Earthen Construction Technology presents the papers from Session IV-5 of the 18th UISPP World Congress (Paris, June 2018). The archaeological study of earthen construction has until now focused on typology and conservation, rather than on its anthropological importance. Earth is the permanent building material of humankind, and was used by the world's earliest civilizations for their first urban programmes. The architectural and engineering know-how required to carry out these monumental achievements can only be obtained through archaeological research: extensive excavations with attention to architectural and structural features, and their collapse, coupled with typological, mineralogical, micromorphological, botanical, chemical, and mechanical studies of building materials. This line of research is recent, starting in the 1980s in Europe, but is rapidly growing and illustrated in this volume. |