ginning around 2700 b.c.e. Mesopotamians began manu-
facturing plano-convex bricks. A mold would give a brick a
fl at bottom and fl at sides (planes). Th e top, however, bulged
or curved out, forming a convex surface. It was this convex
surface that faced out and became the exterior wall of a struc-
ture. Th e plano-convex brick was confi ned to Mesopotamia,
and even there this shape was mostly abandoned aft er 2400
b.c.e. Mesopotamian brick makers aft er that time scraped off
any excess mud, making every surface a fl at plane. Th is tech-
nique would be used by all other Near Eastern brick makers,
including the Persians.
Once shaped, a brick was removed from the mold to dry
and harden. Th e hardest mud bricks were those baked in ov-
ens. However, it was easier to let bricks dry in the sun, the
trade-off being that sun-dried bricks were not as strong as
oven-baked ones. Once dried, by whatever method, the brick
was ready for use, primarily in building walls. Brick walls
were built up one horizontal layer, or course, at a time. Each
course had to be cemented to the course under and over it,
using any one of a number of methods. Workers could simply
press wet bricks together and let them harden in place. More
commonly they used mortar, a moist substance that adhered
the courses to one another when it dried. Th e most usual
mortar in the Near East was clay or mud mixed with straw or
grit. In Mesopotamia another common mortar was bitumen,
a black, sticky petroleum material that seeped up from the
area’s underground oil deposits. Bitumen and other mortars
were also used as plaster coverings for brick constructions.
Mud bricks, even baked ones, needed protection from sun,
wind, and rain. Plastering them once a year protected them
from disintegrating over time.
Walls made of stone were also built in courses and
were oft en cemented together with mortar. One form much
favored by the Phoenicians did not use mortar but rather
stones shaped into equivalently sized rectangles that fi t-
ted tightly together. Th en the blocks were laid in courses in
which groups of three of four stones had their ends facing
out of the wall while other groups had their long sides ex-
posed. Th is alternation of the ends and sides of wall stones
increased the wall’s stability and helped prevent its collapse.
Another method of stabilizing both stone and brick walls
was to add buttresses that kept heavy walls from collapsing
under their own weight. Although buttresses take a variety
of shapes, in the ancient Near East they were fl at pillars of
brick or stone that projected out from a wall. Th e buttress
transferred the outward force that the wall’s weight exerted
down into the ground.
Walls could also crumble under the weight of a build-
ing’s roof. However, by resting the raft ers that supported the
roof on buttresses, builders could partially relieve the wall
of carrying the load. Walls could also be weakened by being
pierced with openings for doors and windows. Th e absence
in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Near East of wood or
stone to reinforce window frames and doorjambs also meant
the absence of full support for the wall above. Consequently,
windows were oft en kept small and narrow, a single brick’s
width, for instance. By carving windows out of single blocks
of stone, the Persians were able to increase the size of these
window openings for their public buildings. Th e stone frame
provided the necessary strength to hold up the brick wall
above it.
Doors also were made as small as possible. Some early
Near Eastern houses even had doors so low and set so nar-
rowly that people crawled through them to reach the interior.
Larger doors became possible through reinforcement. Build-
ers placed two upright posts, or jambs, on either side of the
opening and then laid a beam of wood or a stone, known as
the lintel, across the top of the jambs. Th e lintel transferred
the weight of the wall above the door down to the jambs. An
exceptionally large doorway or the gateway in a city wall
would have buttresses against either side as added bracing.
Lintels were not suffi ciently strong to bear the weight of large
expanses of wall. Th ey would break under such weight. Th us
for entryways in large walls, Near Eastern builders used the
arch, which was invented in Mesopotamia by the Sumerians
in the fourth millennium b.c.e.
Th e most common ty pe of arch in the ancient Near East
was the corbeled arch. A corbel is a brick or block of stone
that sticks out of a wall and on which another building ele-
ment, a raft er or a beam for example, rests for support. In
a brick corbeled arch—most made of brick—the object be-
ing supported was another brick. Th is second brick would
itself stick out over the end of the fi rst brick. On top of the
second brick a third brick was laid, also projecting beyond
its support. As one overlapping brick was added to another,
gradually the side of the arch rose, looking much like a se-
ries of brick steps. From the other side of the entryway, an-
other brick staircase rose to meet its counterpart, forming
the apex of a triangle.ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Little is known about what ancient peoples of Oceania built.
Many lived in caves even into the modern age, and oth-
ers probably lived in huts made of branches and sticks. On
Easter Island, where people arrived around 400 c.e., there is
evidence of such huts, but most of the people lived in caves
they dug in the slopes of the island. For much of eastern Asia,
little has been uncovered for Neolithic structures, probably
because they were either temporary or built from perishable
materials, principally wood.
In the prehistoric era the peoples of the Indian subcon-
tinent and Southeast Asia built domed homes of mud, and
their tombs for local leaders were typically large mud domes
called stupas. When the Buddha died in 483 b.c.e., his cre-
mated remains were divided among eight stupas, but in 260
b.c.e., King Asoka opened seven of these stupas and divided
the remains among 84,000 stupas throughout most of India.
One of these is the Great Stupa in Sanchi in central India,building techniques and materials: Asia and the Pacific 155