made from micaceous residual clay from the Precambrian period - i.e. clay formed by surface weathering such as chemical decomposition of rocks, the solution of rocks, and by the disintegration and solution of shale containing mica. The main difference between these two types of bricks, aside from the colour, is the difference in temper. The brown mudbrick has the usual vegetal temper, but the white one generally has a sand temper. However, as ancient Egypt was a vast empire of its time, the recipes used in the bricks do differ in composition. Studies made in the Delta could identify three main mudbrick groups: clay-rich mudbricks, straw-rich mudbricks and silty mudbricks. There the alluvial clay (clay from the Nile) was rarely used.
It can be hard to recognise mudbrick in the archaeological record, but there are a number of sites that have some amazing mudbrick structures which really shows that simple methods can stand the test of time.
In Egypt, sites such as the Ramesseum have magazines made out of mudbricks that are still preserved, and the village of Deir El-Medineh is almost entirely made out of mudbrick. Both sites are located on the westbank of the Nile, close to Luxor. The oldest still standing mudbrick structure in Egypt is a mudbrick enclosure located in Abydos and dates back to the reign of King Khasekhemwy of the 2nd Dynasty (c. 2890-2686 BCE). In the Middle East, sites such as Çatalhöyük have a Neolithic village made out of mudbrick huts which date to c. 10,000 BCE and Tel Tsaf, in the Jordan Valley, has mudbrick constructions dating to c. 7200 BCE.
Text: Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir. MENAM Archaeology. Copyright 2022. Image: Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir. Copyright 2022.
Further reading:
H. Barnard, W. Z. Wendrich, A. Winkels, J. E. M. F. Bos, B. L. Simpson & R. T. J. Cappers 2016 The preservation of exposed mudbrick architecture in Karanis (Kom Aushim), Egypt, Journal of Field Archaeology, 41:1, 84-100
Maras, S. 2010. A Reassessment of Brick Motifs and Brick-building Techniques at Achaemenid in Susa. In J. Curtis and J. Simpson (eds.) The World of Achaemenid Persia, History, Art and Sociery in Iran and the Ancient Near East. London: 1.B. Tauris. pp. 207- 229.
Serena Love 2017 Field Methods for the Analysis of Mud Brick Architecture, Journal of Field Archaeology, 42:4, 351-363
Sunneborn Gudnadottir, A. 2018 Clear as Mud: an optical microscopic study of ceramics from Shalfak, Egypt. MA dissertation unpublished, London.
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