Dry stone

Dry stone, dry laid in the US, or drystack or, in Scotland and Northern England, drystane, is a method of building structures from stones without any mortar to bind them together. A certain amount of binding is obtained through the use of carefully selected interlocking stones. Dry stone construction is best known in the context of stone walls, traditionally used for the boundaries of fields and churchyards, or as retaining walls for terracing, but dry stone shelters, houses and other structures also exist. The term tends not to be used for the many historic styles which used precisely-shaped stone, but did not use mortar, for example the Greek temple and Inca architecture. The art of dry stone walling was inscribed in 2018 on the UNESCO representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, for dry stone walls in countries such as France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland and Spain. In 2024, Ireland was added to the list.