Tell-Site, Multi-Cellular Flat-Roofed
Labyrinth, Pueblo
Tell-sites.
As the Neolithic peasants applied shifting agriculture, they regularly
abandoned their settlements and returned to them in periodic cycles. When
leaving old homes, they set their houses on fire and furnished the village as
a necropolis of their dead ancestors. After returning, old ruins were
pulled down and new walls were erected on their remains. Every generation of
inhabitants elevated the mound by adding a new storey and so the tell
grew high like a mushroom. Tell Brak in Turkey was The Arabic word tell
meant a ‘heap, mound’ while the Iranian tepe denoted a ‘hill’. In
Turkmenistan their equivalent was depe, in Egypt such settlements were
referred to as kom. In Turkey several tells are denoted as hüyük
‘hillock’. Common people usually assumed that mounds were tombs for the dead.
This etymology is clear in the Macedonian term magula and the word tumba
in Thessaly. The Mound Culture in North America illustrate
a tendency of some peasants’ settlements to turn into a necropolis and
a large tomb for the dead. Tells resulted from needs of
itinerant agriculture. Mesopotamian peasant communities huddled in large
urban units reminiscent of multi-roomed labyrinths because small villages
were assailable by nomads. Their settlements had usually windowless walls
enclosing a honeycomb of small family rooms around the central atrium
courtyard. The small rectangular rooms had walls made of compact clay or
cells separated by hanging reed mats. Younger generations were expected to
annex their premises to their parents’ homes at adjacent ends. The flat roofs
allowed younger families to add their own annexes on the roof of their
parents’ flat. In front of the central atrium we could was a temple or men’s
communal room for administering ancestral cults. Pisé. In Mesopotamia wickers
with mortar out of clay and mud were often replaced by adobes, sun-dried
bricks of convex shape. The mortar was usually thickened by straw,
hay, chaff, leaves, shreds or stones. Sometimes the
half-timberwork was filled by this material to form a maison en pisé
out of rammed clay and gravel. In a rainy weather the adobes got
soaked and the hut was prone to destruction. The short-time durability of pisé
houses explains why new huts had to be built soon on the ruins of older
buildings. Another reason of frequent destructions of tells was the
need of shifting agriculture to move to new fields. Moving to new homes was
ritualised by ‘hut burials’: if the eldest grandmother died, her grandsons
set the whole tell on fire as a necropolis for the dead
ancestors and moved to a new place.
Longhouse. In Mesopotamia
most tells are fortified strongholds with cell-like multi-roomed units.
The well-known Linear Ware settlement in Köln-Lindenthal suggests that the
original form was a ‘longhouse’, a large communal
dwelling whose size could reach Kiva. The roof
could have gables that were of a saddle shape and often resembled upturned
boats. They were decorated with boukrania (bull-skulls) symbolising
cultic totem animals. The flat roof was designed as a balcony for women, who
cooked meals and took care for their children. In order to fend off attacks
from without, the house had not doors and windows,
the only access for entering its interior was provided by removable ladders. The underground space was occupied by a central hall called kiva in Mexican pueblos. It served as a central meeting hall and a
sanctuary for gatherings. The outstanding thatched roof could form an
anteroom with two frontal pillars and evolve into the classical megaron
house. The Greek megaron was
not a large communal house but its hybrid application to a palace.The
megara are known from Sesklo, Dimini and Hacilar where they consisted
from the entrance-hall prodromos and the inner room called telamos.
In the rear behind the oven there were often large jars and amphorae
dug with their bottom into the ground floor. At the earlier stages their function was fulfilled by deep lined storage pits in the
floor, coiled baskets and granaries. Pits in the floor could also make
up for furniture, beds and benches could be formed by elevated platforms from
mud and clay. There were infinitely many variations but two principles
remained constant: the houses were of oblong, quadrangular shape and the
overhanging roof tended to form side naves and anteroom spaces. Megara
seem to have close parallels in Mingrelian houses in Georgia. Their smaller
size, frontal columns and placement on fort-hills, however, suggest
heterogeneous influences. Pagoda. The Neolithic excavations from China bring
evidence for both subterraneans and light quadrangular houses. The latter
type in East Asia probably developed into a pagoda with concave roofs.
The Melanesian and Polynesian convex roofs slanting down to the earth led to boat-houses and aisle dwellings with naves. The
dwellings with side naves were very common in Melanesia, in Brasil and in
Scandinavia. The long houses out of wooden planks were popular among the
Iroquois and Nootka tribes in America. The gables bore totem emblems.
Subterraneans. The Neolithic
settlements of the Amur and Osinovki culture were excavated at Kondon,
Souchou in Kamchatka and in Sakhalin. The habitations of these tribes were
large subterraneans huddled like mounds with many inner cells that could be
accessed by large chimney entrances on logs with notches serving for ladders.
A village on the islet of Souchou in the Amur region is |
Cliff-dwellings. he Anasazi Basket-Makers
(120 to 500 AD) were peasants growing maize, beans, tobacco and
gourds. They lived in large centres built under overhanging rocks. Their
abodes were semidugouts and subterraneans reminiscent of cliff-dwellings
and artificial caves dug out in the sandstone rock overhangs. The single
cells led to the central shaft which joined
different storeys. The inhabitants could climb up the ladders to the
chimney-hole entrance or descend to lower storeys where the men met in their
clubroom kiva. The bottom of the pit was a well, a cult tsenot
where the inhabitants threw away golden rings and other offerings. Such
characteristics confirm our suspicion that the subterraneans and labyrinth
houses had been corrupted by elements due to the Turkic cave-dwellers
and cliff-dwellers. Pueblos. After
500 AD the Anasazi people probably transformed into the Pueblans. The current
dating is 700-900 AD for Pueblo I, 900-1050 for Pueblo II, 1050-1300 for
Pueblo III and 1300-1700 for Pueblo IV. The pueblo dwellings were
large communal settlements made out of sun-dried bricks. Pueblos were
multi-roomed habitations looking like fortified castles. The walls had no
outer apertures and doors, they were accessible only
by ladders. The roofs were flat and full of ‘doors’ or holes
which led down to a small courtyard (atrium). One group of
maize-cultivators lived in the Californian earth lodges, which were simple
semidugouts with inner timberwork covered with a thick layer of earth. The Pueblo
Bonito in Gran Chaco (12th century AD) represented a large settlement
under a canyon overhang which concentrated 600 rooms
in a closed half-circle with several concentric rows. Central rooms were open
from above and served as staircases with ladders. They had no windows or
doors and served for communal meetings at the hearth of the great family.
Another centre of social life was the roof. Individual members lived in side
cells with no hearths. The inner yard had a subterranean kiva for men.
Table 37. Earth lodges, publo dwellings, cellular labyrinths Casas grandes. The Pueblans spoke Uto-Aztecan languages,
only the Keres belonged to the Siouan-Iroquois family. The Sioux were
composed of the buffalo-hunters Dakota who dwelt in skin tepees, and
the eastern corn-cultivators who lived in earth lodges. Large pueblo
dwellings may be compared to casas grandes in Arizona, the open-air
settlements of the pisé type, built of huge blocks of adobe mortar and
gravel. One of them was Casa Montezuma, the great Indian chief’s last abode
(Hodge 1907: I, 211; II, 578). The Chalco culture of Mexico
seems to be a probable ancestor of the Maya and Quiché. From 3,000 BC we may
detect a continuous seed-gathering culture, from 1,000 BC we may speak of a
regular peasant economy. Some settlements recall the Casas grandes.
There was a marked tendency to build large urban communities such as Chichen
Itza, Uxmal, Palenque, Piedras Negras. Most of them
had staircase walls that could be climbed. The pyramid structure resulted in
an acropolis with a temple, long houses and a cult well (tzenot) for ritual offerings. The
highest priest, halach winik, had his teeth mutilated by grinding them
in V-form. His earlobes were perforated and hung with turkeys’ eggshells. The Tupí-Guaraní villages
consist of three or more quadrangular huts (maloca) sheltered by
saddle-roofed structures. Such huts encompass the central place with a
circular ground-plan, dominated by a communal house.
The whole community may be inhabited by 70 or more people,
the single huts being occupied by grand families governed by elderly women.
Most peasants in the Amazon basin live in high ‘long houses’ with
overhanging roofs. Some roofs slant down to the earth and resemble upturned
boats (Holmes 1919: 141ff., Steward 1946-: III, 117). (Extract from
Pavel Bìlíèek: Prehistoric |
