| Entry: | During the excavation of buttress F.3301 (mud-bricks U.16994) it became apparent that many medium sized potsherds were located between the brick layers, stuck in the mortar used to bond the bricks. Also several stones of similar size were visible. Possibly the majority of potsherds previously found in the mud-brick contexts of other walls (e.g. U.13797, 16877 & 17276) are to be more precisely interpreted as content of the mortar rather than the mud-bricks. This initial lack of understanding is most likely due to the fact that during screening, where all finds were gathered, there was no distinction made between mortar and mud-brick in order to speed up work. The practice of sticking things into mortar is not uncommon in a modern context, where stones, gravel, sherds or even metal is inserted into the soft mortar before the next layer of bricks is placed. This helps the elasticity of the walls that have to be able to compensate changes in temperature or moisture for example. On the other hand, large foreign objects such as bone or pottery mixed into the mud-brick material considerably decreases the quality of the brick. The homogenous and compact nature a good brick should have would be reduced if fragments of pottery or other materials were in it, possibly causing the brick to break or split apart in that place.
After cleaning the last few areas of brick stuck to the eastern edge of wall F.2424 (B.105) it became apparent that the double wall of F.5058 directly abutts the exterior of B.105. No gap or bonding material between the walls was identified, at least for the extent to the north of the artificial step near buttress F.3301.
From a technical or architectural point of view the term double wall is somewhat misleading as until now there is no evidence for the bonding of both rows of brick in wall F.5058. The header-stretcher technique (stretcher = bricks placed along the direction of the wall face, header = bricks set at right angles in the next course showing a half length brick every second course in the face section) was not applied, or cannot be identified in the walls interior face. Rather both walls were built in two separate rows but probably in one construction event, immediately next to each other and bonded by the same mortar material used between courses. Further evidence for a double wall is given by the plastered layer below the walls previously identified underneath wall F.2427, which can also be assumed to precede walls F.2408 and F.5058 and shows a double-width substrate level made to hold a double-row of bricks. Also the construction of the corners and buttresses using long slabs that bind into each other proves the case of two rows of brick.
This evidence suffice to label the walls of B.106 as double walls despite the fact that this term used to characterise walls physically bonded with each other, which is more evident in modern contexts and may not necessarily comparable when studying ancient architecture. |
