Pour une nouvelle conception de l’architecture domestique protohistorique métamorphosable dans le nord de la Grande Bretagne

Prehistoric houses typically survive as pits and postholes. These plough-truncated buildings rarely preserve clear evidence for internal use, but one exception is a group of British roundhouses. Wear around their periphery created flat-bottomed gullies, interpreted as resulting from stalling animals. Disentangling these wear patterns can identify individual phases of use with implications for the houses’ superstructure and the underlying architectural concepts.
Detailed architectural analysis of later prehistoric houses, here exemplified by Scottish roundhouses, has concluded that the underlying concepts of architectural design were much more dynamic than previously anticipated. A metamorphosing architecture emerged that was more process than product and not restricted to organic materials, but that finds equivalent expression in stone. Ongoing work by the author is testing these conclusions against wider geographical and chronological parameters.