The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The Earlier Bronze Age
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Hoose. A burnt down round house (4
m in diameter) and two other probable
houses have been excavated at
Stackpole Warren in Dyfed. A small,
stake-walled house, 5.5 m in diameter,
has been found preserved under a
Saxon barrow at Sutton Hoo in East
Anglia; the supposed houses on the
Beaker site at Belle Tout on the chalk
downs of Sussex should now be
discounted. There are also a few other
house remains, claimed from a number
of different sites, of variable
preservation and likelihood (Gibson
1982).
These houses vary in shape from
round to oval to sub-rectangular, with
a central hearth but no preferred axial
orientation or place for the doorway.
The Northton house is 7 m long and
4.5 m wide, whereas one of the Coney
Island houses (Co. Armagh, Northern
Ireland) is only 2.7 m by 3.3 m. The
relatively sunless location and paucity
of faunal remains at Dalmore suggests
a specialized and perhaps seasonal use.
Others may have been occupied all
year round, with people living off a
mixed economy of wheat and barley
along with cattle, sheep and pigs.
Houses, however, are more than just
shelters and can encode complex
cosmologies that may link them to
other entities such as the tomb or the
human body. The orientation, shape
and size of the house can be expected
to have had symbolic importance: no
society builds houses to random
patterns, since there is always an
underlying set of rules. Houses are
different from tombs: they are less
symmetrical, smaller and less
Figure 5.7 Early Bronze Age house plans from the Western Isles: (a)
Dalmore; (b) Northton Structure 1; (c) Northton Structure 2; (d) Barvas;
(e) Cill Donnain.
Sources: After Armit 1996; Burgess and Miket 1976; and with thanks to
M.
Hamilton and N.Sharples
permanent than the earthen round barrows and cairns in which the dead were placed; perhaps
more effort was invested in funerary structures because people would spend eternity in them, in
contrast to their short lives in the houses. At the same time, certain aspects of houses may have
been similar to tombs: the central burial or cremation in a barrow may have symbolized the role
of the hearth within the house. Such similarities and differences may have served to demarcate
the realm of the dead from the living and yet present it as a mirror of life. There seems to have