Tuff - Economic Importance

Economic Importance

Tuff's primary economic value is as a building material. In the ancient world, tuff's relative softness meant that it was commonly used for construction where it was available. Tuff is common in Italy, and the Romans used it for many buildings and bridges. For example, the whole port of the island of Ventotene (still in use), was carved out from tuff. The Servian Wall, built to defend the city of Rome in the 4th century BC, is also built almost entirely from tuff. The Romans also cut tuff into small rectangular stones that they used to create walls in a pattern known as opus reticulatum.

The Romans thought bees nested in tuff. The substance is mentioned in the Aeneid (Book XII, ln 805).

The peperino, much used at Rome and Naples as a building stone, is a trachyte tuff. Pozzolana also is a decomposed tuff, but of basic character, originally obtained near Naples and used as a cement, but this name is now applied to a number of substances not always of identical character. In the Eifel region of Germany a trachytic, pumiceous tuff called trass has been extensively worked as a hydraulic mortar.

Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a U.S. Department of Energy terminal storage facility for spent nuclear reactor and other radioactive waste, is in tuff and ignimbrite in the Basin and Range Province in Nevada. In Napa valley and Sonoma valley, California, areas made out of tuff are routinely excavated for storage of wine barrels.

Tuff from Rano Raraku was used by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island to make the vast majority of their famous moai statues.

Tuff is important in Armenian architecture.