Pit house

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Shell construction of a reconstructed medieval pit house on the castle island of Castrum Vechtense
Reconstruction of a medieval Slavic mine house in the Bärnau-Tachov Historical Park
Reconstructed mine house of the medieval mine house settlement on Petersteich at the original site

Pit house or pit hut is the name of a building that is completely or partially sunk into the ground. Archaeologically, pit houses can be proven by post pits in connection with major discolorations in the ground, which indicate the filling of the previously excavated interior.

Types

A pit is the easiest way to expand space under a roof. It does not need walls and thus no transfer of the lateral forces of the roof to the vertical.

Rectangular pit houses are documented in many parts of the world, in Europe from the late Iron Age to the Middle Ages . In modern times, comparable buildings are used as storage rooms, e.g. B. in Hungary.

Neolithic pit houses

Many researchers claim the existence of pit houses for the Neolithic as well. For example, Buttler and Haberey published the thesis that in the Bandkeramische Siedlung von Köln-Lindenthal complex Kurvo buildings served as apartments, while the rectangular post structures were merely harvest barns. The thesis was refuted only by Oskar Paret . Wüstehube published a pit house of the oldest LBK with a rectangular floor plan. Pits with ovens built into the walls are sometimes interpreted as kitchen buildings.

In Southeastern Europe, pit houses are often postulated in the lowest layer of settlement mounds. These are round to irregular pits or pit complexes, usually with an uneven bottom. According to Bailey, they were created at the beginning of the settlement. However, its use for residential purposes is very controversial. The flat settlement of Makriyalos consisted exclusively of deepened findings.

Some of the pit houses could also be cellar pits within larger buildings.

Rectangular pit houses are particularly typical of the Bischeimer culture (e.g. Schernau). They are also known from the funnel beaker culture, especially the Bernburg culture. A very flat, rectangular pit house of the Bernburg culture was excavated in Windehausen , Kr. Nordhausen

Conclusions about the design

The depth of the interior is between 30 centimeters and more than a meter. The footprint of such buildings was mostly small. Pit houses have been found in large numbers at many excavation sites.

This storage facility with a wooden half-cellar - an original in use in Valais - would give the archaeological evidence of a “pit house”.

The exact construction must be inferred from the finds. Many seem to have been simple buildings without side walls, the gable roofs reaching down to the ground. In other cases, round floor plans suggest huts with wicker walls. On the other hand, traces of support from a beamed ceiling were found in individual pit houses, including those of a hearth fire. The term pit house can conceal a number of buildings with different uses, from a simple earth hut to a (half) cellar house. As with other prehistoric and early historical house types, the walls were made of wood or brushwood in various forms and clad with clay.

Uses

There were clear differences in use for Iron Age houses:

In Celtic and Germanic settlements, pit houses were mostly outbuildings without a fireplace. Traces of manual activity were found in many of them, not infrequently weaving weights and spindle whorls , and occasionally even traces of a loom. It is therefore assumed to be used as workshops, especially as weaving houses. In this context, reference is made to Tacitus ' Germania , according to which the Germanic peoples made their linen “underground”. Due to the higher humidity of the rooms sunk into the ground, flax fibers are more flexible and therefore easier to process.
Provided they were adequately shielded from the sun, pit houses had an evenly damp and cool interior climate and could have served as storage cellars for heat-sensitive food.

Examples of pit houses from Germany (above) and Sussex, Great Britain (below)

In the Anglo-Saxon settlement of West Stow , it was noticeable that the loose filling of the large pit discoloration does not suit constant use. The excavator therefore does not speak of pit houses, but of buildings with deepened findings ("Sunken Featured Buildings"). On the edge of one of the discoloration of the pit, half a hearth in the form of a clay pack with charcoal came to light, the other half of which had fallen into the pit. Here it was assumed that the pit was originally covered with a layer of wooden planks on which the hearth was located. The West Stow Open Air Museum was created to experimentally test the findings and the conclusions .

In prehistoric and early historical Slavic settlements, on the other hand, most of the residential buildings had a sunk floor.

Reconstructions

There are reconstructions of pit houses at the site of the medieval mine house settlement on Petersteich and in several open-air museums, e.g. As the Franconian Open Air Museum Bad Windsheim , the historical park Bärnau-Tachov , the Archaeological Center Hitzacker , the Celtic Museum Hochdorf , in the Museum and Park , in the open-air laboratory Lauresham , the Archaeological open air museum Oerlinghausen and the Museum in the Zeughaus Vechta . There are also reconstructions of pit houses in the early medieval village of Unterrabnitz , Austria. In Great Britain, Anglo-Saxon houses with cellar pits have been reconstructed in West Stow .

literature

  • Volker Babucke: Pit house and board weaver . Likias, Friedberg near Augsburg 2005, ISBN 3-980762-84-X .

Web links

Commons : Pit House  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heidengraben - excavation site of an early La Tène Age pit house ( Memento from January 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Werner Buttler, Waldemar Haberey, Die Bandkeramische Siedlung near Cologne-Lindenthal. Berlin, de Gruyter 1936
  3. ↑ Volker Wüstehube, Early Neolithic Pit Houses? - New reflections on an old problem. Germania 71, 1993, 521-531.
  4. ↑ Łukasz Połczyński, Katarzyna Michalak, The Role of Sunken-Floored Buildings in LBK Farmstead. Open Archeology 2, 2016, 368-380. DOI 10.1515 / opar-2016-0025
  5. ↑ z. B. Dimitris Kloukinas, Regional perspectives into the Neolithic building technology of Northern Greece. In: Apostolos Sarris et al. (Ed.), Communities, Landscapes and Interaction in Neolithic Greece, Ann Arbor, International Monographs in Prehistory 2017, 169 for Macedonia
  6. ^ Douglas Bailey, Balkan Prehistory . London, Routledge 2000, 263-265
  7. ↑ Clemens Lichter, investigations into the buildings of the Southeast European Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Erlbach, Leidorf 1993.
  8. ↑ Maria Pappa, Manthos Besios, The Neolithic settlement at Makriyalos, Norther Greece. Preliminary Report on the 1993-1995 excavations. Journal of Field Archeology 26, 1999, 177-195
  9. ↑ Dimitris Kloukinas, regional perspectives into the Neolithic building technology of Northern Greece. In: Apostolos Sarris et al. (Ed.), Communities, Landscapes and Interaction in Neolithic Greece, Ann Arbor, International Monographs in Prehistory 2017, 171 for Macedonia
  10. ^ Jens Lüning, A settlement of the Middle Neolithic group in Bischheim in Schernau. District Kitzingen. Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, Department of Soil Monument Preservation. Material booklets for Bavarian prehistory, Volume 44. Find inventories and excavation findings. Kalmünz 1988
  11. ↑ Jens Lüning, A pit house of the Bernburg culture from Schwanfeld, district of Schweinfurt. In: Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann (Ed.), Festschrift for Günter Smolla. Materials on the prehistory and early history of Hessen 8/2, Wiesbaden 1999, pp. 415–469, Ulrich Dirks, The Bernburger culture in Lower Saxony. Contributions to archeology in Lower Saxony 1. Rahden / Westphalia, Leidorf 2000, 103-106.
  12. ↑ M. Wehmer, A late Neolithic pit house from Windehausen, district of Nordhausen. In: Jonas Beran, R. Einicke, V. Schimpff et al. (Ed.), Teaching - Collecting - Publishing. Dedicated to Hans-Jürgen Beier. Leipzig 2016, 181–197.
  13. ↑ Bremer Archäologische Blätter , supplement 2, 2000: Settlers, mercenaries and pirates - Chauken and Saxony in the Bremen area , ISSN  0068-0907 .
    • P. 55, settlement in Bremen-Rekum from the 1st – 5th centuries Century AD with stables and pit houses
    • P. 83 ff. Early historical settlement in Bremen-Grambke, P. 90/91 mine houses
  14. ↑ Frankenfelde: pits (houses) more than 4 m wide interpreted as residential houses ( memento from September 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ Cornelia Weinmann: House building in Scandinavia from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages (sources and research on the linguistic and cultural history of the Germanic peoples 230 = NF 106) Berlin / New York 1994, pp. 158–164.
  16. ↑ Marek Dulinicz: Early Slavs , 2006 ISBN 3-529-01396-X