Tinos island has been the host to a great many dry stone structures. It is a land where stone is so plentiful, the people who inhabit it utilize this versatile resource to survive. Having lived alongside these stones over many generations, they became great stone masons and crafters.
These stones, found in fields, were moved in order to easily cultivate the soil. Thus, after being lifted for cultivation, the stones were used to build fences to divide the land in smaller parcels, creating the parastes / pezoules / skales. From the hard matter of stone, the Tinian craftsman created an intangible culture. One of the fullest expressions of this culture was dry stone technique.
The dry stone technique – building with stone without connective material has been recognized globally by UNESCO.
The dry stone technique on Tinos had various categories:
- Everyday use – reuse the stones to build and rebuild
- Sustaining – used to retain water and sustain the soil in terraces
- Road and exposed – to create paths and walls as boundaries between fields
- Building – high duration / used for many building types such as homes or stables
The public agricultural paths of Tinos have 5 categories:
- Paths
- Agricultural roads
- Village roads
- Dimosies (wide streets going from the ports to the capital)
- Rimotopos – an area for the common water of two neighboring fields to flow so as not to destroy the fields through erosion
For public roads, the Venetians and later on the community leaders demanded mandatory days of work on the dry stone paths and walls in order to keep them safe to cross and to rebuild the parts destroyed by rain. This practice had been kept untill the 1970s.