A.

Introduction
Earliest Stone Age Men:
Group life now more regular & highly organized
Communities included profl artist & skilled craftsmen.
Bestowed more car upon the bodies of the dead;
painting the corpses, folding the arms over the heart &
depositing pendants, necklaces & richly carved
weapons & tools in the graves
He formulated an elaborate system of sympathetic
magic designed to increase his food supply
Cro- Magnon could count, first systematical record
Must have invented a crude system of writing
Neolithic Culture:
Neolithic man had better mastery of his environment
He was less likely to die from a shift in climatic conditions
or form the failure of some part of his food supply
Devt of agriculture and domestication of animals
Rapid increase in population & promoted a settled
existence
The new culture was the first to distributed around over
the entire world
B. Influences
The organization of settlement and the architectural
structure of houses differed according to regions and
periods and reflected environmental, economic and
social changes taking place during the long prehistoric
period.
Building materials consisted of thick timber posts reeds,
clay (hayclay or mud-bricks) and stone for the

foundations and the upper structure (walls), while for

roofing, tree trunks, reeds, clay and hay were used.
C. Vocabulary
Barrow
Dolmen/ Cromlech
Hearth
Megalithic
Menhirs
Nuraghi
Thatch
Tholos
Tumulus
Wattle & daub
Corbell
Buttress
Ditch
Drystone
Fortification
Gallery
Henge
Megaron
Moat
Pise
Tauf
Tayalot

Tell
Trilithion
Ziggurat
D. Architectural Character
3 Germs of later architectural developments:
Hunters and fishermen in primeval times naturally
sought shelter in rock caves, and manifestly the earliest
form of human dwellings;
Tillers and soil took cover under arbours of trees, and
from them fashioned huts of wattle and daub;
Sheperds, who followed their flocks, would lie down
under coverings of skin which only had to be raised on
posts to form tents.
Natural arbours, again, would suggest huts with tree
trunks for walls and closely laid branches, covered with
turf, for roofs
Huts of this character are still in use among primitive
peoples as well as huts of two storeys with external
stairs, in the village of old Jericho.
Tents of sheepskins apeak for themselves and are still
as much in use among Bedouin Arabs and other
nomadic tribes as they can have been in prehistoric
times.
1. Dwellings
a. Huts- consisted of one room huts w/ walls made of
posts, & were built independently of each other (Nea
Nikomedeia).

b. Timber-framed houses- houses had stone foundations

and walls of mud-bricks (unfrired bricks from a
mixture of clay and hay) were built.
-Houses were rectangular, w/ 1room or possessed an
open or closed porch (megaron-type). They were built
independently of each other, on the gound floor as a
rule, while thereare indication that 2storey dwellings
also existed.
2. Other Structures
a. Monoliths- are single upright stones, known in Western
France as menhirs.
Ex. Mehirs at Lockmariaker and Carnac in Brittany, the
Latter of which is 63 ft. high, 14 ft. in diameter, and weighs
260 tons.
b. Dolmens(dol= table, maen= stone)
The name is sometimes applied to 2 or more
upright stones supporting a horizontal slab.
c. Cromlechs ( Crom= bent + a flat stone)
May be used for 3 or more upright stones, capped
by an unhewn flat stone.
d. Cirles of Stone- The most important specimen of these is
Stonehenge. Insome circles as at Stonehege, as well as
in other known circles, are found trilithons, which appear
to be a modification of dolmen.
e. Tumuli- or burial mounds were probably prototypes of the
pyramids in Egypt and of the beehive huts in Wales,
Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland.
f. Lake Dwellings- consisted of wooden huts built on piles in
the water for protection against attack. There are some
models of lake dwellings in the Zurich Museum.
Fortification-

g. Nuraghi, Nurhag- which is found in the great numbers in

the Island of Sardinia, has greatly puzzled archeologists. It
has been conjectured that they were sepulchers, the dead
being exposed on their summits.
E. Architectural Examples
From tents to round houses: 8000 BC
The tent-like structures evolve into round houses.
Jericho is the earliest known town. A small
settlement here evolves in about 8000 BC into a
town covering 10 acres. Builders of Jericho have a
new technology- a brick, shaped from mud & baked
hard in the sun, in keeping w/ a circular tradition,
each brick is curved on its outer edge.
Most of the round houses in Jericho consist of a
single room, but may have as many as 3suggesting the arrival of the social & economic
distinctions w/c have been a feature of all
developed societies.
The floor is excavated into the ground; then both
the floor & the brick walls are plastered in mud.
The roof of each room, still in the tent style, is a
conical structure of branches and mud aka wattle
and daub.
Example: Khirokitia, a settlement of about 6500 BC
in Cyprus.
Most of the rooms here have a dome-like roof in
corbelled stone or brick.
One step up from outside, to keep out the rain,
then several steps down into each room; seats &
storage spaces are shaped into the walls; & in at
least 1house there is a ladder to an upper sleeping
platform.`

 Another striking innovation at Khirokitia: a paved

road runs thru the village, a central thoroughfare
for the community, w/ paths leading off to the
count yards around w/c the houses is built.
Staright walls with windows: 6500 BC
One of the best preserved Neolithic towns is
Catal Huyuk, covering some 32 acres in southern
Turkey.
The houses are rectangular, w/ windows but no
doors. They adjoin each other, like cells in a
honeycomb & the entrance to each is thru the
roof.
The windows are a happy accident, made
possible by the sloping site. Each house projects
a little above its neighbor, providing space for
the window.