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     Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology


Composition Analysis of Ancient Bricks, Candi Bukit Kechil, Bujang Valley, Kedah

Zuliskandar Ramli and Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman
Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology  2013  5:924-930
http://dx.doi.org/10.19026/rjaset.6.4143  |  © The Author(s) 2013
Received: October 30, 2012  |  Accepted: December 21, 2012  |  Published: June 25, 2013

Abstract

Candi Bukit Kechil or Bukit Kechil Temple is one of the temples in Bujang Valley that was built on a hill apart from Candi Bukit Pendiat (Site 17), Candi Bukit Meriam (Site 26), Candi Bukit Penjara (Site 25) and Candi Bukit Gajah Mati (Site 7). On the whole, this temple was made from bricks and based on the north-south orientation and the construction of the lotus-like structure, it is believed that this temple is of Buddhist religion and was built between 9th to 10th century AD. Based on GPS reading, the temple’s location is N5 37.129 E100 27.324. Analysis on the bricks of the temple was performed to determine whether the bricks used local raw material or otherwise, as well as to find out the physical condition of the bricks, particularly their burning method. As such, two analysis techniques were conducted, namely the X-Ray Diffraction and the X-Ray Fluorescence method that respectively determined the mineral content of the bricks as well as the major and trace element content of the bricks. Analysis shows that the minerals contained in the brick samples of Candi Bukit Kechil comprise of quartz, muscovite, albite and kaolinite. The presence of the kaolinite mineral shows that there are bricks that were baked at temperatures less than 550°C and this shows that open burning was used. The analyses of major and trace element content show that the raw material used are local raw material and the sources of the raw material were obtained from the area of the Bujang River basin and the areas around Mukim Merbok and Mukim Bujang.

Keywords:

Bujang river, Bujang valley, candi bukit kechil, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF),


References


Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

Open Access Policy

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.

ISSN (Online):  2040-7467
ISSN (Print):   2040-7459
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