Lake-Dwellings
Pile-dwellings. The origins of
Levalloisian architecture can be reconstructed ex post from
Aurignacian finds. M. M. Gerasimov reconstructed successfully a number of
Late Palaeolithic huts in Siberia (Malta), whose originators were Aurignacian
tribes. I. G. Shovkoplias made a reconstruction of similar round huts in the
Ukraine (Mezin). These habitations were quadrangular or polygonal pyramid
tents (tepees) supported by a
construction of with tall piles crossed on their top and tied with a bast
rope (Jelínek 1972: 250,
267). The conic roof was covered with fells and hides, whose lower fringes
were weighed down with heavy stones. Some tents had a circular design and had
an asymmetric roof leaning to the entrance. Close kinship with microlith
tribes was manifested in a similar architecture of Magdalenian pile-dwellings
that differed from Aurignacian types by having lower asymmetric roofs,
shorter piles and a circular wreath of surrounding stone stabs. On the other
hand, Aurignacian pile-dwellings were of design almost identical to
the Tungus chum and the North American Indian tepee. Their
conic construction was very steep, the piles were extremely tall, the top
ends overtopped a lot their crossing and the basement consisted of a circular
wreath of plain stones. Both abodes were built by fishermen
as temporary summertime shelters on the waterside but in the Neolithic
they turned into waterlogged pile-huts intended for permanent living. Piles
hammered into the lakebed or into the bed of boggy marshes served for
insulation from water and humidity. The first Levalloisians wandering to
Southeast Asia could live as fishermen in the marshland by making tree-dwellings
with nests from boughs and piles in their crown. Pile-houses. Neolithic Europe was
peopled by a race of lake-dwellers, who built their huts on platforms set on
many piles in the middle of a lake or on a lakeshore. The earliest record of
a settlement with pile-houses on an island amidst the marshes comes from Nea
Nicomedeia on the Vistritsa river from (its radiocarbon dates were from 6,063
to 5,834 BC). Its inhabitants combined fishing with agriculture and keeping
goats (Mongait 1973: 206). The site might have been occupied by ancestors of
the Macedonian Paeones, who were
attacked by Dareios and described by Herodot: ‘In the centre of the lake is a
timbered scaffolding on high piers, accessible over one narrow footbridge ...
They get these stakes from the Orbelos mountains and whoever gets married
drives three stakes into the lake-ground for each of his wives. They live in
huts built on the scaffolding and every hut can be entered only over a
drawbridge projecting above the water. Little babies are tied up with a rope
by their legs in fear lest they should fall down into the water’ (Herodot, Hist.
V, 16). The ethnonym is suggestive of Paion,
a divine healer on the Olympus of Apollo's and
Asklepios’ stock. Lake-dwellings
were most common in the cultures ranging as a long belt of lakes from Austria
to Belgium. The pile-houses began to appear at Ljubljansko Blat belonging to
the Vuèedol culture and continued with the Mondsee culture excavated on Lake
Mondsee (Sharfling). It included sites on Lake Attersee and finds at Rainberg
near Salzburg. The next station was the Altheim group found near Landhut
in Bavaria. Its settlement was surrounded by three
concentric rings of ditches and palisades (Bray, Trump 1982: 14). The
continuous belt of lake cultures with pile-dwellings ended with the Michelsberg culture reaching as far
as Belgium. Another parallel belt headed for Italy and split in Switzerland. Its main station
was situated in the Lagozza
culture of northern Italy related to a few smaller groups in central and
southern parts of the peninsula. The Swiss settlements included the Egolzwil centre near Luzern, the
Horgen group on Zürichsee and the Cortaillod
sites on Neuchâtel. The Horgen group bore resemblance to the
Seine-Oise-Marne culture in northern France, while the Cortaillod localities seemed
affiliated to the Chassey culture in southeast France. The
former two cultures tended to bury their dead in rock-cuts caves and should
be classified as Epi-Tardenoisian. The latter two group
lay on the belt of Epi-Aurignacian cultures and should be attributed to the
Celtic Belgae. Cave-dwellings were very common also in the Chassey
localities, because they covered deeper Azilian layers. The Chassean custom
of inhuming dead bodies in burial caves links them with the Seine-Oise-Marne culture and
rock-cut tombs common in the Phoenician world. Their heritage was due to
Mesolithic microlith peoples. It associated the Hebrew with the Iberians in
southwest Europe and the Eburones in Belgium. Their artificial caves
were cut into soft rocks to form large chambers with niches. They became very
common on Sardinia, at the lakeside of Chalain in the Jura, in the Paris
basins and Burgundy (Whitehouse 1975). The Chasseans exhibited a very dense but
incompact distribution, their settlements were scattered in many isolated
groups. One group pursued the southern track to the Garonne basin, whereas
the mainstream followed the northern track to the Seine Basin and Brittany
(Piggott 1974: 111; Vogt 1955). The radiocarbon dating reckons with a period
from 3,600 to 3,000 BC. Their origin is sought in a westward colonisation
from Italy (Vouga 1934). Their burial customs indulged in digging pit graves
or trench and chamber graves. Terramaricoli. In Italy the
rock-cut caves flourished from 2,500 to 1,700 BC and their builders never
became extinct. The Bronze Age lake-dwellings had a
similar distribution but their area was shifted a little bit more westward.
The Swiss lake-dwellings on Bieler See and Lac du
Bourget contained much bronze industry. In northern Italy these pile-houses
were built in the marshes on wooden platforms surrounded by artificial
ditches and lakes so that they survived to posterity as heaps of black soil
with organic garbage refuse (Pulgram 1958). The terramara finds (Plur.
terremare) were unearthed also in the Alföld and Tószög terremare with heaps of garbage along
the rivers in the eastern end. Their origin must be due to lake-dwellers
mixed with Urnfielders. Palafitticoli. On Lago Isolino
and Lago di Varese we find more traditional lake-dwellings palafitte with almost unbroken records
from the Neolithic period. Palafitta (Plur. palafitte) is a local name for pile-houses built on wooden
platforms and waterlogged sites of the Lagozza culture. Best-preserved
remains come from Castione dei Marchesi, Casarodole and Roteglia. Their
Bronze Age heir was the Polada culture on the southern end of Lake Garda in
north Italy. The list of their alleged inhabitants palafitticoli and terramaricoli
is too impressive to quote but it counts mostly with the Ligures,
Piceni, Italiotes and Celts. Crannog. While most
pile-houses on the continent drew away about 300 or Another group of pile-dwellings is known
from Wissmar in Mecklenburg and Gägelow near Schwerin. Vineta and Biskupin
are towns of pile-dwellings, allegedly from Slavonic times, but they probably
conceal an earlier substratum from the Iron Age. Their originators may have
been the Pluni, Ploni or Polani, who could have their hand also
in the similar Poznañ group. Their villages have long rows of houses
along the waterside and the long central lane. In Africa a group of Bantu peoples use
pile-houses that have developed from lake-dwellings.
Their distribution in eastern and southeast Africa betrays a common
starting-point in the Levalloisian or Pre-Aurignacian colonisation. Their
architecture is based on pile constructions, wooden platforms and conic
roofs. The tribes Fon, Luba, Zande, Vongera, Male and Mogadisha in East
Africa use it for building their homes and dry granaries protected from
water. |
Talang. When the Tungus
tribes traversed China and the Philippines, they flooded the shores of
southern seas with their conic tepees that gradually transformed into
seaside and riverside pile-houses. Typical lake-dwellings
were rather rare but almost every waterside in Vietnam, Malaya and Indochina
was rimmed by local pile-houses. They inhabitants lived on the water,
travelled on it and used it also as a dump. The most primitive forms of
pile-huts made appearance in Malaya and in Austronesia. The Dayaks built high
platforms on high piles and approached them by ladders. Their huts were long
houses for large matriarchal families. The Malays lived in stilt-houses
called talang that were built in secluded places. Both tribes were
remarkable for fishing skills, seafaring and their piracy. They slept on mats
and used swords for self-defence. The Papuans in New Guinea built
pile-dwellings on logs that were 5 or Raft-dwellings. Also the
Siamese were wont to live on the water, but their dwellings floated on the
water surface as rafts. The Khao had stilt-dwellings with stilts projecting
above the earth. Their granaries were made of live trees hanged by wooden
platforms. The Annamites in Vietnam used both raft-dwellings and
stilt-dwellings. In America the classic lake-dwellings
are not very common, they were common only to the Olmecs, Chavin and Aztecs,
who lived on the lakeshores and earned their living by fishing. The Paumara
in Venezuela constructed floating rafts out of reeds. The Chavín and Olmecs
are suspected to be a lost colony of the Phoenician seafarers, who came via
the Atlantic Ocean. The Mexican Aztecs had taken over their tall tepees patterns
from the Uto-Aztecan tribes of North America. The Haida, Nootka and other
Salish tribes in British Columbia abandoned such tepees and built
large rectangular pile-dwellings made from wooden platforms and long boards.
Tree-Dwellers. Southeast Asia is inhabited by
residual populations of primitive fishermen, whose culture cannot be
explained by Mesolithic migrations. These populations live in trees,
make nest from intertwined boughs in their crowns and access them by climbing
up steep ladders. In South India the long stilt-dwellings
in the trees are erected by the Kanikkarar. In China the Miao-tse were
said to live in rock caves in winter and in tree-dwellings in summer (Buschan
1923: 540, 641). The dwarfish Senoi and Semang belonged to the Malaysian
Negritos but their culture was influenced by prehistoric Proto-Malays to such
an extent that they combined living in rock-caves with summertime relaxation
in tree-dwellings. They average
Table 55. Stilt-dwellings at the
waterside Vako. Also the Garo
used tree-dwellings for summertime habitation. The Naga used them only for
their sentries as guarding huts. The Karen in Burma fled to them temporarily
when staying outside far from their homes on harvest tours. In New Guinea the
Kai tribe built tall tree-huts with long ladders. Similar huts were built by
the Battaks in Sumatra who combined them with pile dwellings constructed on
high wooden platforms. The fishermen’s tribes in the Solomon Islands built
their tree-dwelling vako when menaced by foes. The aborigines on the
Isle of Isabelle lived in tree-dwellings that towered 25 to Extract from Pavel Bìlíèek: Prehistoric Dialects II. Prague 2004,
p. 580-584 |
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