In a message dated 2/8/2001 1:03:29 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Can anyone tell me about properties brick that has been burned? >>
In my limited experience, from memory of Mississippi, there are two types of
brick making features. One like the report on the Brooklyn, Alabama kiln
(imagine being a kid from New York finding one of these!) that I saw was
organized into chambers which were fired from one end and the draft carrying
the smoke out the other end, probably creating more uniform bricks than the
other method.

The other method, used also in Mississippi, found in the vicinity of the
Waverly Plantation, Waverly Ferry Access, Tenn-Tombigbee Project, by William
H. Adams et al. is a square "Borg" like cube constructed on the surface of
all the partially air dried bricks that is built with an empty chamber within
with an access from the outside. A Fullbright Scholar then the reporter on
fieldwork in the American southeast for "American Antiquity" whose name
escapes me at the moment, showed us some slides of Uruguay where they are
still made that way while we were in Mississippi. Depending on the prevailing
wind, some bricks get hotter than others in this arrangement and "glaze" on
the outside, reminding me of some of those old forts in Britain that burned
so intensely the stones themselves fused together.

My two cents.
George Myers