An Archaeomagnetic Study of a Wattle and Daub Building Collapse

Abstract

Archaeomagnetic methods, originally developed to assist in the reconstruction of pottery vessels, are applied to the study of sintered remains of Neolithic wattle and daub buildings in Calabria, Italy in order better to understand the circumstances of burning and structural collapse.These Stentinello-culture buildings from Piana di Curinga comprise one of the densest areas of Neolithic settlement known in the western Mediterranean. A spinner magnetometer was used to analyze both the orientations of thermoremanent magnetism vectors in one structure's daub fragments as well as the intersection angles they make with timber imprints and wall surface planes. It was found, in conjunction with experimentation, that the building was probably intentionally burned and that those who set fire to it knew the structure's walls would at least partially collapse. Several lines of evidence indicate how old, abandoned daub buildings were probably set afire so as to harden and hence preserve the pieces of now-fired wall daub for future incorporation into the matrix of new walls. The implications of daub salvage with respect to settlement composition are noted.