Prehistoric

• Vernacular architecture


  Architecture derived from the Latin vernaculus, meaning domestic, native, indigenous
• Vernacular architecture


  • Category of architecture based on local needs and construction materials and reflecting local traditions
  • Tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural, technological, and historical context in which it exists
  • Rearranging the environment it becomes architecture
  • Provides protection from animals, tribe, and natural calamities
• Five principal features of vernacular architecture

  • The builders, whether artisans or those who planning to live in the buildings, are non-professional architects or engineers
  • There is consonant adaptation, using natural materials, to the geography
  • The actual process of construction involves intuitive thinking, done without the use of blueprints or any for construction drawings
  • There is balance between social & economic functionality and aesthetic features
  • Architectural patterns and styles are subject to a protracted evolution of traditional styles specific to an ethnic domain
• Vernacular buildings also demonstrates the achievements and limitations of early technology, utilizing technologies learened only through tradition
• Vernacular architecture can address the most common of structural problems with simplicity and logical arrangment of elements
• Primitive races of antiquity

  Required only the simplest kinds of buildings, though the purposes which they served were the same as those of later times in civilized communities
• Primitive buildings


  • Hut or house for shelter
  • Shrine for worship
  • Stockade for defense
  • Cairn or mound over the grave of the chief or hero
• Early human dwellings and shelters

  • Chosen locations that could be defended against predators and rivals and that were shielded from inclement weather
  • Many located near rivers, lakes, and streams, perhaps with low hilltops nearby that could serve as refuges
  • Constructed temporary wood huts as early as 380,000 BC
• Types of early human dwellings

  • Shelters within caves
  • Houses of wood, straw, and rock
  • Houses built out of bones
• Caves used by Stone Age people have been found in many regions of the world
• Lascaux Caves


  • Used about ten to twenty thousand years ago
  • Used by several generation of people
  • Entered through one entry to a large hall
  • Interior has elaborate paintings of animals and hunting scenes

  
• Timeline of prehistoric period

  • Paleolithic Age
  • Mesolithic period
  • Neolithic
  • Megalithic
• Paleolithic dwellings


  • Hut
  • Lean-to
  • Tent
  • Pit house
• Huts


  • Oval huts located in shoreline
  • Made of 75mm diameter in stake
  • Supported with ring of stones
  • Supported with 300mm diameter posts
  • Organic flooring
• Lean-to


  • Erected against the wall of a cave
  • Animal or any organic material cover
  • Supported with 2 posts
• Tents


  • Wooden post driven into earth
  • Covered with animal skin or organic material
  • Secured withe large wooden pegs
• Pit House


  • Shallow ground depression
  • Surrounded by posts with rings of mammoth bones and tusks
• Early Neolithic settlement: Structure 075, Wadi Faynan, Jordan, 9600 BC


  • Elliptical structure composed of a large central mud-plastered area bordered by benches
  • Benches suggest a place for people to watch the activity being performed in the central area
  • Grinding stones suggest food processing was the focus of the public activity
• Early Neolithic settlement: Skara Brae, Mainland, Scotland, 3200 BC


  • Cellular structure
  • Floor compartments
  • Interconnected by covered corridors, suggesting a tightly linked community
• Timber framed House, 6220 BC


  • Square plan
  • Mud wall supported by a framework of oak sampling, 1m footing
  • Plastered white clay
  • Roof with smoke hole
• Longhouses, 4200 BC


  • Houses grouped together
  • Oriented to northwest to southeast direction
  • Entrance oriented southeast
  • Gabled roof
  • Floors made of clay on a base logs
  • Roof with turf or thatch with smoke hole
• Types of tombs


  • Passage graves
  • Gallery graves
• Passage grave: Maeshowe


  • Neolithic chambered cairn and passage grave
  • Mainland, Orkney, Scotland, 2800 BC
  • Grass mound hides a complex of passages
  • Chambers built of carefully crafted slabs of flagstone weighing up to 30 tons
  • Aligned so that the rear wall of its central chamber held up by a bracketed wall is illuminated on the winter solstice
• Gallery grave: Ġgantija


  • Neolithic, megalithic temple complex on the Mediterranean island of Gozo
  • Temples are older than the pyramids of Egypt, built during the Neolithic Age (c. 3600-2500 BC)
  • Possibly the site of a Fertility cult
• Mesopotamia refers to the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
• The Fertile Crescent is an agricultural region that runs along the foot of the Taurus and Zagros mountains in a broad arc from the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean to present-day Iraq
• A vast network of villages had formed in the highlands of Mesopotamia
• Ġgantija


  • Neolithic, megalithic temple complex on the Mediterranean island of Gozo
  • Temples are older than the pyramids of Egypt
  • Temples were erected during the Neolithic Age (c. 3600-2500 BC)
  • Temples are more than 5500 years old and the world's second oldest manmade religious structures, after Göbekli Tepe
  • Possibly the site of a Fertility cult
• Mesopotamia


  • Fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
  • Part of the Fertile Crescent agricultural region
  • Vast network of villages had formed in the highlands
  • One of the most productive grain-bearing regions in the world
• Urbanization of Mesopotamia


  1. 9000 BCE: Hilltop cities evolved

  2. 5000 BCE: Largest network of villages and cities in the world
• Khirokitia


  • Family unit consisted of several circular structures combined around a small open space
  • No central village religious site, burials took place within the space of a family unit's house
• Çatalhöyük


  • City consisted of rectangular flat roofed houses packed together into a single architectural mass with no streets or passageways
  • Inhabitants moved across rooftops and descended into their homes through the roofs via ladders
  • Walls were made of mud bricks reinforced by massive oak posts
  • If a family died out, its house was abandoned for a period of time
  • Typical residence contained one large room connected to smaller storage rooms, equipped with benches, ovens, and bins
• Megalithic structures


  • Dolmen
  • Menhir
  • Cromlech
  • Tumulus
  • Cairn
  • Stonehenge
• Stonehenge


  • Trilithons, medieval gallows consisted of two uprights with a lintel joining them
  • Redesigned from a lunar to a solar monument by the Beaker People
  • Addition of a ring of sixty large bluestones to the interior
• Menhir


  Upright Megalith, standing alone or sometimes aligned with others
• Megalith


  Large stone used as found or roughly dressed
• Monolith


  Single block of stone of considerable size, e.g. obelisk or column
• Cairn


  Heap of stones piled up as a monument or tombstone
• Cromlech


  Circular arrangement of megaliths enclosing a dolmen or burial mound
• Dolmen


  Consisting of two or more large upright stones supporting a horizontal stone slab