El patrimonio arquitectónico construido con tierra. Las aportaciones historiográficas y el reconocimiento de sus valores en el contexto de la arquitectura popular española

Abstract

The earthen architectural heritage and, in general, the built ensembles integrating the so called "vernacular architecture", have been repeatedly investigated for more than a century by archaeologists, architects, ethnologists, historians or geographers. During the last thirty years we can find a significant progress in the procedures for studying, cataloguing, protecting and watching over these cultural goods, which are representative of the diverse ways of inhabiting and constructing in the different regions of the world. However, currently there are few interventions in this kind of heritage that one can consider truly scientific, which is even more obvious in the case of the earthen buildings. In fact, the earth-built architectural heritage is one of the most fragile and endangered sections in the vernacular heritage, regardless of what we find barely developed up to now the essential intervention criteria. To go in depth regarding the essential features of this kind of architecture, identify its main values as cultural landscape shaper and emphasize the most important historiographical contributions on the subject are the main goals of this paper.