Structural Description (part 9)

Construction Technique of the Peripheral Wall

The technique applied for building the peripheral wall is approximately the same as for the central platform. The main difference lies in the abundant use of flat stone elements, especially along the southern part and in both southeastern and southwestern corners.

The observations made during the excavation showed clearly that the outer flank alone was nicely set, while the inner limit of the peripheral wall remains indistinct and mostly integrated to the sediment deposits packed between the peripheral wall and the central platform. This shows clearly that the peripheral wall was built after the central platform was finished, and also that the artificial accumulation of sediment was done at the same time as the building of the peripheral wall. This will be explained in detail in a later section.

One more feature of the peripheral wall is the regular use of flat and thin slabs. This type of stone material is almost absent in the central platform. Moreover, we observed a vast majority of those flat slabs at the base of the collapsed accumulation. Most of them were lying in horizontal position, quite far from the wall edge, so we first thought those to form a paved pathway. We soon recognized that the flat stones were originally used for the top layers of the peripheral wall, and that they fell farther than the underlying stone elements.

The same type of flat stones was also observed near the base of the southern part of the peripheral wall. The reason of the presence of such flat construction elements at this location is not known.