The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology. (original) (raw)
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Modelling of the Neolithic settlements space of the Central Danubian Europe, regardless of its landscape or village scopes, is always linked with longhouses. This is supposed to be a feature which structured the culture of early farmers. Two important aspects of the Neolithic house – its profane social complexity on one hand, and its sacred quality on the other – have been highlighted many times. But on what data can we infer its original appearance, function and duration? The find context is limited in terms of the original wooden construction, the archaeological imprint of which consists solely in a system of post holes. The aim of this text is therefore to present the existence of ethnographic parallels of the Central European Neolithic longhouses. Our purpose is certainly not to create direct analogies, but to induce basic imagination. Three particular cultural areas and the local populations show that the dwelling form could have had many features (e.g. construction of post, rectangular ground plan, roof form) in common with the original Neolithic houses. Both ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological evidence also reopen the issue of the so far unconfirmed construction properties of the long Neolithic houses (e.g. construction material, floor level). Other, culture dependent features observed at ethnographic cases (number of inhabitants, length flexibility, and lifespan) could contribute to creation of archaeologically testable interpretation models.
BURIALS INSIDE the domestic space were a constant in South-Eastern Europe starting from the Mesolithic and continuing at least till the end of the Calcholithic period. During some intervals of time (such as Early and Middle Neolithic), the burials inside the domestic space were the only funerary practice recognized by the archaeologists. As these burials are not demographically significant, it is obvious that they represent some kind of exception from the yet undiscovered rule for disposing of the dead. This paper focuses on the Early Neolithic burials of the Stačevo-Crio culture discovered at Trestiana, in Eastern Romania. They were published as graves inside the domestic space. We will look at the spatial distribution of the graves discovered here and analyze their relationship with the houses from a spatial perspective. The aim is to investigate the possibility of making new interpretations on old data, and to identify possible intra-site patterns and if there is the possibility that some of the graves might actually be part of a cemetery located at the periphery of the settlement.
On the lake settlement Serteya XIV (Velizh district of Smolensk region, Russia) studied during the 90-s of XX and beginning of XXI century there were identified several belonging to different periods “horizon habitat” with finds and remains of structures of Mesolithic – Final Neolithic or Chalcolithic (IX – first half of II Millennium cal. BC). Cultural layers of the settlement lies both in sandy coastal sediments, and in the peaty part of the lake basin. The remains of dwellings from the late stages of habitat on the settlement are discussed in the paper. This is two buildings, located on the sandy terraced shore, and one from the peaty area of the site. During the excavation and initial analysis of the findings these buildings were related to the middle and late Neolithic. These conclusions were revised due to the subsequent analysis of the ceramic material, of spatial distribution of different groups of ceramics and objects of the settlement and due getting a series of radiocarbon Dating. It was identified that the earliest of these dwellings belongs to the early Neolithic, to the final Serteyskaya – Rudnianskaya archaeological culture (4 quarter of the VI Millennium cal. BC). In the remains of the second building it was detected two different chronological stages: the first stage relates to the final Rudnianskaya archaeological culture (end of the VI Millennium cal. BC); the second, to Usviatskaya archaeological culture (late V – IV Millennium BC). As for the third dwelling, originally associated with Rudnianskaya culture, then it was confirmed final Neolithic/ Chalcolithic age (the first half of II Millennium cal. BC). Its date and cultural identity is not yet determined more precisely. The second important aspect of this research is the question of the possibility of graphic reconstruction of the Stone Age dwellings. As the cultural layers of most sites in this region are located in the sandy deposits, which are not stored any organic materials and details of buildings, so all reconstructions have tentative shape. In this case, great importance has the building found in peaty part of the settlement due to the preserved wooden details of the construction. These materials provide additional information about used tree species and the ways of its utilization.