Book Deal!

I am uncommonly pleased to announce that a contract for the preparation of a publication has been cordially agreed between Amberley Publishing of Stroud and myself.

The book, currently titled The Archaeology of Postholes: Reconstructing Prehistoric Buildings, will have 60,000 words, with 130 illustrations, and while advance order lines will be waiting to take your call, I’d give it a couple of weeks, as I haven’t written it yet.
Many thanks to Miles Russell for his good offices.
This is the basic synopsis for the book which I developed last February. It will cover many of the topics covered so far on Theoretical Structural Archaeology, but with a linear rather than episodic narrative structure, and it will require a new set of black and white illustrations.

37. Upstairs in the Neolithic

In the last article, we looked at prehistoric architects. However, the reason this is theoretical structural archaeology, is that we have not found any. What archaeologists have recorded are the foundation plans of thousands of prehistoric buildings, along with large amounts of structural evidence we don’t yet understand.

The structural analysis in this article has been superseded by a new article;  Understanding the Neolithic Longhouse.

Notes & Queries; Sledges

My observation that a 7000 year old LBK longhouse from Olszanica in Poland had 2 wide doors [right], prompted the question was it a cart shed? I think I satisfied myself, and my readers, it was not; it is simply too early. I somewhat reluctantly concluded that perhaps sledges were the possible explanation.

Well, that simply was not good enough for Martha, who edits this site, so in an interesting case of role-reversal, and she set off to consider this in much more detail.

And I am so glad she did.

35. Olszanica Longhouse 6: Why has it got wide doors?

When I saw her, it was love at first sight: beautiful, slender, elegant, complex, and I know size isn’t everything, but she has got the biggest roof I’ve ever seen on an early Neolithic building!
But there was something else. Not that I noticed it at first, as I ran my eyes over her sleek form, but eventually my eyes were drawn to the openings.
So let's cut to the chase: Longhouse 6 from Olszanica in Poland [1] has a doorway 2.20m wide, and it is dated to 5000 BC.

So what is that all about?