Neolithic House—Types in Temperate Europe

Abstract

Ten years ago the prehistoric soil of Europe was literally riddled with ‘pit dwellings’ in which our ancestors slept and cooked, huddled together like soldiers in a bell tent. I suppose it was wraithes from Tacitus and Xiphilinus combining in the minds of 16th century antiquaries with more exact travellers' tales of the earth lodges of the Red Indians that caused this overcrowding of the pits. For the holes in the ground are there right enough: it is only in the last ten years that Bersu and Paret have evicted their human occupants to make room for the pigs and weevils these would properly accommodate. Thanks to them we realize that neither Stone Age Danubians nor Iron Age Britons were housed in subterranean silos or semi-subterranean sties. But it is only fair to remark that Laszlo and Marton in Hungary and Schuchhardt in Germany before the first world war had identified commodious houses built above the ground on a frame of stout posts. Today it is plain that such farm houses were normal from the beginning of the new stone age wherever excavators' technique is adequate for their recognition, and it is to their description that I must devote most of this sketch.