1.
0 prehistoric period of
Europe with emphasis on
different types of structure
built during Stone Age period
PREHISTORIC PERIOD: Periods without a
historical record, no written language and
medium to keep records (Some places
prehistoric till 20th century).
STONE AGE:
Paleolithic (9000 BC and above period)- Ancient
stone Age. Populated by a society of Nomadic
hunters and implements and who lived largely
in caves that they decorated with paints.
Mesolithic (8000-4000 BC)- Middle stone Age.
Approximately up to 5000 BC. An intermediate
characterized by food gathering activities and
the beginning of Agriculture..
Neolithic- New stone Age. Approximately
5000- 2200 BC. Characterized by fixed
settlements and farming, and beginning
of Architecture and Religion.
Bronze Age and Iron Age:
The period approximately 3000 BC to the
1st Century BC, characterized in general
by the use of Metal and the smelting of
metal. Farming communities were
sheltered, and the making and use of
pottery become widespread.
PREHISTORICAL PERIOD IN STONE
AGE EUROPE
Human beings inhabited the earth from more
than one million years ago.
Architecture in raw forms as it were with very
arrangement of nature.
People were living in small groups in the
natural caves in good harmony. The main
livelihood was hunting.
Conscious about ritual action. In seeking
places for ritual ceremonies they have
defined to set out boundary.
They did it in two specific ways:
Circumscription - It arrest and pattern
the flow of ground (In Architecture Boundary), plots of land or walled towns.
Accent - Involving in setting free
structure with mass and height, this
stretches of open space - Architecture of
Monuments.
Boundary and monuments both imply
a determined marking of nature.
The first generation
lacked such
confidence in their
own-standing with
nature.
They moved about
in search of
tolerable climate
(very cold ice sheet
covering the
nature), food and
the special
environment.
Architecture of
shelter developed
in the pleats of the
earth.
They made of it the stages of their
progressively organized life.
They turned a spot of earth into a
hearth (special place). With the
invention of fire, it proved to be a great
place-marker. Earliest heart - great
cave at Escale (France) 500,000 years
ago.
The first documented piece of
Architecture.
OLD STONE AGE
The age of development of human
technology with the introduction of the
first stone tools. In general, people were
hunters and food gatherers.
During 400,000 and 100,000 years ago,
stone tools noticeably improved (cutting
knives sharp and easy to grab).
Both building technology and the ritual
use of Architecture became very
sophisticate in the later stage.
Hunters became concerned with religious
observance and their related destiny. Death
was mysterious ,this anxious thoughtimplicated the concept of Architecture.
The shelter was pushed beyond mere
housing and the cave becomes the
sanctuary. Example - a cave at Monte Circeo
- a lime stone hill (South of Rome)
During the search of eternal belief the hunter
started using art as "A Tool of Expression".
Example - Elaborated details are seen in the
cave at Lascaux, France (10,000 years old).
NEW STONE AGE
When Old Stone Age hunters were
working in the sanctuaries at Lascaux,
violent change in climate - mild weather,
a period of warmth that melted the great
ice sheets and transformed the scene of
grass - shrubs, covered into stretches of
forest.
Transformed the European scene of grass-
shrubs, covered into stretches of forest.
The hunters slowed down in places on
the planet from Europe to near East and
settled and turned to farming and animal
husbandry.
Demographic pressure demanding more
food that could be secured through
hunting and gathering and food
productions began on a systematic
basis.
This new pillar of existence - termed as
New Stone Age
The Architecture of Europe
Paleolithic period: Dwellings
Hut, lean to, Tent, Pit house
Mesolithic period: Dwellings
Huts, Pit-houses
Neolithic period: Dwellings
Timber-framed house ,Long houses,
Collective tombs: 50 thousand
Megalithic passage Graves
Megalithic gallery Graves
Earthen long borrows ( mortuary)
Temple and Ritual structure
temples
Henges
Dry stone house
DWELLINGS PALEOLITHIC PERIOD
A. HUTS
1. TERRA AMATA
Terra Amata (near Nice, 300,000-400,000 years
ago, is the oldest artificial man made structure
(huts).
The huts were oval in shape. Made of branches or
saplings set close together braced on the outside
by a ring of large stones.
Hearth was placed in the middle, The immediate
area was must for sleeping. There were work space
- kitchen and toilet area.
2. MOLODOVA I
Molodova I - (44,000 years ago) . This
measured about 8 m (26 ft) by 5 m (16
ft) internally. The shelter consisted of a
wood framework covered with animal
skin, held in place by a rough oval of
mammoth bones.
B. LEAN TO LE LAZARET
Le Lazaret Nice (France) - 150,000 years ago - was
an early example of a lean-to, about 12 m x 14 m
(39 ft x 13 ft), erected against one wall of a cave
and defined at the base of rows of stones, and
possibly post supports.
A skin curtain and roof may have been draped over
the posts, and the lean-to may have had two
compartments separated by an internal partition,
each with an entrance on the long side. The larger
of the two compartments contained two hearths .
C. TENTS
PLATEAU - PARRAIN
Plateau - Parrain (France) - 15,000 years ago - tent
with a floor area about 3 m x 3 m (10ft x 10ft).
The skirts of the tent were weighed down with
pebbles; inside was a small paved area, and
outside a number of tool-manufacturing
workshops.
NEOLITHIC:
Neolithic communities lived in
small individual house made of
timber-framed houses square
or rectangular single-family
dwellings, or longhouses lived
in by expanded or multiple
families.
TIMBER FRAMED
Nea Nikomedeia (6220 BC)
in Macedonia, northern
Greece, was one of the
oldest Neolithic settlements
in Europe. It contained a
number of square houses,
with mud walls supported
by a framework of oak
saplings and in filled with
bundles of reeds set on end.
DRY STONESKARE BRAE
Most striking evidence
of dry-stone Neolithic
dwellings Skara Brae (c.
2500-1700 BC), stonebuilt houses with
double-skin walls about
3m (10 ft) thick overall.
The cavity was filled
with domestic refuse.
The dwellings appear to
have been roofed with
turf or thatch, with a
smoke-hole positioned
over the central hearth.
The interiors were
remarkable for their
stone furniture.
In Sittard (Netherlands) 5000 BC 80 meter long
house accommodated number of families or
extended family inside one roof.
PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS
Society had developed A class
structure monumental tombs
honored the remains of more
mortals only. Common body
disposed on the ground to rot.
The buried might have taken
place in shallow graves in
natural caves. Example - Hall
of Saflieni - at the top of a hill
has tombs - 7000 dead.
Upended stones or Menhirs -
simplest form of monuments Menhirs were not intended to
enclose shape.
These object in mid space with their mass and
height-made them visual from a long distance. the first instance of a principle organizing space.
Example - The stone avenue at near town of
Carnac (North of France) is the conceptual of
classical colonnade - 2000 megalith of local
granite lined up for 4 km north of the village in 1013 rows towards a circle.
PREHISTORIC
TOMBS
Neolithic stone
tombs were simplest
form box like
chamber made up of
several up right
slabs for walling and
less flat slab for roof.
Known as Dolmen.
COLLECTIVE TOMBS
A striking
architectural feature
of collective tombs.
There are between
40,000 and 50,000
large, elaborate
megalithic tombs,
passage graves and
gallery graves,
Maes Howe ireland
Los Millares Spain
Passage grave (Tumuli) was the dominant
Megathilic tomb type, has a corridor lined with large
stone slabs leading to a circular chamber often
having a corbelled vault. Examples: Maes Howe
(Ireland) - 3rd millennium BC, Los Millares (Spain)
Mid Howe Shetland island
Esse, Brittany
Megalithic Gallery Graves
There is a fine gallery-grave at Mid Howe, Shetland
Islands. It consisted of a stalled chamber with twelve
sections some 23 m (76 ft) long overall, and was covered
by a rectangular mound approx 33 m x 13 m (110ft x 43
ft) in plan.
A more typical example was found at Esse, Brittany,where
the 6 m (19 ft) long grave was divided into an entrance
porch, and a gallery with three transverse slabs
Temple and Henge
gantija is a megalithic temple
complex on the Mediterranean
island of Gozo (Malta). Gigantic
Neolithic structures, which were
erected during the Neolithic Age
(5000-2200 BC).
5500 years old, the gantija
temples are the world's oldest
free-standing structures, and the
world's oldest religious structures
The temples are cloverleaf-
shaped; built up with facing
stones and filled in with rubble.
Each was constructed as a series
of semi-circular apses connected
with a hall in the center.
The structures more impressive for having been
constructed at a time when no metal tools were
available to the natives of the Maltese islands,
and when the wheel had not yet been introduced
it is believed that these were used as ball
bearings to transport the enormous stone blocks
required for the temples' construction.
STONEHENGE 3100-1550 BC
Stonehenge is the most famous Neolithic and
Bronze Age megalithic monument located near
Salisbury.
It is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular
setting of large standing stones and is one of the
most famous prehistoric sites in the world.
Early Britons built and rebuilt Stonehenge over a
span of 1000 years. Stonehenge was built between
3100 - 1550 BC at Salisbury (England).
This monumental was assumed constructed in
three phases:
This first stage 3100 BC-ditch enclosure. dug a
circle of 56 pits, each around 1 m in diameter,
known as the Aubrey holes.
Second: In 2100 BC - huge pillars of rocks were
erected in concentric circle around the centre of
site.
The monument (temple) was remodeled in the
third period (1500 BC). 30 enormous sarsen
stones were brought from a quarry around 24
miles (40 km) north to the site.
The stones were dressed and fashioned erected 33 m
(108 ft) with a 'lintel' of 30 stones resting on top.
Each standing stone was around 4.1 m (13.5 ft) high,
2.1 m (7.5 ft) wide and weighed around 25 tons.
The thickness stones is 1.1 m
(3.75 ft) and distance between
them is 1 m (3.5 ft).
Of the lintel stones, they are
each around 3.2 m long (10.5
ft), 1 m (3.5 ft) wide and 0.8 m
(2.75 ft) thick. The tops of the
lintels are 4.9 m (16 ft) above
the ground.
Within this circle stood five
trilithons of sarsen stone
arranged in a horseshoe shape
13.7 m (45 ft) across with its
open end facing north east.
the stones used were apparently hauled across Salisbury
plain on sledges and rollers by several hundred people.
Scientist (Archeologist) believes that early people were
able to forecast eclipse of the sun & moon of these
celestial bodies in relation to the stone movements.
(Astronomical clock or calendar for predicting seasons).
These sites may have served as an observatory
ritual/religious ceremony took place on specific day of
year.
