The impressive retaining walls of the Temple Mount are characterized by huge building blocks, each finely chiseled with a flat projecting boss, surrounded by a frame. The frame is sunk some 2 cm below the face of the stone and its average width is 8 cm. A wide, toothed chisel, was used to smoothen the stone margins. Special care was taken in the chiseling of the vertical margins of adjacent stones.

In the eastern wall of the temple mount, about 32 m north of the southeastern corner, a vertical 'seam' is recognizable (Tour 4, Site 38): the courses of stones on each side of the 'seam' differ in size and workmanship. The northern section of the wall was probably constructed during the Hasmonean period while the southern part is typically Herodian. The Hasmonean section of the wall is built of huge margined stones of cruder workmanship than that of the Herodian building blocks. The 'seam' of the eastern wall indicated that the origins of the margin-cutting style predates Herod's time, as witnessed in the Hellenistic architecture of Greece, Asia Minor and Alexandria, as well as in the Levant, e.g., the palace of the Sons of Tuvia at Iraq el-Amir in Jordan (near `Amman), dating from at least the third century BCE. Examples of pre-Herodian margin stone-cutting are also attested in Jerusalem: at the 'Tower of David' (the Paza'el Tower), in the 'First city wall' and in the 'Hasmonean Tower' unearthed in the Jewish quarter.

This stone-dressing method was so widely practiced in Herod's days that it is referred to as the 'Herodian dressing'. 'Herodian' masonry is attested at the sites of Aloné Mamré (near Hebron), in the Cave of Machpelah (Hebron), in the Augusteum in Sebastia and possibly also in the Herodian platform at Caesarea. In Jerusalem, 'Herodian' stones are preserved beneath the Damascus Gate. Interestingly, this stone-dressing fashion serves as a decorative theme on Second Temple period ossuaries found in the Jerusalem area (See Tombs and Burial Customs).