• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Lake Dwellers / Pile Dwellings (Alps Region; Neolithic & Bronze Age)

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 19, 2004
Messages
29,622
Location
Out of Bounds
In the mid 19th century Swiss archaeologist Ferdinand Keller examined vertical wooden piles exposed by a drop in water level at Lake Zürich. Similar pilings were subsequently discovered at lake sites around Switzerland (and eventually throughout continental Europe). Keller proposed that the pilings were the remains of villages built on stilts over the lakes' waters. This notion of prehistoric villages existing out over lakes became popular.

A lesser known 19th century archaeologist - Albert Jahn - agreed that the pilings were used to elevate structures, but not out in the lakes. Jahn believed they were stilt houses erected on shores or in marshy environments that were subject to flooding. Jahn's interpretation is now the more widely accepted one.

For more on these prehistoric settlements see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_pile_dwellings_around_the_Alps

https://web.archive.org/web/2012040...wellings_reveal_hidden_past.html?cid=30542748

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24937169?seq=1
 
Newly analyzed discoveries indicate the area around Lake Lucerne was settled up to 2,000 years earlier than previously believed.
3,000-Year-Old Submerged Settlement Discovered in Switzerland

Traces of a prehistoric pile dwelling suggest humans inhabited the Lake Lucerne area 2,000 years earlier than previously thought

Archaeologists surveying Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne have discovered the remains of a submerged Bronze Age village.

... Though researchers have long searched for proof of early habitation in the Lucerne region, a thick layer of mud had obscured traces of the village until recently.

Per a statement from the local government, construction of a pipeline at Lake Lucerne offered underwater archaeologists the chance to examine the lakebed up close. The ... team recovered about 30 wooden poles and 5 ceramic fragments at depths of roughly 10 to 13 feet.

Experts used radiocarbon analysis to date the artifacts to about 1000 B.C., when the lake level was more than 16 feet lower than it is today ...

The team identified the wooden sticks found at the site as supports used in pile dwellings, or prehistoric coastal houses that stood on stilts. Dwellings of this kind were common in and around the Alps between 5000 and 500 B.C. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-bronze-age-settlement-switzerland-180977651/
 
Perhaps the oldest stilt village. maybe stilt walkers originated here.

Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Ohrid, the "Pearl of the Balkans", scientists have uncovered what may be one of Europe's earliest sedentary communities, and are trying to solve the mystery of why it sheltered behind a fortress of defensive spikes.

A stretch of the Albanian shore of the lake once hosted a settlement of stilt houses some 8,000 years ago, archaeologists believe, making it the oldest lakeside village in Europe discovered to date.

Radiocarbon dating from the site puts it at between 6000 and 5800 BC.

"It is several hundred years older than previously known lake-dwelling sites in the Mediterranean and Alpine regions," said Albert Hafner, a professor of archaeology from Switzerland's University of Bern.

"To our knowledge, it is the oldest in Europe," he told AFP.

The most ancient other such villages were discovered in the Italian Alps and date to around 5000 BC, said the expert in European Neolithic lake dwellings. ...

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-archaeologists-uncover-europe-oldest-stilt.html
 
Back
Top