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The Ancient Indigenous Architecture of Lakeland Fishermen Clickable terms are red on the yellow background |
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Map 1. Types of human dwellings (after R.
Biasutti) |
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GENERAL ARCHITECTONICS
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FOLK ARCHITECTURE § Cliff-Dwellings and Burial Rock-Cut Caves
§ Rectangular
Longhouses Out of Straw and Mud
§
Earth
lodges and Subterranean Sancturaries § Semidugout Zemlyankas of Lapponoid Cremators
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TYPES OF DWELLINGS
§
Tungusoid teepes,
pile-huts and lake-dwellings
§ Pelasgoid conical rondavel roundhouses§
Megara, palatial
temples and columnal palaces
§
Flat-roofed
labyrinth architecture of Oriental farmers
§
Rectangular wicker longhouses with
thatched roofs
§
Gotho-Frisian
wurts, terps and half-timber longhouses
§
Dome-shaped beehive huts
§
Irregular
multi-peaked marquee nomadic tents
·
Epi-Aurignacian
tepees and pile-dwellings
·
Bascoid Cyclopean megalithic
architecture
·
Megalithic
tombstones and tholoi graves
·
Lapponoids’ lean-to and semidugout pit-house
·
Turcoid
dwellings and burials in rockcut caves
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ANCIENT SETTLEMENTS §
Lakeland,
marshland, lowland, grassland and desert ecosystems §
Multicellular
labyrinths in arid subtropical lowland §
Tell-sites
in oases of subtropical shrublands §
Multicellular
labyrinths in arid subtropical lowland §
Tell-sites in
oases of subtropical shrublands §
Oppidans:
hillforts towering on high rock promontories §
Getic boroughs:
villages in alluvial lowlands §
Palatial poleis
and cultic spas in seaside harbours §
Straight streets
and alleys of lake-dwellings |
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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 500 m from shores, crannogs in the British Isles stood on
artificial wooden islands. Long piers were hammered into the bottom of lakes
and marshes to support a wooden waterlogged platform and surrounded by a
timber palisade. Crannogs are found
in Britain (Pickering, Somerset), Scotland (Galloway, Ayrshire, Clyde valley)
as well as Ireland (Lagore Crannog, Lisnacroghera). Most of them come from
the Iron Age or are of Early Christian date. Being relatively small, they
must have been inhabited by single families seeking protection from dangerous
intruders. ‘The oldest examples in Ireland have yielded early Neolithic
material’ with Bann flakes (Bray, Trump 1982: 68). 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 6 metres tall (Vlach 1913: 127). 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 155 cm in height but contains a strong admixture of Mongolian blood
(Buschan 1923: 540, 641).
Table 1. 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 30 metres above
the ground. They accessed them by means of long ladders (Vlach 1913: 38). Extract from Pavel Bìlíèek: Prehistoric Dialects II. Prague 2004,
p. 580-584 |
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