The Annual of the British School at Athens

Abstract

THE article of most general interest in this excellent number is that by Mr. C. A. Boethius on primitive house types as illustrated from Mycenaean and Nordic structures. The results of recent excavation on prehistoric Greek sites show that there is no evidence to support, still less to prove, the widespread assumption that the round hoop-roofed house is the original type from which all forms of human houses have been evolved. There is a considerable variety of primitive forms, and both rectangular and round huts and houses occur contemporaneously in ancient times and at the present day among primitive races. In Greece the neolithic material shows that well-developed round huts and equally advanced rectangular houses were contemporaneous. In Sweden we find round huts, possibly developed from a primitive tent or a screen against wind and rain. In the Bronze Age come oval houses developing into the rectangular form. “The evidence of primitive European dwellings shows, besides round tents or huts and pent roof structures, horseshoe screens with a fire in front of them, and rectangular screens with their various forms of development centring on the fire. Anywhere in Europe, climate and material can thus suggest a beginning which leads to a round hut, a horseshoe-shaped hut, or a rectangular hut with a central or eccentric hearth, and door at one end. A rectangular house with a central hearth can be just as elementary as a round or horseshoe-shaped neolithic hut, and of entirely independent origin.”