thumb|Kelheim (Lower Bavaria). Archaeological Museum: Reconstruction of a settlement of the Linear pottery culture (5th millennium BC) from Hienheim

The Neolithic long house was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the Old Europeans in Europe beginning at least as early as 6000 to 5000 BC. They first appeared in central Europe in connection with the early Neolithic cultures like the Linear Pottery culture or Cucuteni culture. This type of architecture represents the largest free-standing structure in the world in its era. Long houses are present across numerous regions and time periods in the archaeological record.

The long house was a rectangular structure, wide, of variable length, around up to . Outer walls were wattle and daub, sometimes alternating with split logs, with pitched, thatched roofs, supported by rows of poles, three across. The exterior walls would have been quite short beneath the large roof. They were solid and massive, oak posts being preferred. Clay for the daub was dug from pits near the house, that were then used for storage. Houses in the urban settlements had two stories, with up to three or even four floors on each story.

Twenty or thirty people could have lived in each house, with villages composed typically of five to eight houses. Exceptionally, nearly 30 longhouses in a fortified settlement (dating to 4300 BC, i.e., Late Linear Pottery culture) were revealed by excavations at Oslonki in Poland.

Examples

The Balbridie timber house in what is present day Aberdeenshire, Scotland, offers a fine example of these early timber structures. Archaeological excavations have revealed extant timber postholes that delineate the support pieces of the original structure. This site is strategically located in a fertile agricultural area along the River Dee, very close to an ancient strategic ford of the river and also near an ancient timber trackway known as the Elsick Mounth.

References

Bibliography

  • Rodney Castleden. 1987. The Stonehenge people. 282 pages
  • C. Michael Hogan. 2007. Elsick Mounth, Megalithic Portal, ed A. Burnham
  • A. W. R. Whittle and Norman Yoffee, Europe in the Neolithic: The Creation of New Worlds, 1996, Cambridge University

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