habitat rupestre.pdf - Società Friulana di Archeologia

A. Torres Barchino, J. Serra Lluch, A. García Codoñer, J. Llopis Verdú, I. de la Torre Fornésfesting itself as a cheap solution for he humblest amongst us:the cueveros [the cave dwellers]; but they were never meantto be an alternative to above-ground architecture, but rather aremedy given the scarce resources of many of its inhabitants.The cave dwelling should not therefore be seen as an adaptionto the environment per se, but rather a potential solution to aneconomic predicament, and used during moments of demographicgrowth, as occurred during the 20s and 30s, all theway trough to the post-war era with the subsequent emigrationto France and Germany which definitively left the cavesuninhabited”. 5The caves in the Barrio de la Torre in Paterna are an exampleof these excavated dwellings that appeared in response to asocial situation of scarcity, in which case we do indeed findthat the surfaces of the walls are covered in whitewash. Acheap and functional colour solution for sunken-feature architecturesused as dwellings.Fig. 5-6-7 Sunken-feature architecture in Villacañas, Toledo, Spain.The white of the limeNowadays, the majority of sunken-feature architecture inthe Spanish Levante used as dwellings, with the exceptionof the natural shelters that were occupied during prehistorictimes, is coloured in white with whitewash, a building techniquethat originates far back in the history of architecture. Infact, the Spanish language still uses two terms with differentetymologies to describe construction processes related to thecovering of surfaces in whitewash. The first, enjalbelgar is aLatin word (exalbicāre) synonymous with whitewash (encalar)which means to whiten the walls with lime, whereas thesecond, jaharrar comes from the Arabic-Spanish (ǧayyár)and describes the covering of a façade in a mortar of lime.The tradition of using lime comes from both sides of thecountry’s cultural heritage.Lime is a building material that can easily be obtained fromheating naturally occurring limestone. Lime obtained in thisway is called quicklime and is highly corrosive, to such an extentthat is has to be mixed with water to obtain slaked lime ina process that generates a great deal of heat. The technologyrequired to obtain lime is cheap and it is believed that it wasfirst developed by the Romans in about 300 B.C. Once again,culture, terrain, materials and colours, describe a relationshipas close as elemental.The lime used for binding in the production of plaster is veryresistant and at the same time allows the surface of the wall tobreathe. Slaked lime reacts with the carbon dioxide in the airto revert to a limestone in a process that can take up to threeyears depending on the climate.Vitrubio himself warned of the advantages of a good plasteringto ensure the longevity of the rendering. Firstly he wouldmake a scratch coat, making sure to that the surface remainedrough and uneven; over this trullisatio or scratch coat hewould add three parts of sand and another three parts of limestucco mortar with a fine marble powder, which would allowthe colour of the paint to have more lustre and last longer. Inthe dwellings with earthen floors, from the floor to a height ofthree feet, instead of smoothing it, he would create a scratchcoat or trullisatio using a mixture of mortar and chips of oven-firedbrick. 6 Spanish writers from the 18th Century alsorecommended jaharrar or plastering to strengthen the walls,to which we should add an incipient aesthetic influence, as125volumeRicerca_OK_2012-11-15.indd 125 16/11/2012 15:02:11