Anathyrosis is the technical word for the ancient method of dressing the joints of stone blocks in

dry stone Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction me ...

construction, i. e.,

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

without mortar, which was then commonly used. Because the stone blocks are set in immediate contact with each other without gaps, their joints must be exactly dressed. In order to reduce the time required to sculpt such joints, the faces of the stones to be joined were finished and smoothed only in narrower margins on the sides and top of the faces to be joined, while the interior of adjoining faces were recessed. The smoothed margins of such a face together resemble a doorframe, and the word, created by the ancients, is allusive. ''Thyra'' (θύρα) is Greek for “door”, and thus “door framing” is ''anathyrosis''. This technique was frequently used to construct walls, including in

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitr ...

form, and was used to join the drums of

columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression membe ...

. Close examination of where this technique was applied to a specific stone block since removed or fallen away can help locate its placement in the edifice or determine whether it was joined to other blocks.

References

*Robertson, D. S. 1929. ''Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Rywert, Joseph 1996. ''The Dancing Column''. The MIT Press.

External links

*{{Commonscatinline Architectural elements Ancient Greek architecture Stonemasonry