page_title: Wattle and daub
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Wattle and daub / Construction
context_page_description: Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. Wattle and daub has been used for at least 6,000 years and is still an important construction method in many parts of the world. Many historic buildings include wattle and daub construction, and the technique is becoming popular again in more developed areas as a low-impact sustainable building technique.
context_section_description: The wattle is made by weaving thin branches (either whole, or more usually split) or slats between upright stakes.  The wattle may be made as loose panels, slotted between timber framing to make infill panels, or made in place to form the whole of a wall. In different regions, the material of wattle can be different. For example, at the Mitchell Site on the northern outskirts of the city of Mitchell, South Dakota, willow has been found as the wattle material of the walls of the house. Reeds and vines can also be used as wattle material. The origin of the term wattle describing a group of acacias in Australia, is derived from the common use of acacias as wattle in early Australian European settlements.
  Daub is usually created from a mixture of ingredients from three categories: binders, aggregates and reinforcement.  Binders hold the mix together and can include clay, lime, chalk dust and limestone dust.  Aggregates give the mix its bulk and dimensional stability through materials such as mud, sand, crushed chalk and crushed stone.  Reinforcement is provided by straw, hair, hay or other fibrous materials, and helps to hold the mix together as well as to control shrinkage and provide flexibility. The daub may be mixed by hand, or by treading – either by humans or livestock.  It is then applied to the wattle and allowed to dry, and often then whitewashed to increase its resistance to rain. Sometimes there can be more than one layer of daub. At the Mitchell Site, the anterior of the house had double layers of burned daub.
  This process has been replaced in modern architecture by brick and mortar or by lath and plaster, a common building material for wall and ceiling surfaces, in which a series of nailed wooden strips are covered with plaster smoothed into a flat surface. In many regions this building method has itself been overtaken by drywall construction using plasterboard sheets.
caption: A woven wattle gate keeps animals out of the 15th century cabbage patch (Tacuinum Sanitatis, Rouen)
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