Glossary Architecture and settlements
Pisé
Also called: pise
Walling of damp earth packed or moulded in place without bricks, used in early Cyprus for walls, benches, hearths and floors.
Pisé, a French term for rammed earth, is common in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Cyprus. Walls, benches built against house walls and hearth platforms were made of it, often together with stone and mudbrick, and some Chalcolithic pit graves had their rims lined with pisé and pebbles. Excavators use the word fairly loosely for any shaped mud construction that is not made of bricks. See furniture for pisé benches and hearths.
Related terms
- Mudbrick
A building brick of clay mixed with straw or other temper, shaped in a mould or by hand and dried in the sun without firing.
- Tholos
A round building: in Neolithic Cyprus a circular house, and in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus a circular tomb with a vaulted roof.
- Pit grave
A simple grave dug as a hole in the ground, usually for one body; the normal form of burial in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Cyprus.