Pier and Rubble? ‘Phoenician’ Building Techniques in the First Millennium BCE Levant and the Mediterranean.

Abstract

Ashlars and rubble masonry were often used side by side in Levantine buildings of the Iron Age. This book distinguishes various such techniques and focuses on the popular pier-and-rubble technique. It deals with its prerequisites, its possible predecessors as well as its various structural advantages and traces its spread from its emergence at the turn of the first millennium BCE to the latest evidence, dated to its very end. An analysis of the ashlar piers’ typology and other technical characteristics indicate that its use was not spread by specialised masons but possibly by word of mouth accompanying various forms of exchange. The technique’s diffusion to the Iberian Peninsula, but not to the central Mediterranean, confirms that it should not be taken as a ‘Phoenician’ cultural or even ethnic marker. The pier-and-rubble technique is at best distantly related to the central and west Mediterranean technique called a telaio, three variants of which may be differentiated. The origin of those can only partly be traced to the ‘Punic’ area and likewise they are inadequate as cultural or ethnic markers; rather than that, the study of such building techniques highlights multi-directional links across the Mediterranean beyond the movement of mere objects and thus adds to our picture of interregional exchange. The individual occurrences of the pier-and-rubble technique are compiled in the book’s richly illustrated catalogue.