Materiale edilizio fittile

Ceramic Building Material recorded in the farm excavation of Aïn Wassel consists of a small assemblage of fragments. Among them, the greatest part belongs to roof tegulae with different flange shapes. Fabrics do not vary significantly, ranging between light brown and brownish-orange colours, and demonstrating a substantial compactness with moderate inclusions. Thicknesses are comprised between 2 and 3 cm. The collected examples show all vertical or oblique finger impressions on the rear surface meant to facilitate the grip in the mortar bed. Stamps are absent. Cut-aways are preserved only in some cases. Chronological subdivisions of these fragments are quite impossible. However, on the basis of some specific mortar or cocciopesto traces it might be assumed that some tiles were employed in secondary use as floor and wall construction elements of the excavated Byzantine building. This is probably the case of a half preserved and very well realised tile with squared flanges, whose details remind the African imitations of Italic roof tiles, produced during the first centuries AD. Other collected Ceramic Building Materials are several fragments of imbrices, vaulting tubes (one entire example is also present) and bricks in form of bessales, sesquipedales and a presumed small architectonic slab. Although production kilns are not known in the surroundings of the excavated area, it seems quite plausible that these kind of material was modelled and fired in the neighbourhoods of ancient sites. Especially the great amount of vaulting tubes, ubiquitous in rural sites of this area, seems to strengthen this theory.