Ioannis Ioannou

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PREHISTORIC, TRADITIONAL AND CONTEMPORARY ADOBE BRICKS FROM CYPRUS

by Maria Costi de Castrillo and Ioannis Ioannou

Earthen architecture in Cyprus dates back to the Neolithic era. Up until the first half of the 20... more Earthen architecture in Cyprus dates back to the Neolithic era. Up until the first half of the 20 th century, adobe bricks were used extensively for the construction of load-bearing masonry walls. However, following the modernization of the local society, the urbanization trends and the introduction of industrialized building materials, the use of adobes declined. Contemporary adobes are produced by a limited number of local manufacturers using random raw materials and empirical techniques. As a result, the end-product is generally non-homogeneous with variable physico-mechanical properties. This paper presents a comparative study between prehistoric, traditional and contemporary (19 th-21 st century) adobes from Cyprus. Reported results include mineralogical and physico-chemical analyses of both raw materials and brick specimens sampled from prehistoric archaeological sites, 19 th-20 th century traditional buildings and contemporary producers. The findings of the study show that traditional and contemporary adobes are to a great extent similar to the prehistoric bricks, taking into account their inherent inhomogeneity. Nevertheless, mixing of raw materials was probably the norm in prehistory; this practice has been gradually abolished in traditional and contemporary adobe production. It is anticipated that the current study will contribute towards improving the practices for local adobe production and will assist in the development of quality control methods for earthen materials, thus enhancing their use in contemporary sustainable construction.

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