Note 36 — Chapter VII · Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; The Towns upon the Hill of Hissarlik.

The process employed in cementing the materials of the vitrified forts was then perfectly unique. The processes employed to obtain the necessary heat varied according to circumstances and according to the nature of the materials used. At Sainte-Suzanne and at La Courbe marine salt was used as a flux. Captain Prévot36 thinks that the walls were smeared with a coating of clay, and that as in the baking of bricks spaces were left between so as to produce more intense heat. M. de Montaiglon is of opinion that the buildings were in the first instance erected without the use of any calcareous or argillaceous material, and that glass in a state of fusion was poured over them afterwards, this glass consolidating them and forming with them one indestructible mass. M. Thuot seems much disposed to share this last opinion, but he thinks that some chemical materials such as soda or potash were also used. Yet one other possible solution may be mentioned, a solution which is becoming more and more generally accepted, namely that the granite was not after all really melted, but that the vitrification should either be attributed to the fusion of the argillaceous mass, which has been subjected to an igneous transformation, such as that which often takes place in furnaces for baking bricks and in lime-kilns.37