Prehistoric Architecture

• Prehistoric architecture is the study of buildings that existed before written history.

Background

• Architecture's development was significantly influenced with the advent of agriculture.
• Early builders used materials that were readily accessible like mud.
• Burial sites are indicators of thriving communities gone by.
• Fortifications evidence historical regional conflicts.
• Wars fostered cultural adaptation and spread.
• Trade was vital for regional development, while isolation tended to trigger societal decline.

Styles

• EGYPTIAN: Characterized by lotus, papyrus, and palm capitals.
• NEO-BABYLONIAN: Notable for heraldic animal figures.
• ASSYRIAN: Recognized by chiseled alabaster slabs and crenellations.
• GREEK: Defined by the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders, along with the trabeated system.
• ROMAN: Known for arches, vaults, domes, and Composite and Tuscan orders.

Vernacular Architecture

• Vernacular architecture originates from the Latin term "vernaculus," meaning domestic, native, or indigenous.
• Also referred to as folk, traditional, or popular architecture.
• Vernacular architecture addresses local needs, utilizes local building materials, and mirrors local traditions.
• This type of architecture changes with the environment, culture, technology, and historical context.
• Vernacular architecture involves adapting the environment to create structures.
• It provides essential protection from wild animals, tribal conflicts, and natural disasters.
• Key aspects include construction by non-professional architects or engineers and adaptation to the geography using natural materials.
• Construction relies on intuitive methods instead of blueprints or formal construction drawings.
• It balances social needs, economic viability, functionality, and aesthetics.
• Styles are shaped by the gradual changes in traditional styles within specific ethnic regions.
• Vernacular buildings showcase the advancements and limits of early technology.
• Construction techniques are passed down through generations.
• Vernacular design addresses fundamental structural issues with simplicity and logical arrangement.

Early Human Needs

• Ancient people mainly needed simple buildings.
• These dwellings served basic needs like shelter or worship.
• Stockades offered defence.
• Cairns were burial mounds for important people.
• The structures were made with simple, often perishable, materials.

Early Stone Age Dwellings

• Early humans favored locations defendable against predators and shielded against harsh weather.
• Habitats near rivers, lakes, and streams, possibly with nearby low hilltops for refuge were optimal.
• Temporary wooden huts existed as far back as 380,000 BC.
• Other dwellings includes makeshift campsites in caves or open-air locations with simple structures.
• Shelters within caves are some of the oldest, with houses later built from wood, straw, and rock are more modern.
• Bone houses are rare, but have been uncovered.

Caves as Rock Shelters

• Caves offer natural protection, due to the traces such as tools and bones found.
• Caves were occupied by Stone Age peoples worldwide.
• The Lascaux Cave layout was discovered in 1940, and archaeologists believe it was created between 15,000 to 13,000 BC in France.
• The cave was occupied for 10,000 to 20,000 years, used by multiple generations.
• Entry to a large hall branched off into other spaces.
• The cave featured elaborate paintings of animals and hunting, it celebrated hunting life of early Stone Age humans.

Building Materials

• Twigs and branches, animal skins, and animal bones were used as building materials.

Timeline of Prehistoric Periods

• Paleolithic Age: This period is known for the development of primitive stone tools.
• Mesolithic period: Saw the systematic planning of villages, with houses aligned in rows.
• Neolithic: Consisted of the rise of agriculture, structures built with timber framing and wattle, and funerary structures becoming part of architectural designs.
• Megalithic: Characterized by gallery burials.

Paleolithic Dwellings

• Paleolithic dwellings are divided into four constructional types; huts, lean-tos, tents, and pit houses.

Huts

• Oval-shaped huts made in shorelines.
• Constructed with 75mm diameter stakes attached to ring of stones.
• Supported with 300mm diameter posts and featured organic flooring.

Lean-tos

• Erected against a cave wall.
• Covered with animal skins or other organic material.
• Supported by two posts.

Tents

• Wooden posts driven into the earth.
• Covered with animal skin or organic materials.
• Secured with large wooden pegs.

Pit Houses

• Pit Houses have shallow ground depression.
• They are surrounded with posts with rings of mammoth bones and tusks.

Early Neolithic Settlements

Structure 075 in Wadi Faynan, Jordan dated back to 9600 BC

• It was an elliptical layout.
• Layout was a large central space covered in mud, with benches.
• Contained possible marks from wooden posts and grinding stones suggesting food processing was conducted here.
• Benches surrounding the central could have been for people to observe the activities.

Skara Brae, Mainland, Scotland, 3200 BC

• Consists of floor compartments and linked corridors which provided a tightly linked community.
• Has cellular structure built in the Neolithic period.

Timber Framed Houses

• A timber framed house from 6220 BC was a square plan with mud walls supported by oak held with footing.
• It was coated with white clay and has a roof was built to allow smoke to escape.

Longhouses from 4200BC

• Longhouses are houses grouped together and oriented to the northwest to southeast with gabled roofs.
• The entrance points to the southeast.
• The floors are made of clay on logs.
• The roof has a hole for the smoke to be released made with turf or thatch.

Tombs

• There are two forms: passage graves and gallery graves.

Passage Graves

• Consist of a covering mound and coursed masonry filled with stone slabs with a square butress corner.
• Inclined walls supported by a corbelled vault.

Passage grave Example: Maeshowe.

• The Maeshowe is a well-preserved Neolithic chambered cairn and passage grave on Mainland, Orkney, Scotland.
• Maeshowe dates to 2800 BC and features passages hiding the grass mound.
• Chambers were erected carefully using flagstone slabs carrying 30 tons.
• The building aligns so a bracketed wall holding the rear wall of its central chamber, is illuminated on the winter solstice.

Megalithic Gallery Grave

• A stalled chamber that is compartmented, and excavated with an entrance porch and transverse slabs.
• Graves were erected with trancepts, and facade with large sarsen stone and addition of apse and niches.

Megalithic Temple Complex

• Ggantija is a temple complex found on the Mediterranean island of Gozo.
• The Neolithic complex is older than the pyramids of Egypt.
• The temple was constructed during the Neolithic Age, from 3600-2500 BC.
• The complex is the second oldest man-made religious structure, after Göbekli Tepe.
• The buildings may have been a fertility.

First Communities From 3500 BCE

• Mesopotamia, Khirokitia, and Catal Huyuk.
• Mesopotamia means "middle river" in Greek, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
• The Fertile Crescent is in a broad area from the eastern Mediterranean shores to present-day Iraq, under the Taurus and Zagros mountains.
• It encompassed modern areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Urbanization Stages

• From 9000 BCE, hilltop cities arose which include: Jericho in Israel and Tell Aswad in Syria.
• From 5000 BCE, the Mesopotamian area had the largest network of villages and cities.

Khirokitia

• A family unit was composed of circular structures that surrounded an open space for communal activities.
• No religious was built. Instead, burials happened within the family home.
• A pit dug in the house stored the dead, rituals and plaster.

Catal Huyuk

• Catal Huyuk had flat-roofed homes packed together in a single structure.
• There were no streets or passageways.
• Residents traversed rooftops and descended into their homes using ladders.
• The homes' walls were built of mud, oak and small high windows provided small lighting.
• When a family died, the house was abandoned briefly before being reclaimed.
• A single residence contained one large chamber with small storages room.
• The room contained benches, ovens, and bins.
• Its generous size was 5 by 6 meters and walls were plastered
• Benches were raised on three sides for sleep/activity.

Ritual Megalithic Structure From 2500 BCE

• Megalithic structures had stones associated with divinity.
• A list of the structures includes: Dolmen, Menhir, Cromlech, Tumulus, Cairn, Stonehenge

Stonehenge

• Its trilithons had medieval gallows with two uprights and a lintel joining them.
• It was built with Neolithic henges and stone circles.
• Beliefs changed as the builders changed the earthwork, from a lunar to a sun dial.
• The center of their cosmology had a connection between the smelting of ore and the sun.
• The Beaker People created a redesign transforming its moon dial to the sun.
• 60 large bluestones were added to the space.

Terminology

• Menhir: Upright megalith, a standing stone aligned with others.
• Megalith: Large stone used as found or roughly dressed.
• Monolith: A single block of stone ex. Obelisk.
• Cairn: Heap stones for as a marker.
• Cromlech: Circular arrangement of megaliths enclosing a dolmen, or burial mound.
• Dolmen: Consisting of large upright stones that a horizontal stone sits on.
• Trilithon: Two upright megaliths which support a horizontal stone.

Bronze Age

• Timber-Framed Houses, Burial Mounds, Temples and Ritual Structures, and Defensive Structures.
• Timber-Framed Houses were constructed from 1000-900BC with six rooms and five hearths.
• The main hall was 10m x 5m and interlocked logs by means of notches cut near the extremeties.
• A circular bronze age house created earthwork platforms and a timber fence measuring 134m x 55m in 1000-900BC.

Burial Mounds From 1500 BC

• Made mainly for single grave burials.
• They were set beneath circular mounds.

Structures for Temples/Rituals From 1500 BC

• Flimsy compared to Megalithic Examples.
• Henges and open-air shrines lasted into the bronze age in Britain.

Fortifications Example: Los Millares, Spain (2340 BC)

• Bastion and semi-circular bastions were used.
• These timber-palisaded were also coated with clay exterior.
• The purpose of the clay to prevent burning.
• The coating in the interior has a large revetment.

Iron Age

• Timber-Framed Houses (same types in the bronze age), Drystone Houses, Defensive Structures.
• Hill Forts were constructed (350 BC) with one rampart and a ditch.
• They were faced with timbers, and gates at the east and west ends.