ABSTRACT
A brief text in 1999 outlined the state of the art regarding knowledge of the earthen heritage in Sicily: the well-known 4th cent. BC fortifications of Capo Soprano at Gela; some pani di terra (lit. cakes of earth) cemented together with lime and clay mortar, cropping up occasionally in Cefalù in 17th/18th cent. religious buildings; a few observations regarding pietra e tayu (lit. stone and mud), emerging from the archive studies of Henri Bresc (Mungiguerra 1999). Now that local archaeologists from the Sicilian heritage offices (e.g. Sebastiano Tusa, Rosalba Panvini and Francesca Spatafora)
1 INTRODUCTION
Earth has been detected in buildings dating back to various epochs and in various geographical areas. Earth is a building material that is still pertinent at all latitudes, and has negligible environmental impact; one has only to think of its widespread availability and the consequent reduction in transportation, the extremely inconsequential amount of energy required for its transformation, the elimination of the need for disposal, recycling of waste and dumping. In the last decades great progress has been achieved in the contemporary use of earth in building, though not in Italy, where the material and (perhaps more) non-material values of the links with the contextual reality hinder the use of earth building techniques in ordinary situations. Compared with others Italian Regions, this is more evident in Sicily, where the typical immediacy of earth building techniques (deeply rooted in the physical and cultural identity of the productive context) has been lost, because of the lack of flourishing building traditions.
