The Use of Adobe in Prehistoric 

 Dwellings of the Southwest 



By Neil M. Judd 



HE word 'adobe', according to the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, 1 has been traced to an Egyptian hieroglyph 

 denoting 'brick', thence to the Arabic at-tob, al-tob, whence 

 the Spanish adobar, 'to daub', 'to plaster'. It reached the 

 United States from Mexico, into which country it was 

 introduced by the Spanish conquerors of the early part of the 16th 

 century. In its present most widely accepted meaning, 'adobe' de- 

 notes a large, tabular, unbaked brick, molded in a wooden frame and 

 dried in the sun, but it may also mean mortar made from the same 

 material as the bricks and utilized with them in the construction of 

 walls or in the surfacing of floors, roofs, etc. In addition, it may 

 even mean the dry, clayey soil suitable for use in the manufacture 

 of bricks or mortar. 



Adobe, in the latter sense, occurs widely throughout the arid or 

 semi-arid sections of southwestern United States. Being a product of 

 aridity, it finds its greatest use, for construction purposes, in regions 

 of little rainfall where other building materials are mostly wanting. 

 If "necessity is the mother of invention", it seems that the primitive 

 peoples attracted to the broad, brown plains of southern Arizona, for 

 example, were not slow to recognize the degree of protection fur- 

 nished by a layer of clayey soil spread over their first temporary shel- 

 ters nor in discovering the possibilities of that soil when properly 

 prepared for use in the erection of larger, more permanent dwellings. 

 And yet, even though most frequently utilized in desert regions, 

 adobe requires an abundant water supply for its successful manipu- 

 lation. 



The present Mexican, and even a large proportion of the Ameri- 

 can, population dwelling in southern Texas, New Mexico, and Ari- 

 zona, and the adjoining sections of Chihuahua and Sonora, construct 

 their houses of adobe bricks after a manner introduced by the 

 Spaniards. A shallow hole near the site of the proposed structure 

 provides a mixing place into which water is poured to soften the 



1 Bulletin 30, pt. 1, page 14, Fourth impression, 1912. 

 [241] 



