dry stack

throughout the hills behind our village, there are vestiges of the shepherds and goatherds who used to live their lives with their flocks. there are walls made of dry stack stones, and there are beehive-shaped dry-stack stone huts where they would wait out the weather. the huts are called capitelles, and they still dot the hillsides. building a stone structure without mortar is a painstaking and frustrating process, if this tiny, unfinished wall of sea-smoothed terra cotta tiles is any indication. i can’t imagine building something taller than me, that i would feel unafraid to spend the night in.

beach tumbles roof tiles (pierre sèche)