The "Neolithic House": Worldwide Comparisons

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Shepard. Kisha Supernant. Kenneth M. Ames. Andrew Martindale.

Traditionally, Northwest Coast houses were rectangular, post and beam dwellings. Architectural details varied regionally, ethnically and even locally. It is presently impossible to trace this variation archaeologically beyond a few coarse-grained statements. The earliest structures date to at least ca. 5000 calBP; they are rectilinear and some at least are semisubterranean. The longest continuous sequence of houses is presently documented in the Prince Rupert Harbor region of northern British...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivan Pavlu. Petr Kvetina.

The earliest longhouses of the first agricultural population in Central Europe appear discontinuously, without continuity with the previous settlement; only indirect information about the residence patterns of the latter is available. This is due to both different settlement strategy of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups, and the state of research. Therefore, only the evolution of Central European Neolithic longhouses can be assessed. Their introduction in Central Europe is supposed to be of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julian Salazar. Jordi A. López Lillo.

Agriculture was adopted by NW Argentina inhabitants around BP 3500 within a complex process of macroregional population reorganization, economic intensification and increase of territoriality. This transition was followed by a rapid introduction of large and solid buildings that became the major and most visible features in the village outlays after BP 2500. Thousands of multi round-room compounds were built and inhabited by several generations all over several high valleys, like Tafí, Anfama,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anick Coudart.

The archaeological and ethnographical study of domestic dwellings gives us the opportunity to grasp the logical structure which underlies the transformation of any architectural tradition, then the process of reproduction-transformation of a cultural group, and ultimately the evaluation of its sustainability. A comparative architectural approach between Bandkeramik Neolithic and New-Guinean Anga groups) allows us to extract the structure inherent in architectural traditions; i.e. the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kellam Throgmorton. Richard Wilshusen.

The transition from lightly built, short-term or ephemeral structures to substantially built, sophisticated dwellings occurred between A.D. 400 and 1400 in the Ancient Pueblo Southwest. At the early end of this period, most dwellings were occupied by a single household and may have only lasted for about a decade. By the end of this period, nearly the entire population of the northern Southwest lived in multi-household, apartment-style dwellings that housed entire villages for generations. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Junko Habu.

Archaeological data from the prehistoric Jomon period of the Japanese archipelago indicate that, by the middle of the Early Jomon period (ca. 6000 cal. BP), the presence of large settlements with dozens of pit-dwellings became common. Some of these pit-dwellings are quite deep, measuring more than two feet in depth. The residents of these settlements are considered to have been relying primarily on hunting, gathering and fishing. Environmental management may have been an important part of their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean-Paul DEMOULE.

It is accepted with good reason that the appearance of the Neolithic in Europe results from a phenomenon of diffusion, notably demic, from the Near East and more particularly Anatolia. At first sight, there are considerable differences between the Near Eastern houses, which are often small and stone-built with white plaster floors, and the large wood and and earth houses of Central Europe. In fact a more detailed analysis of the situation in intermediate regions, especially the north-west...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Byrd.

The talk addresses the built environment of complex hunter-gatherer villages of the contact period in California. Although not agriculturalists, they constitute one of the most diverse and well-documented amalgam of complex hunter-gatherers in the world. The study explores the interrelationship between vernacular architecture, households, community organization, and their socio-economic underpinnings. In doing so, highlighted case studies will include the Chumash of coastal southern California,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dean Snow.

While details remain debated, the general outline of the emergence of semi-permanent sedentary domestic architecture in Northern Iroquoia is well understood. Communities comprised of bark longhouses came to be associated with subsistence maize horticulture over the course of the last millennium prior to European contact. Various factors triggered periodic community relocations throughout Northern Iroquoia, migratory events that were usually short-distance but occasionally involved long-distance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Peterson. Robert Drennan. Adam Berrey.

Household garbage constitutes the most ubiquitous, and least ambiguous class of information on Neolithic household activities, social standing, and economic well-being available to archeologists. Unlike the short-lived symbolism of funerary ritual expressed in burials, or the celebration of individuals and institutions in monumental architecture, accumulated household garbage time-averages longitudinal patterns of domestic life. Remains from midden deposits are thus ideally suited to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Belfer-Cohen. Nigel Goring-Morris.

Large-scale durable architecture appears quite suddenly with the emergence of the semi-sedentary Natufian (ca. 15,000 calBC) in the Near East. Subsequently, during the course of the Natufian, structure sizes diminish; they were commonly semi-subterranean, constructed with wooden posts, stones and puddled mud. These traditions continued during the PPNA (ca. 10,000-8,500 calBC), albeit with the innovation of mud-brick superstructures. An important distinction between the Natufian and the PPNA is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Clark.

In Middle America the transition from the Archaic to Early Formative period (ca. 2000-1400 BC) was marked by the first use of pottery and the construction of durable dwelling clustered in small hamlets or villages. These markers of year-round dwelling in one place represent a major transition in Early Formative times to neolithic lifeways and presumably lifeworlds. I review the evidence of the earliest houses known from highland and lowland regions of Middle America, with an emphasis on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Kuijt.

How many people lived in individual buildings within early food producing communities? Be it as an explicit driver or as an implicit background landscape, all modeling of small-scale household life, developing Neolithic villages, and the evolutionary trajectory towards the full-blown domestication is linked on some level to demography and the increasing scale of human communities through time. The reconstruction of the scale of Neolithic house, including our engagement with what may represent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Rocek.

The archaeology of the United States Southwest permits examination of the process of Neolithisation with chronological precision in a wide range of contexts. In broadest outline, Southwestern data parallel social, economic and technological patterns documented worldwide. The recency, large sample, and fine resolution of Southwestern data allow recognition of multiple divergent and convergent patterns shaped by local environments and cultural traditions that are difficult to observe in other...