Introduction to Architecture: Pre-Historic

Introduction to Architecture

• History of architecture is a record of man's effort to build beautifully.
• It traces the origin, growth, and decline of architectural styles that have prevailed in lands and ages.
• Historic styles represent particular methods, characteristics, and manners of design which prevail at certain places and times.
• Six influences of architecture include: Geographical, Geological, Climatic, Religious, Social, Historic.

Module 1: Pre-Historic Architecture

• Prehistoric architecture refers to the period before written history.
• Covers architecture during the Late New Stone Age.
• Prehistory spans the Old Stone Age, Middle Stone Age, and New Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic).
• These ages are defined by the materials used to make tools, starting with stone.
• Before the Old Stone Age (100,000-50,000 years ago), the basic architectural typologies were caves and temporary dwellings.
• Architecture was invented to provide shelter and protection from extreme weather, wild beasts, and enemies.
• Direct human ancestors evolved in Africa 2.3 million years ago (Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, homo sapiens sapiens)
• The human race succeeded largely due to the development of tools made of stone, wood, and bone.
• Humans spread from Africa into Southern Europe and Asia. Settling far north was limited by cold climate.
• Humans migrated from Siberia to North America by foot. They reached Southeast Asia by boat into Australia.
• Before 9000 BC, people led nomadic lives as hunters and gatherers. By 9000 BC, farming and agriculture were practiced.
• Fertile soil & plentiful food allowed animal domestication for work, milk, and wool. People settled down, and lived in communities
• First villages appeared in the Middle East, South & Central America, India and China.
• There was no organized religion but the dead were treated with respect with burial rituals and monuments.

Architectural Character

• Materials used included animal skins, wooden frames, and animal bones.
• Construction involved existing or excavated caves and Megalithic structures, most evident in France, England, and Ireland
• Decorations included cave paintings in Africa, France, Spain, and sculptures.

Invention of Architecture

• Prehistoric architecture is difficult to reconstruct due to the decay of fibrous materials used.
• Early human settlements incorporating architecture date back to 40,000 BCE, with limited evidence available.
• A Paleolithic village excavated in Mezhirich, Ukraine, dating back to approximately 15,000 BCE revealed huts made of woolly mammoth bones, that provided an intricate framework for structures.
• Humans began to form settlements during the Mesolithic to Neolithic periods, architecture diversified into distinct forms.
• As settlements grew, collaboration led to more sturdy structures. Most structures from this period were made of timber with a post-and-lintel system.
• Stone ceremonial structures appeared around 3700 BCE across Europe, circular structures served as tombs.
• Newgrange in Ireland has passage graves dating back to 3000 BCE, with burial chambers made of large vertical rocks covered with smaller rocks and dirt, with geometric designs.
• Early design elements centered on simple geometric forms like circles and spirals.
• Megalithic structures like Stonehenge were likely inspired by the sun and moon, referencing the cyclical nature of prehistoric life and religious beliefs.
• The Paleolithic Age spanned from around 30,000 BCE until 10,000 BCE and produced the first accomplishments in human creativity.
• Knowledge of Paleolithic human culture is derived from archaeological and ethnographic comparisons to modern hunter-gatherer cultures. The Paleolithic lasted until the retreat of the ice, when farming and use of metals were adopted.
• Early men sought defensible locations near rivers, lakes, and streams, using hilltops as refuges.
• Temporary wood huts existed as early as 380,000 ВСЕ. Other houses existed such as, campsites in caves or in the open air with little in the way of formal structure.
• The oldest examples are shelters within caves, followed by houses of wood, straw, and rock. A few examples exist of houses built out of bones.
• Caves acted as shelters, with the number used by Paleolithic people drastically small.
• In the Upper Paleolithic, caves turned into ritual and religious gathering places.

Paleolithic Shelters

• Tents and huts consisted of frames constructed of mammoth bones, with tusks supporting the roof and skulls/thighbones forming walls. Multiple families lived inside, with hearths for warmth.
• Huts: Oval-shaped (8m-15m X 4m-6m), built close to seashores, using stakes with stones as supports, stout posts along axis, and floors of organic matter and ash.
• Molodova: Wood framework covered with skins, held in place by oval mammoth bones enclosing 15 hearths.
• Dolni Vestonice: Palisades of mammoth bones and tusks set into ground filled with brush wood and turf. Oval (16m x 10m) with limestone used for walls, central hearth capped with earthen dome, and open to sky in summer.
• Mezhirich: walls of mammoth jaws and long bones, topped with skulls, roofed with tree branches and overlaid by tusks.
• Lean-tos: Erected against cave walls, defined by stones(12m x 4m), with skin curtains and roofs draped over posts may have 2 compartments and entrances.
• Tents: Skirts weighed down with pebbles with paved interiors, open-air hearths, wooden posts driven into earth covered with skins, secured by reindeer antlers later.
• Pit Houses: Common in eastern Europe with low temperatures, oval trapezoidal or pear-shaped (5m-8m x2.5m-3.5m) with central post holes indicating a roof, constructed with shallow depressions in the ground surrounded by mammoth bones & tusks.

Mesolithic Period Architecture

• The Mesolithic period served as an important "Middle Stone age" bridge of about 2,000 years, between the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages, though the art of this period had little relevant artistic connotations.
• Humans developed cave paintings, engravings, and ceramics to reflect their daily lives, developing new architecture outside the caves with stone, bone, and wood tools for hunting, fishing techniques.
• Significant advances leading to the Mesolithic revolution included means of transport (sleds pulled by dogs, canoes) and the microlith industry for hunting and fishing tools (hooks).
• The first cemeteries and burials under Mesolithic dwellings appeared during this period.
• The Mesolithic period marked the end of the ice age, the beginning of a more temperate climate. Men changed their lifestyles and sedentary societies appeared, along with colonies, race differences, and fishing.
• It is divided into the Epipaleolithic, meaning above the Paleolithic and the Protoneolithic, which means period preceding the Neolithic.
• The first cemeteries were created.
• Open-air huts and villages appeared in the Mesolithic period. Houses, with trunks and branches, consisted of a single room and were semi-dug into the ground. They buried dead people in cemeteries near villages or under floors.

Mesolithic Populations

• First populations identified in its initial phase or Epipalaeolithic were: Azilian (France), Maglemosian (north of Europe), Ertebølle (south of the Scandinavian peninsula)
• Villages were arranged systematically, with aligned houses in rows. More regular plans came in existence with artefacts.
• Settlements were based around water bodies, with fishing, cultication, domesticated animals
• Dwellings were more durable as compared to that in the Paleolithic age.
• Pit Houses: Shallow oval pits 6m-9m long and 25m wide with timber roofs and stone hearths used as working slabs.
• Huts composed of bamboos with plans that are trapezoidal, they had wide entrances facing the water bodies (rivers) with floors of lime and posts reinforced with stones.

Neolithic Period Architecture

• Its beginning was from 8,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C.
• The Neolithic is the last stage of the Stone Age after the post-glacial period, lifestyle linked to land and animals for food and clothing developed.
• Development occurred in the eastern Mediterranean, the Nile valley, Syria and Iraq and also some populations in northern Europe.
• Populations developed agriculture and domesticated animals for food and clothing.
• The term Neolithic is Greek for new stone or polished stone because man began to polish the stone to work better agriculture and livestock, age of the Stone age phase.
• People in the Neolithic period were great builders, mud-brick was utilized to construct houses and villages.
• The production of food led to developments in agriculture, therefore settling down while dwellings became more sustainable.
• Houses were built with square/rectangular plans, with sections divided with animal skins.

Neolithic Housing

• Timber Framed Houses: Square plan: 25’ x 25’, mud walls with 3’ deep footings with pitched and thatched roofs with overhanging eaves. Interiors were raised, plastered with sunken hearths.
• Long Houses: Rectangular plans (20’ x26’-150’) with oak posts and of the framework covered with clay, floors with layers of clay logs.
• It consisted of 3 types of plans: TRIPARTITE, BIPARTITE, SINGLE BAY HOUSES
• Dry stone houses: Stone built houses with 3m thick cavity walls. Inner outer caves were made of dry stones. Rectangular plan with circular corners. Thatched roofs with a smoke hole over central hearth.
• The settlements lead to building monumental or stone architecture. Such as Passage Graves and Gallery Graves.
• Others are Menhirs that can exist as monoliths or a part of group
• Collective Tombs
  • Passage Graves (upper photo): A long passage leads to a long chamber deep inside with walls that are made of large upright slabs, with burial chamber(5sqm)
  • smooth walls
  • three cells at three sides of the chamber mainly made with masoned walls and corbelled roof
• Gallery Graves (upper photo), 23m long chamber divided into twelve sections and covered with a rectangular mound.

Menhirs, Dolmens and Henges

• Menhir (literally in Brittany French: a long stone; men-stone, hir-long) is a huge stone standing vertically in the ground. Such stones are usually standing in the middle of a field
• The number of megaliths in Carnac is the largest in the world. More than 3,000 are found there, dating to the period between about 5000 to 1000 BCE.
• Dolmens - sort of structures in a form of a "table", consisting of two huge standing stones supporting a horizontal giant stone.
• Two or more stones supporting a large one at the top and Burial features is also called cromlechs (brythonic origin).
• Stonehenge is a site in southern England, composed of a group of stones arranged in concentric circles completed in c.2900 BCE. Is the best-preserved megalithic site in Europe
• Open air ritual structures, the plan comprised of concentric circles
• The circle of stones and five dolmen menhir structures open to the sun around the summer solstice

End of the Stone Age

• The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 and 2500 BCE.
• The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age was a period during which modern people could smelt copper, but did not yet manufacture bronze
• The first highly significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin or arsenic, each of which was smelted separately.