WordNet
n. a primitive style of masonry characterized by use of massive stones of irregular shape and size
Wikipedia
Cyclopean masonry is a type of stonework found in Mycenaean architecture, built with massive limestone boulders, roughly fitted together with minimal clearance between adjacent stones and no use of mortar. The boulders typically seem unworked, but some may have been worked roughly with a hammer and the gaps between boulders filled in with smaller chunks of limestone.
The most famous examples of Cyclopean masonry are found in the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, and the style is characteristic of Mycenaean fortifications. Similar styles of stonework are found in other cultures and the term has come to be used to describe typical stonework of this sort.
The term comes from the belief of classical Greeks that only the mythical Cyclopes had the strength to move the enormous boulders that made up the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. Pliny's Natural History reported the tradition attributed to Aristotle, that the Cyclopes were the inventors of masonry towers, giving rise to the designation Cyclopean.
Usage examples of "cyclopean masonry".
I cannot describe the emotions with which I actually touched - in objective reality - a fragment of Cyclopean masonry in every respect like the blocks in the walls of my dream-buildings.
Below us the primal Cyclopean masonry spread out as it had done when first we saw it, and we began rising and turning to test the wind for our crossing through the pass.
I cannot describe the emotions with which I actually touched--in objective reality--a fragment of Cyclopean masonry in every respect like the blocks in the walls of my dream-buildings.
Past Cyclopean masonry we rode, rounding the eastern face and looking down ahead into a valley of minor pyramids beyond which the eternal Nile glistened to the east, and the eternal desert shimmered to the west.
There was a vast room - a chamber of Cyclopean masonry - and I seemed to be viewing it from one of its corners.
The passage, slightly taller and wider than the aperture, was for many yards a level tunnel of Cyclopean masonry, with heavily worn flagstones under foot, and grotesquely carved granite and sandstone blocks in sides and ceiling.
She scrambled over and under this cyclopean masonry, following whenever possible the wear marks indicating a trail.
The ministry building was of the newer sort, though its concrete walls were deeply scored to make it look as if it were built of cyclopean masonry.