TABLE OF CONTENTS The body of work called variously Earth Retention, or Shoring, or Geo Support, or Sheeting has historical roots. Earth Retention, as we know it today, has been the amalgamation of construction technologies, equipment innovations and engineering analyses borrowed from many other disciplines. The real coalescing of these roots into a distinct discipline did not occur until well into the latter part of the 20th century, but now represents literally billions of dollars of work annually in the United States alone.
Earth Retention systems are created by a contractor drilling, driving and excavating, and an engineer investigating, analyzing, predicting, measuring and confirming. The innovations of the past have come together in the 20th century to form a critical mass which has evolved into the shoring industry as we know it today.
We may never know how those first timber piles, found in Swiss lakes, which supported stilt type houses from the period of 3000 BC were installed, but we assume that in some manner they were driven into the ground. Pile driving was born. We do know, however, that the Greeks were driving piles in 1000 BC and that later the Romans also performed pile driving. The driving of timber piles continued through the ages. Just when piles were first used for their lateral capacity as a retaining wall is open to conjecture. It may have been for fortifications where parallel lines of vertical timber piles were installed and fill was placed between them to create breastworks.
