Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with mortar and even the ancient lime mortar, to wall or cover formed structures.
Gobekli Tepe, early monumental Neolithic stonemasonry using flint-carved limestone columns (~9500 BCE).
12th-century stonemasonry at Angkor Wat
Diamond-wire saw in use for quarrying marble.
Ashlar is a cut and dressed stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones.
Ashlar masonry north gable of Banbury Town Hall, Oxfordshire
Ashlar polygonal masonry in Cuzco, Peru
Quarry-faced red Longmeadow sandstone in random ashlar was specified by architect Henry Hobson Richardson for the North Congregational Church (Springfield, Massachusetts, 1871). Although each block was cut with great precision on adjacent faces, the external face was left rough as when removed from the quarry. The blocks were laid randomly without continuous courses or vertical and horizontal joints.