Cyclopean masonry is a type of stonework found in Mycenaean architecture, built with huge limestone boulders, roughly fitted together with minimal clearance between adjacent stones and no use of mortar. The boulders typically are unworked, but sometimes are worked roughly with a hammer, and often the gaps between boulders are filled in with smaller chunks of limestone.
The most famous examples of Cyclopean masonry are found in the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, and the style is characteristic of Mycenaean fortifications. Similar styles of stonework are found in other cultures and the term has become used to describe typical stonework.
The term comes from the belief by classical Greeks that only the mythical Cyclopes had the strength to move the enormous boulders that made up the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. Pliny's Natural History reported the tradition attributed to Aristotle, that the Cyclopes were the inventors of masonry towers, giving rise to the designation Cyclopean.[1]
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"The walls are usually founded in extremely shallow beddings carved out of the bedrock. 'Cyclopean', the term normally applied to the masonry style characteristic of Mycenaean fortification systems, describes walls built of huge, unworked limestone boulders which are roughly fitted together. Between these boulders, smaller hunks of limestone fill the interstices. The exterior faces of the large boulders may be roughly hammer-dressed, but the boulders themselves are never carefully cut blocks. Very large boulders are typical of the Mycenaean walls at Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, Krisa (in Phocis), and the Athenian Acropolis. Somewhat smaller boulders occur in the walls of Midea, whereas large limestone slabs are characteristic of the walls at Gla. Cut stone masonry is used only in and around gateways, conglomerate at Mycenae and Tiryns and perhaps both conglomerate and limestone at Argos."[2]
Harry Thurston Peck, writing in 1898, divided Cyclopean masonry into four categories or styles:[3]
While Peck's first and possibly second and third styles conforms to what archaeologists today would classify as cyclopean, the fourth now is referred to as ashlar and is not considered cyclopean. There is a more detailed description of the Cyclopean styles at the Perseus Project.[5]
Pausanias described the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns:
Modern archaeologists use "Cyclopean" in a more restricted sense than the description by Pausanias; while Pausanias attributes all of the fortifications of Tiryns and Mycenae, including the Lion Gate, to the Cyclopes, only parts of these walls are built in Cyclopean masonry. The photograph above shows the difference between Cyclopean masonry (shown in the blue rectangle), and the ashlar masonry of the Lion Gate.
Apart from the Tirynthian and Mycenaean walls, other Cyclopean structures include some tholos tombs in Greece and the fortifications of a number of Mycenaean sites, most famously at Gla.
The Nuraghe of Bronze Age Sardinia also are described as being constructed in cyclopean masonry, as are some of the constructions of the Talaiotic Culture abounding on Menorca and present to a lesser extent on Mallorca. Other constructions dating from Roman times considered to be cyclopean may be found, for instance, in Tarragona, in a large section of the Roman city walls. See an image of the Roman walls of Tarragona at the Enciclopèdia Catalana.
In Ireland, cyclopean type of masonry may be seen in the building of some Early Medieval Churches.