PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE

Lecturer: Syeda Tahmina Tasnim

If you had to build a shelter right now,
using only materials found in nature,
what would you use and
why?
 Timeline?
The Bronze Age settled agriculture mud and reed
Paleolithic huts and semi-
The Iron Age hunter-gatherer
Neolithic permanent houses
domestication
The Stone Age Mesolithic temporary wood
Pottery and Textiles
huts
caves
Three Age System
The three-age system is the periodization of history into time periods divisible
by three.

-The Stone Age,

-The Bronze Age
-The Iron Age

The three-age system is a methodological concept adopted during the 19th

century by which artifacts and events of late prehistory and early history could
be ordered into a recognizable chronology.
The structure reflects the cultural and historical background of Mediterranean Europe and
the Middle East and soon underwent further subdivisions, including the 1865 partitioning
of the Stone Age (for being a longer period) into

-Paleolithic period
-Mesolithic period
-Neolithic period

PALEOLITHIC PERIOD (Old Stone Age):

-Ice age Period

-The Paleolithic Age, or Old Stone Age, spanned from around 30,000 BCE until 10,000 BCE
and produced the first accomplishments in human creativity.

-A typical Paleolithic society followed a hunter-gatherer economy. Humans hunted wild

animals for meat and gathered food, firewood, and materials for their tools, clothes, or
shelters.

-At the end of the Paleolithic era, humans began to produce works of art such as cave
paintings, rock art, and jewelry, and began to engage in religious behavior such as burial and
rituals.
DWELLINGS AND SHELTERS:

-Early men chose locations that could be defended against predators and rivals and
that were shielded from inclement
weather.

-Many such locations could be found near rivers, lakes, and streams, perhaps with low
hilltops nearby that could serve as refuges.

-As early as 380,000 BCE, humans were constructing temporary wood huts.

-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.

MESOLITHIC PERIOD (Middle Stone Age):

-Ice Age Period was over

-The Mesolithic period represents the second stage of the Stone Age, which comprises the
years between 10,000 B.C., and 6,000 B.C.

- Hunting and the gathering of wild plants, grains and shells, the main types of the economy
of the Palaeolithic man was continued. Wildgoat, cattle, pig, deer, fox, hedgehog, bird, rat
and other rodents constituted the fauna of the period. A kind of domesticated pig found

at Yioura is the first evidence of animal domestication just after 8000 BC.
-It is difficult to find a unique type of artistic production during the Mesolithic Period, and
art forms developed during the Upper Paleolithic (the latest period of the Paleolithic) were
likely continued. These included cave paintings and engravings, small sculptural artifacts,
and early architecture.

-Among the new forms of chipped stone tools were microliths, very small stone tools
intended for mounting together on a shaft to produce a sharp edge. Polished stone
was another innovation that occurred in some Mesolithic assemblages.
DWELLINGS AND SHELTERS:

-The presence of architectural remains and burials on the same site suggests that a
community of hunter-gatherers settled here for a long time in order to practise also
fishing and shell-collecting.

-Some lived in small collections of huts, like in the Paleolithic period, that were
organized in villages. Others lived in walled cities and semi-permanent houses.

-Societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands created by
the warmer climate.
 TOOLS:-
hand axe,
digger
knives
spears
arrows

The Man of Bicorp: The Man of Bicorp holding

onto lianas to gather honey from a beehive as
depicted on an 8000-year-old cave painting near
Valencia, Spain.
NEOLITHIC PERIOD (New Stone Age):

-It spanned from around 7,000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C.

-The development of settled agriculture and the use of tools and weapons made of polished
stones.

-The major crops grown during this period were ragi, horse gram, cotton, rice, wheat, and
barley. They were first food producers with storage for food.

-Pottery and Textiles first appeared.

-Went from hunters to herdsmen to farmers to townsmen.

-Polytheistic (more than one god) religion

-River valley civilizations in Egypt (Nile), Mesopotamia (Tigres/Euphrates), India (Indus), China
(Yellow)

-Oldest city-Jericho, 7,000 BC

-This revolutionized man’s life and paved the way for the beginning of civilization.
Jericho City
DWELLINGS AND SHELTERS:

-The Neolithic Age is significant for its Megalithic Architecture (tombs, temples, and
structures).

-The people of this period lived in circular or rectangular houses which were made
from mud and reed.

-At some places they lived in mud-brick houses.

-The most common materials used during the period included thick timber posts,
reeds, clay, stone, and tree trunks.

-It's also known for being the first to build monoliths - monuments dedicated to
religion or social significance.
CIVILIZATION AND SHELTER

True ‘CIVILIZATION’ came when economic and social development had advanced
sufficiently to allow the building of towns and cities where men engaged in

-TRADE,

-INDUSTRY and

-PROFESSIONAL PURSUITS.

Houses varied in styles and construction methods with the change of occupation also.
The various types of shelters and structures represented the characteristics of people
and their profession.
SAVAGE:
-They’re wild, ferocious nature, and the actions of a person as savage, it means "cruel" or
"brutal."
-A place can also be described as savage if it's untamed, uninhabitable, and unwelcoming.

They were basically engaged in-

Hunting
Fishing
Food Gathering
Nomads

The ‘Savage’ Hunter sought shelter in

ROCKCAVES

STRUCTURES:

HUTS of reeds, rushes and wattle-and-daub

TENTS of saplings sheathed in barks, skin, turves or brushwood
BARBARIAN:
-People with uncivilized culture, or a person with no knowledge of manners.
-Started Agriculture and Cattle Bearing nearly 10000 years ago.

They were basically engaged in

-Crop Harvesting
-Cattle Bearing
-Settled life

STRUCTURES:

-Rectangular or Round Houses of Stone, Clay and Timber in the settlements established near
the crops.
-When towns developed, houses had to be adapted to urban conditions, more solidly built,
crowded together, and rising to two or more stories.
COMMUNAL NEEDS

Once the need for Shelter and

Subsistence were met,
communal needs became prominent

-Taming landscape
-Water supply
-Building fortification
SACRED SPACES
Beyond that, the greatest achievements of rising civilizations were usually works of a
SACRED CHARACTER, places for

-WORSHIP
-TOMB
Megaliths
-A megalithic structure is a prehistoric monument made of large stones.

-Megalith comes from Greek; "mega“ means big and "lithos“ means stone.

-Megalithic structures can be found across Europe in Great Britain, Ireland, France,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Corsica, and Malta.
These structures can also be found in Russia, the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
CATEGORIES OF MEGALITHS:
Even though separated by great distances, many of the structures look alike and
can be separated into three categories:

1. Menhir structures-the upright or standing stones. Standing stones are

often arranged in circles or lines.

Monolithic ‘Menhirs’
Ex_ Menhirs at Locmariaker and Carnac at Brittany.
The one in Carnac is 63 ft high, 14 ft in diametre, weighs 260 tons.
2. Dolmens – three or more upright stones with a stone that balances on top. Dolmen
structures acted as a burial ground. A Cairn is a dry stone encasement of one or several
burial chambers.
-Built of Massive stones of a stounding size.

-Shaped with the most primitive stone/bronze tools.

-Earthen mounds containing UPRIGHT and LINTEL stone forming a chamber.

-The chamber was used as a burial place for a several to a couple of hundred persons.

-Most of the mare free standing today and were part of round/long Barrow.
3. Tumulus- is a mound of earth, grass, and stones that covers a tomb. Where as the
Dolmen and Cairn provide access to the burial chamber, a Tumulus is totally closed off by
dirt.
Thank you
STONEHENGE