Jacal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The jacal is an adobe style housing structure historically found throughout parts of the south-western United States and Mexico. The structure was employed by Native Americans prior to European colonization and was later employed by both Hispanic and Anglo settlers in Texas and elsewhere [1].
Typically, a jacal would consist of slim close-set poles tied together and filled out with mud, clay and grasses. More sophisticated structures, such as those constructed by the Anasazi, incorporated adobe bricks—sun-baked mud and sandstone.
[edit] External links
- Sketch of a Jacal from A pictorial history of Texas, from the earliest visits of European adventurers, to A.D. 1879, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
- Jacal in Big Bend National Park.[[2]]
Jacal construction is similar to wattle and daub. However, the "wattle" portion of jacal structures consists mainly of vertical poles lashed together with cordage and sometimes supported by a pole framework, as in the pithouses of the Basketmaker III period of the Ancestral Puebloan (aka Anasazi) Indians of the American Southwest. This is overlain with a layer of mud/adobe (the "daub), sometimes applied over a middle layer of dry grasses or brush which functions as insulation.
