UDK 72.001.8(497.2)"634" Documenta Praehistorica XXVI The built environment: pit-huts and houses in the Neolithic Douglass W. Bailey School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University, UK BaileyDW@cardiff.ac.uk ABSTRACT - Among the major changes which emerged in southeastern Europe after 6500 BC. one of the most significant was that people began to build their social environments. Two main tyfies of architecture wire used: pits-huts and surface-level structures. This paper examines the character of these two forms of buildings and suggests that they represent important differences in community structure and organization. Examples are drawn from three sites. DivosUn (phases I and II). Usoe and Ovcliarovo-gorata IZVLEČEK - Med mnogimi spremembami, ki so se pojavite v jugovzhodni Evropi po letu 6500 BC.je hita ena najpomembnejših, da so ljudje začeli postavljati stavbe in s tem graditi svoje socialno okolje. Glavni vrsti arhitekture sta bili: polzemljanke in stavbe, postavljene na nivoju tal. I' članku raziščemo značaj obeh vrst stavb Menimo, da kažeta pomembno razliko v ustroju in organiziranosti skupnosti. Primere navajamo iz treh najdišč. Divostin (fazi I in II), Usoe in Ovcharovogorata. KEY WORDS - Southeastern Europe; Seotithic: pit-huts; houses: social entironment INTRODl CTION One of the most important developments in human behaviour which occurred in prehistoric southeastern Europe was the adoption of permanent architecture. After 6500 BC, people built new social environments of pit-huts and surface-level houses which they grouped in camps and villages. The emergence of the built environment had major consequences for the ways people lived their lives. The most important of these consequences were changes in the physical and social arrangements of people, places and things. This article investigates the emergence of the built environment in southeastern Europe after 6500 BC. Two forms of building are examined: pit-huts and surface-level structures. Several examples will he described and then assessed in terms of three variables: spatial arrangement; the processes of construction and abandonment or destruction; and duration. Examination of the built environment of Neolithic southeastern Europe in these terms reveals important distinctions in the organisation and structure between the communities which lived in pit-hut camps and those which lived in villages of surface-level structures. PIT-HITS The digging out of shallow pits and the erection, over them, of wood, twig and clay superstructures made up the built environment for many Neolithic communities in both the early part of the Balkan sequence and in its later phases. Two examples of pit-huts will illuminate their character. The first example comes from the late seventh and early sixth millennium BC. Starcevo phase, camp at Divostin in Serbia (Bogdanovic 1988) (Fig. 1). The pit-huts, or earth-cabins' as the excavators termed them, were round or elliptical in form; some had concentrations of stones in the middle of their floors and these would have supported posts which would have held-up pit-hut roofs. In some huts small 153 Douglass W Bailey Fig. 1. Pit hul from Divostin I (after Bogdanovit 198AJ. hearths were built. The Divostin pit-huts were not very large, measuring no more than 5x5 m: in depth they were no deeper than 0.5 m. When excavated the pit-huts contained a variety of different things including ceramics, flint tools, animal bones, anthropomorphic figurines, and as well as deposits of rubbish and ash. In terms of type and quantity of hut content, as well as in hut si/e and form, there is great variation between the structures at Divostin. The second example of pit-huts comes from the early fifth millennium BC site of Usoe in northeast-em Bulgaria (Todorova 1973: Vajsov 1990: Gatsov 1990). As at Divostin, there is great variation in the size and contents of the Usoe huts. Some were quite large, measuring more than 10 m in length, others were much smaller. Some pit-huts contained hearths. In and around the pit-huts were concentrations of lithic tools, pottery and anthropomorphic figurines. Also found were a great many zoomorphic figurines, all of which represent quadrupeds, and most have horns. In some pits there specific sets of lithic tools, perhaps dedicated to butchering animals and w orking hides and skins (Gatsov 1990). The huts were spread out along a terrace in a roughly linear arrangement and there may have been several, loose, clusters of structures, although there is no clear division of space within the site (Fig. 2). In its linear spread along the terrace. Usoe resembles many Neolithic sites, especially those in the northern Balkans, w hich overlooked river- and stream-valleys and flood-plains. What can we infer from these records of the built environment about the ways in which people lived their lives and. most especially, about people's interrelationships? The character of pit-huts The Divostin and Usoe pit-hut camps were very similar. despite the 1000 years which separate them. Their common character is evident in the spatial arrangement of huts, in the processes of their construction and abandonment and in their duration. Spatial arrangement concerns the form and size of the huts themselves, the organisation of their interiors and the horizontal layout of pit-huts, one to another, across the site. Investigation of spatial arrangement must also consider the numbers and types of activities which took place within individual pit-huts and those which would have taken place outside and between them. Assessment of the processes of construction and abandonment includes an examination of the methods and materials of building. as well as the processes w hich mark the end of pit-hut use. Duration reflects the life-history of structures. Spatial arrangement With very few exceptions, the pits-huts were small arid round. Their limited size meant that, at any one time, they could have accommodated few people and few separate activities. The evidence for activities taking place outside of pit-huts is strong, both for the sites in question and for many other similar sites from the Balkan Neolithic. If separate activities are conceived in spatial terms as different domains (see Cribb 1991), then in pit-hut camps many different. 154 The built environment: pit-huts and nouses s\ the Neolithic 0 1 C? ° a Q Q 0 f\ üO D o OOry qO T 0 0 _ O ô 1 ° CO 0 "o 8 a û PIT HUTS and PITS SO _ 150 m Fig. 2. The site o/Usoe in northern Bulgaria (after Vajsov 1990/ separate domains of activities existed in the pit-hut tanips. both within. but also, perhaps more frequently. outside of huts. In pit-hut camps, domains of activity were not fixed or permanent zones; they were adjustable and overlapping areas and would have shifted around a site and changed according to different working or living activities or social occasions. A distinction can be draw n between two types of activities which took place in and around these pit-huts. Some activities concern the biological functions of life such as eating and sleeping; these can he considered as living-aspects (Hunter-Anderson 1977). The second type of activities can be considered as role-aspects; these are activities through which people establish, intentionally or otherw ise, their identity and place within their communities. In the Divostin and Usoe camps, the majority of activities which took place were living-aspects, such as making and repairing flint tools, working hides and skins, eating, sleeping and sheltering. There is. however, evidence for role-related activities at Usoe and Divostin. At both sites people made and used anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and. especially at Usoe. they made and used a series of small clay objects, which have been interpreted :ls tokens or counters (Rndja 1998.219-235). These objects, especially the figurines, were employed in ceremonies and rituals related to the expression of identities and relationships among people (Bailey in press). On balance how ever, both of the pit-hut camps examined here and, I suggest, others of similar form across the region in the Neolithic, were dominated by living-aspect activities w ith role-related activities accounting for a much smaller part of people's time or of camp space. It is highly likely that most role-related activities occurred away from pit-hut camps, litis is important because similar distinctions between the places and types of activities are evident in many communities of foragers. In such communities, activities which w ere integral to the definition of peoples' roles and identities, such as animal kills and. more crucially perhaps, during the distribution of meat after kills, occur awav from camps (Hunter-Anderson 1977. 313). Other important patterns of spatial arrangement are evident in the alignment of pit-huts within camps. At both Divostin and Usoe there is no obvious pattern of spatial relationships of one hut to another, nor is there an ordered lay out of structures across either camp as a w hole. While the sense of spatial disorganisation is particularly strong at Divostin, it is also present at Usoe. If there is any pattern, it is at Usoe where the pit-huts are distributed in a roughly linear fashion along the terrace. Such an alignment of huts is common in communities where the maintenance of visual contact between settlement and some external part of the landscape is important; thus linear arrangements of structures are found in camps w hich face important resource zones or conduits of access such as beaches or rivers (Whitelaw 1994.165). 155 Douglass W Bailey Of greater interest, perhaps, is the recognition that linear arrangements of huts restrict the number of direct neighbours that any one hut can have. In this sense, sites with linear arrangements of buildings do not emphasis the coherence of the larger community group (tthilclau• 1994.165). Thus, one could argue that the inhabitants of camps with linear arrangements of pit-huts may hav e engaged primarily in the types of activities which required only small-scale cooperation of people or of small groups of people; such activities may have included hunting, herding, simple gathering and small-scale garden horticulture. Creation and abandonment of pit-huts A second element of the shared character of pit-hut camps is evident in the processes of their construction and abandonment. As with their spatial arrangement, these processes have important implications for the organisation and structure of camp communities. In their creation, pit-huts were easy to make. Some took advantage of natural hollows in the ground: for others little digging was required as the depth of pit-floors was seldom lower than 0.5 m below the surface. The use of readily available materials, such as saplings, branches, mud and. perhaps. day. which required little if any modification or transportation before use. also suggests that the creation of Neolithic pit-huts was not technically difficult and involved relatively small investments of time, effort or planning. The social anthropologist Tim Ingold has highlighted the distinctions in planning evident in the creation of different types of living structures. At one end of the spectrum are the casually made nests which non-human primates, such as chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, create on a nightly basis and which are used once for nothing other than sleeping and which are abandoned each morning (Ingold 1995: Crows and h ¡985). Nests are made out of materials which are close at hand and there is little, if any modification of materials or planning involved. In this sense, raw materials are co-opted' for use in the nest. In considering the creation of pit-huts. the distinction between building by co-option and building by construction is significant Construction is the adaptation and transformation of raw materials, some of which may need to be acquired at a distance, to fit into an existing architectural form. Following Ingold's distinctions, the pit-huts of Neolithic sites such as Divostin and I'soe. were created through processes of co-option, although unlike the one-off nests, their creation involved some modifi- cation and transportation of materials and they were used for longer periods of time. Duration of pit huts The recognition of the co-optive character of the creation of pit-huts invests them with a sense of the temporary and unplanned, litis sense also pervades their life-use and destruction and abandonment Many elements of hut creation, such as the posts, poles and coverings, were relatively perishable and would not have lasted beyond a single sequence of one or two seasons without substantial repair or replacement. However, pit-huts combine this sense of the impermanent with a degree, though more limited. of the fixed and the concrete. Thus, as well as the impermanent and perishable, pit-hut creation also used more permanent fixtures, such as stone platforms, hearths, stone post-footings and levelled or lined floors. This combination of the temporary and the fixed represents a trade-off between the demands of mobility and flexibility , on the one hand, with the need for security and comfort on the other (Cribb 1994). One consequence of the simplicity of much of the building materials employed in creating the superstructure and the absence of any significant investment of labour in their creation was that the wood and mud superstructure of huts could be dismantled easily and moved or. more likely, simply discarded and abandoned. The more permanent fixtures could have been abandoned though, perhaps, with the intention that they were re-used at a later date. Thus, w hile not as impermanent as the nests of nonhuman primates, pit-huts were relatively temporary structures. In terms of duration of occupation and settlement, they represent mobility and portability. Pit-hut camps such as Divostin and Usoe would have been occupied at any one time for a very limited period, perhaps over a season. If pit-huts were occupied over longer periods of time, then it is most likely that these longer uses w ere punctuated by significant episodes of vacancy and abandonment. Thus, although pit-hut camps may have been occupied repeatedly over longer periods of time, the dominant character of these camps was one of transience. Social consequences and inferences of pit hilts In terms of their spatial arrangement, creation, abandonment and duration, the pit-hut camps of the Neolithic Balkans are best characterised as loose collec- 156 The built environment: pit-huts and nouses s\ the Neolithic tions of structures w hich were designed and used for single living- or role-aspect activities and which were used over the short-term. The people who inhabited such camps were probably members of small groups whose relationships may have been based on kinship and on descent through generations. These kinship relations were rooted in routines and rituals of alliances, contacts, sharing and communality which occurred without any great concern for a particular place in the landscape, let alone in any individual built structure. Indeed, few activities took place in pit-hut interiors: most took place outside of pit-huts and away from the camps themselves. The character of pit huts which is shared by the structures at Divostin and at Usoe and the inferences drawn from them are very different from the character anil inferences of surface-level structures SURFACE LEVEL STRUCTURES Surface-level structures are the second major architectural form of the Balkan Neolithic and they are different from pit-huts in important ways. Again, two examples will be described and assessed. The first example comes from the fifth millennium BC. later Vinfa culture phase of Divostin (Bogdanovic 1988). In Div ostin II. a number of separate surface-level structures were built. Building no. H is a good specimen (Fig. 3). Compared to the earlier pit-huts. Building 1-4 is large, measuring 16 m in length and 6 m in width. It is not circular, but rectangular in form and its interior is complex, divided into three separate rooms. Furthermore, the building contains four hearths and there are separate intramural domains for different activities. There is also a greater diversity and quantity of objects within the structure, pottery vessels were more numerous and complex in form. The distinction of separate, fixed, repeatedly used, domains dedicated to particular activities is a character of the Divostin v illage as a whole in this phase. Thus, there are areas given over to working copper, malachite, azurite and quartz. Other buildings at Divostin share Building 14's orientation and rectilinear form, although some are larger and others smaller. The second example of surface level structures comes from the site of Ovcharovo-gorata in northeastern Bulgaria (Atigelova 1988; 1992; Angelova and Bin ¡988). Like Building 14 at Div ostin, the Ov charovo-gorata buildings are rectilinear in form. In most cases they are no larger than 5 x 5 m and most have only one room. Two buildings, nos 7 and 15, are excep- tions and have two rooms each. Every house has a hearth in its interior, one house, no. IS, has two, one in each of its rooms. .\s at Divostin, house interiors contain large numbers of tools, pottery and other objects. The similarity between different structures in terms of size and form is very strong: the orien- • « « thermal structure oven ft storage containers tig- 3. Building no. 14 at Divostin II (after Bogda no vie 19K8¿ 157 PoujjUissW Bailgy tation of one building to another Is also marked, although, as discussed below, there were three separate orientations in use. Spatial arrangement The Divostin building and. at least, two of the Ov-charovo structures are larger than the pit-huts. This difference has important implications for our examination of social structure and organisation. The larger size of the Divostin building and of two of the buildings at Isoe have the very practical implications that separate activities and more people could have been accommodated within any one structure at any one time. While there is continued evidence that activities occurred outside of buildings, there were more separate, fixed, domains dedicated to separate activities within the buildings at I'soe and Divostin II. Compared to die pit-hut camps, tile villages of surface-level structures contain more permanent, fixed and unadjustable domains of activities. Both living- and role-aspect activities occurred within these surface-level structures, although there appear more role-related activities, such as textile production. than were present in pit-huts. While the pit-huts were oval or round in plan, the surface level structures were rectilinear in form; this distinction has two important implications. On the one hand, the interiors of rectilinear buildings can be divided easily into smaller rooms and sub-units; the division of oval or round interiors sacrifices space to acutely angled corners. The potential for subdivision, and for easily addedon external rooms, suggests that in the rectilinear surface structures, the expansion of building-based groups, over time, could be accommodated within the same space or physically attached extensions. Thus rectilinear structures allowed efficient subdivision of interior space. The abilities or needs to establish dedicated activity domains and to subdivide interior space were significant architectural developments. The former process solved the crisis of simultaneity , which had restricted the number of different activities which could be carried out at the same time within a building. Furthermore, the subdivision of interior space helped to prevent or avoid conflict, interference and disturbance between different activities or people. It is also significant that rectilinear structures use external. village, space more efficiently than do circular forms of building: quite simply, more rectilinear than curvilinear buildings can be packed into the same area of space. In this sense, the use of rectilinear buildings implies that the area available for building was limited or, perhaps more importantly, that certain areas of space w ere deemed more appro priate or preferable for building than were others. At both Divostin and at Ovcharovo-gorata. buildings were arranged in particular spatial relationships to other buildings. On the most general level, buildings at both sites were focused on a common place; the sense of the aggregation of buildings is strong, especially at Ovcharovo-gorata, where buildings are packed tightly into a shared village space. At both sites structures were built with concern also for a common pattern of village order. At Divostin II. buildings share a common orientation of floorplans. At Ovcharovo-gorata, the sense of organisation in village layout is even more evident. Here there are three separate orientations: one to the northeast (Buildings 1-8 and 12); one to the southwest (Buildings 19-27); and a third between the other two (Buildings 9-11 and 13-18). Creation, abandonment and destruction of surface-level structures In terms of their creation, surface-level structures were built of more substantial and durable materials than were pit-huts. Building-walls were made of larger wooden posts, which were often set down into foundation trenches; posts were interwoven with branches and twigs and covered with clay and mud. In other regions, such as northern Greece and in the Danube Gorges, stone was used to form the lower parts of walls: in northern Greece, mud was mixed with clay and straw, shaped into blocks, dried in the sun to make mud-bricks' and used in building w alls. Hearths and ovens were substantial and often had stone foundations. Many of the building materials in use required secondary and tertiary stages of transformation or acquisition: thus trees were cut and split into timbers and carried to the village: clay and stone was brought from streams, mud-bricks were formed and dried. In some cases walls were covered with layers of plaster. In all of these ways, surface level structures of the Neolithic are better understood in terms of Ingold's definition of construction: people were using new combinations of material, some of which required significant investments of time and labour, to create an end-product w hich was much more than the sum of its parts. The investment of people in place evident in these surface level structures was greater than was the case for pit-huts. 158 The built environment: pit-huts and nouses s\ the Neolithic Building duration, abandonment and destruction The succession of repairs to walls, ovens and hearths, the relaying of floors and the reconstruction of buildings with their floor-plans in direct repetition of earlier generations of buildings document the desires which people had to occupy these places over relatively long periods of time. Perhaps most telling as an indicator of the duration of surface level buildings was the long-term repetition of structures seen in the four successive phases of buildings at Ovcha-rovo-gorata. In those cases, especially in the western Balkans, where buildings were not reconstructed in direct vertical repetition of floorplans. new buildings expanded the area of v illages horizontally; sequential connections were maintained by adhering to common orientations of buildings. In the light of the greater investment in die construction and maintenance of these surface structures, it is not surprising that events of building abandonment or destruction had greater significance as well. Increasingly through die later phases of the Neolithic in southeastern Europe, the end of many buildings use-life was marked by intentional destruction by burning. Stev anovic and Tringham have argued dial the firing of buildings were important social events linked to the changing composition of village communities (Steranovic 1996: 1997; Tringham /995). Social consequences of rectilinear surface structures The characteristics of the architecture of buildings at Ovcharovo-gorata Divostin II and many similar sites across southeastern Europe after 6500 BC have important implications for the organisation and structure of society in these communities, especially when compared with those of pit-hut camps. Perhaps most importantly, there appears a new ideology about the connection of groups of people to particular places in the landscape. While the relationships between people in pit-hut communities were defined and maintained through agreements, negotiations and alliances in which permanence of place was not an important factor, surface-level communities developed their social relationships via descent, which was grounded, repeatedly, in particular buildings which were firmly anchored to particular places. Thus with surface-level structures there appeared a rise in the importance and value of the specific pla- ces in which people conducted their lives. This is evident within the construction (in the sense of that term suggested above) of individual buildings and in the concentration of buildings into, mainly, tightly packed villages. The emphasis w as on permanence and continuity, of grounding people in places. The concentration of buildings within a v illage. distinct from the disorganised or linear arrangements of many pit-hut camps, suggests that the people within the v illages of surface-level structures may have needed to live and work together. One possible focus for communal work may have been increasing labour demands of field-based agriculture. If this was the case, then for parts of the year, the local workforce would have needed to have been in regular contact. The aggregation of buildings into villages would have prov ided a physical focus for contact and collaboration. If groups of people were anchored to particular places at the level of a village community, what can be inferred about people at the level of smaller groups within the village communities? The most important development evident in the appearance of surface level structures in southeastern Europe after 6500 BC was the emergence of the household as a significant social institution in which social and economic decisions were made (Bogucki 1993; Tringham 1991: 1995; Tringham and Krstuf 1990a: 1990b; Kaiser and Voytek 1989; Chapman 1989; 1990; see also Bawden 1982; Setting et at. 1984; Ellis 1988; MacEachern et al. 1989; Bourdier and AlSayyad 1989). Perhaps the most important consequence of the emergence of the household in southeastern Europe after 6500 BC is that it provided a new and powerful way in which social relationships between people could be created, maintained, manipulated and dissolved. From this perspective, houses can be seen as physical and permanent creators and regulators of relationships between people. The membership of individuals within particular households was a critical social division within the structure and organisation of these village communities. The induction of indiv iduals into household membership would have been an important focus for ritual ceremony. Thus, the burial, especially of infants and children, in household floors and the display and. perhaps intentional, breakage of anthropomorphic figurines probably were the foci of ceremonies employed to declare membership within households {see Bailey in press). In this sense, the identity of individuals may have been based prima- 159 Douglass W Bailey rily on their inclusion within particular households. Identities of individuals within households, in turn, may have been based on the different skills, tasks and knowledges, which each particular person brought to the group. From this perspective it is possible to see that the built env ironment was a powerful factor in the production of individuals' identities. Just as individuals obtained identities through their incorporation within particular households which were grounded in surface level structures, so also did the households themselves acquire identities. Identities of individual households were probably based on differentials of building size, contents and the particularities of individual household membership. Differentials between households within the same village and the inter relationship of household to household, both for co-operative, communal activities as well as for more divisive, perhaps competitive behaviour would have formed the fabric of village social structure, lite built environment was the basic component of this structure. Where more mobile communities, including those who built and used pit-huts, regulated and manipulated social relationships through mostly temporary or ephemeral short-term co-residence or verbal agreements. rituals and ceremonies, the physical permanence of village houses invested social relationships with a strong and lasting legitimacy'. The emphasis on maintaining residence in the same place over very long periods of time which is seen in the superimposed rebuilding of houses at sites such as Ovcha-rovo-gorata, develops across much of the Balkans into multi-level tell settlements. By the end of the fifth millennium BC. community life in southeastern Europe was dominated by an ideology of the house and the household which was founded on the built environment less flexible and immune to the effects of routine negotiations and alterations. Importantly. as the examples provided were chosen to show, the distinction between the two ty pes of architecture and the social correlates suggested, cannot be explained in terms of a simple chronological dev elopment or evolution of cultural behaviour. Nor can the development of the built environment be explained aw ay in terms of a natural human desire for shelter from the elements. A more accurate explanation of the differences between the forms of architecture may rest in terms of differences in local strategies of resource exploitation, such as the distinction between tending herds of grazing animals and planting and harvesting cereals. Equally important is the possibility that different communities in southeastern Europe at this time took different decisions as to the degree of commitment they wished to make to a particular place in the landscape or to a particular set of people. The decision to settle down which both pit-huts camps and household villages represent, to v ary ing degrees, may therefore have been a decision based as much on social perceptions as on the potential of economic benefit. CONCLUSIONS Thus, the two major types of architecture built in southeastern Europe after 6500 BC reveal two different trends, in many places contemporary , of social organisation. The mobile, less permanent communities which built and used pit-hut camps were flexible social groups; inter relationships within these communities, both between individuals and between groups, were open to continuing negotiation and rearrangement. The social organisation of the more permanent communities which built and lived in villages of surface level structures were fixed, much 160 The bullí environment p