Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
underground stone built tombs with arcuated rooi ng can be found in the Levant,
when, for some reason, intra-mural burial was required. h ey are set down into
the occupational levels of the tells in default of chambers cut into (sot ) bed rock
for the standard extra-mural burials. h ey are small and constructed of boulders
and i eld stones.
However for two centuries between ca 1500 BC and 1300 BC a type of under-
ground stone built tomb referred to as a tholos l ourished in Mycenaean Greece
(v Lawrence chap. 6). h ese tombs developed in size, masonry technique and
ornament to become, in some instances, very imposing monuments. h e earlier
tombs (1500 BC-1400 BC) were built of random rubble or roughly square rubble.
h e chambers vary in size upwards from ca 8m in diameter. h ese tombs pro-
gressively develop in size to ca 14m in diameter and roughly of the same height
from l oor to peak of the pointed dome. Equally the masonry passed from rubble
to uniform bastard ashlar (i.e. entirely i ne jointed at the surface). h ey were of
uniform design, a long narrow dromos was excavated in the slope of a hill until
sui cient height was available in which to set a chamber of pointed domical form.
h e walls of the dromos and of the chamber were built in stone masonry and earth
packed back behind them to the scarp of the excavated emplacement. h en the
peak of the chamber was buried in earth to the level of the hill top. h e cham-
ber portal at the end of the dromos was given monumental treatment, and the
lintel was of megalithic disposition and surmounted by a relieving triangle in the
masonry. h e i nest of these tombs were revetted on the interior with, e.g. decorated
metal plating. Foremost among these tholoi were the two tombs at Mycenae and
that at Orchomenos, well known today as the Treasury of Atreus, the Treasury
of Clytemnestra and the Treasury of Minyas. (NB the term “treasury” was used
by Pausanias for the grave of a hero, where the vital forces resident in his
soma
were treasured up for the welfare of the community.) Parallel to the Mycenaean
tholoi another type of arcuated stone tomb was developed in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean—the underground vaulted tombs of Late Bronze Age Ugarit. h ese were
bourgeois rather than princely, but very well constructed in bastard ashlar. h e
blocks were corbelled out and their faces dressed to give a pointed proi le to the
vault. h e form was thus arcuated but not the construction.
Returning to the Mycenaean tholoi, it is clear that they were entirely stone built
domes in form, but the statics of their construction are subject to varying assess-
ment. h e individual blocks were i nely dressed bastard ashlar—i.e. the jointing
at the face was very i ne, but the joints, both bed joints and rising joints, opened
apart to the interior, also in general they were set in regular courses with horizontal
beds. h us in general they did not constitute what is understood by voussoirs, i.e.
wedge shaped blocks where the planes of both the rising joints and the bed joints
radiate from a “centre”. h is disposition increases the state of compression (both
Arcuated
stone
rooi ng—
Mycenaean
tholos
285
286-289
203
