EXARC Journal (May 2018)
The Construction of a Bronze Age Longhouse Model in Dwelling-byre Style using Experimental Archaeological Techniques
Abstract
Longhouses built using earth-fast post technique belong to the most important and most successful house types of middle European prehistory. The footprints of these structures, in various styles, are identifiable from the very beginning of the Neolithic period up to the Middle Ages, and sometimes up to early modern times. The history of longhouses is closely connected with a settled, agricultural structured society. The subsistence of their inhabitants was usually based on a special form of mixed economy, whereby the cultivation of grain, vegetables and fruits played an important role along with the breeding of animals such as cows, sheep, goats, and pigs. This mixed economy insured the guaranteed survival of the farmers during troubled times such as animal epidemics and crop failures. Since the Bronze Age period, these longhouses were often used as dwelling-byres, where people and animals lived side by side with each other although the archaeological evidence is not always obvious. For researchers and archaeologists this house type is readily identifiable, because the earth-fast posts were often dug over one meter deep in the ground and therefore we can spot them in our excavations even when the original soil level of the past has already been destroyed by erosion (See Figure 1).
