Provider: Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic

TY  - JOUR
JO  - Anthropologie (Brno)
TI  - Between archaeology and anthropology: imagining Neolithic settlements
AU  - Květina P
AU  - Hrnčíř V
Y1  - 2013
VL  - 51
IS  - 2
PB  - Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic
SN  - 0323-1119
SP  - 323
EP  - 347
KW  - Neolithic longhouse
KW  - Ethnographic analogy
KW  - Settlement patterns
N2  - 
N2  - Modelling of the Neolithic settlements space of the Central Danubian Europe, regardless of its landscape or village scopes, is always linked with longhouses. This is supposed to be a feature which structured the culture of early farmers. Two important aspects of the Neolithic house - its profane social complexity on one hand, and its sacred quality on the other - have been highlighted many times. But on what data can we infer its original appearance, function and duration? The find context is limited in terms of the original wooden construction, the archaeological imprint of which consists solely in a system of post holes. The aim of this text is therefore to present the existence of ethnographic parallels of the Central European Neolithic longhouses. Our purpose is certainly not to create direct analogies, but to induce basic imagination. Three particular cultural areas and the local populations show that the dwelling form could have had many features (e.g. construction of post, rectangular ground plan, roof form) in common with the original Neolithic houses. Both ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological evidence also reopen the issue of the so far unconfirmed construction properties of the long Neolithic houses (e.g. construction material, floor level). Other, culture dependent features observed at ethnographic cases (number of inhabitants, length flexibility, and lifespan) could contribute to creation of archaeologically testable interpretation models.
ER  -