PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY

URDANETA CAMPUS
College of Engineering and Architecture
Department of Architecture

HOA 111
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE 1
RSW01: “Prehistoric Architecture”

SORIA, CHRISTIAN PAUL B. ARCH. ZALDY F. CORPUZ, UAP

Student Instructor

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PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE

Stonehenge / Wikimedia ns

The term prehistory references the period before history was written down,
prior to any kind of written explanation of culture and civilization.  This discussion
covers architecture during the period we call the Late New Stone Age.  This is a very
small segment or cross-section of prehistory.  Prehistory basically covers the Old
Stone Age, Middle Stone Age, and New Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic and
Neolithic ) periods, as well as portions of the Bronze and Iron Ages.  These ages
refer to the materials with which tools were made during those periods.  So the
earliest tools were made of stone and then people developed bronze and iron metal
tools.  The Three-Age System was developed by Danish antiquarian Christian
Jürgensen Thomsen, who was able to use the Danish national collection of
antiquities and the records of their finds as well as reports from contemporaneous
excavations to provide a solid empirical basis for the system. He showed that
artifacts could be classified into types and that these types varied over time in ways
that correlated with the predominance of stone, bronze or iron implements and
weapons.1

The definition of prehistoric architecture is, quite literally, pre-history. In other

words from a time before mankind was capable of recording its history in writing.
This makes the prehistoric era one that is very difficult to define, dating back tens of
thousands of years. For an era that is so vast it’s difficult to recognise any real
themes in its architecture, but there are a few key forms and concepts that pre-date
any known civilization, and were significant enough that they would influence key
architectural developments in the centuries and millennia to come.

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FATHER OF HISTORY
Herodotus is undoubtedly the “Father of History.” Born in Halicarnassus in
Ionia in the 5th century B.C., he wrote “The Histories.” In this text are found his
“inquiries” which later became to modern scholars to mean “facts of history.” He is
best known for recounting, very objectively, the Greco-Persian wars of the late 5th
century. He is revered for his honesty as he explains in his writing that he is not sure
of the veracity of the supposed events and scenes that occurred but is only writing
down what he gathers from his numerous travels through the Greek world.

Much of his biography remains uncertain. Gathering from his own works and
accounts of his travels, Herodotus must have come from a relatively wealthy family.
It is believed that he was exiled from Halicanassus by the tyrant Lygdamis and lived
in Samos until he returned to assist the removal of his foe. He spent time in Athens
and even joined the colony of Thurii. He was buried either in Thurii or in Pella, which
is in the Macedonian region.

STONE AGE
The Stone Age marks a period of prehistory in which humans used primitive stone
tools. Lasting roughly 2.5 million years, the Stone Age ended around 5,000 years
ago when humans in the Near East began working with metal and making tools and
weapons from bronze.
During the Stone Age, humans shared the planet with a number of now-extinct
hominin relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.
When Was the Stone Age?
The Stone Age began about 2.6 million years ago, when researchers found
the earliest evidence of humans using stone tools, and lasted until about 3,300 B.C.
when the Bronze Age began. It is typically broken into three distinct periods: the
Paleolithic Period, Mesolithic Period and Neolithic Period.
The concept of a "Stone Age" is found useful in the archaeology of most of the
world, although in the archaeology of the Americas it is called by different names and
begins with a Lithic stage, or sometimes Paleo-Indian. The sub-divisions described
below are used for Eurasia, and not consistently across the whole area

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PALEOLITHIC

Proposed map of early human migrations, according to mitochondrial population

genetics with numbers that are millennia before the present (its accuracy is disputed)
"Palaeolithic" means "Old Stone Age", and begins with the first use of stone
tools. The Paleolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age.
The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Palaeolithic, which
predates Homo sapiens, beginning with Homo habilis (and related species) and the
earliest stone tools, dated to around 2.5 million years ago. [15] Evidence of control of
fire by early humans during the Lower Palaeolithic Era is uncertain and has at best
limited scholarly support. The most widely accepted claim is that H. erectus or H.
ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP (before the present period) in
a site at Bnot Ya'akov Bridge, Israel. The use of fire enabled early humans to cook
food, provide warmth, and have a light source at night.
Early Homo sapiens originated some 200,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle
Palaeolithic. Anatomic changes indicating modern language capacity also arise
during the Middle Palaeolithic. [16] During the Middle Palaeolithic Era, there is the first
definitive evidence of human use of fire. Sites in Zambia have charred bone and
wood that have been dated to 61,000 BP. The systematic burial of the
dead, music, early art, and the use of increasingly sophisticated multi-part tools are
highlights of the Middle Paleolithic.
Throughout the Palaeolithic, humans generally lived as nomadic hunter-
gatherers. Hunter-gatherer societies tended to be very small and egalitarian,
[17]
 although hunter-gatherer societies with abundant resources or advanced food-
storage techniques sometimes developed sedentary lifestyles with complex social
structures such as chiefdoms,[18] and social stratification. Long-distance contacts may
have been established, as in the case of Indigenous Australian "highways" known
as songlines.[19]

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MESOLITHIC

The Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age (from the Greek mesos, 'middle', and lithos,

'stone'), was a period in the development of human technology between the
Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.
The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, some 10,000
BP, and ended with the introduction of agriculture, the date of which varied by
geographic region. In some areas, such as the Near East, agriculture was already
underway by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short and poorly
defined. In areas with limited glacial impact, the term "Epipalaeolithic" is sometimes
preferred.
Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last ice
age ended have a much more evident Mesolithic era, lasting millennia. In Northern
Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from
the marshlands fostered by the warmer climate. Such conditions produced distinctive
human behaviours that are preserved in the material record, such as
the Maglemosian and Azilian cultures. These conditions also delayed the coming of
the Neolithic until as late as 4000 BCE (6,000 BP) in northern Europe.
Remains from this period are few and far between, often limited to middens. In
forested areas, the first signs of deforestation have been found, although this would
only begin in earnest during the Neolithic, when more space was needed
for agriculture.
The Mesolithic is characterized in most areas by small
composite flint tools: microliths and microburins. Fishing tackle, stone adzes, and
wooden objects, e.g. canoes and bows, have been found at some sites. These
technologies first occur in Africa, associated with the Azilian cultures, before
spreading to Europe through the Ibero-Maurusian culture of Northern Africa and
the Kebaran culture of the Levant. However, independent discovery is not ruled out.

NEOLITHIC

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Entrance to the Ġgantija phase temple complex of Ħaġar Qim, Malta, 3900 BCE[20]

An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing
tools - Neolithic stone artifacts are by definition polished and, except for specialty
items, not chipped

"Neolithic" means "New Stone Age". Although there were several species of
human beings during the Paleolithic, by the Neolithic only Homo sapiens
sapiens remained.[21] (Homo floresiensis may have survived right up to the very dawn
of the Neolithic, about 12,200 years ago.) [22] This was a period of
primitive technological and social development. It began about 10,200 BCE in some
parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world [23] and ended between
4,500 and 2,000 BCE. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural
characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops and
of domesticated animals.
Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and
domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping
of dogs, sheep, and goats. By about 6,900–6,400 BCE, it included
domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally
inhabited settlements, and the use of pottery. The Neolithic period saw the
development of early villages, agriculture, animal domestication, tools, and the onset
of the earliest recorded incidents of warfare. [24] The Neolithic era commenced with
the beginning of farming, which produced the "Neolithic Revolution". It ended when
metal tools became widespread (in the Copper Age or Bronze Age; or, in some
geographical regions, in the Iron Age). The term Neolithic is commonly used in

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the Old World, as its application to cultures in the Americas and Oceania that did not
fully develop metal-working technology raises problems. [specify]

The monumental building at Luni sul Mignone in Blera, Italy, 3500 BCE

Settlements became more permanent with some having circular houses with
single rooms made of mudbrick. Settlements might have a surrounding stone wall to
keep domesticated animals in and protect the inhabitants from other tribes. Later
settlements have rectangular mud-brick houses where the family lived together in
single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where
people preserved skulls of the dead. The Vinča culture may have created the earliest
system of writing.[25] The megalithic temple complexes of Ġgantija are notable for
their gigantic structures. Although some late Eurasian Neolithic societies formed
complex stratified chiefdoms or even states, states evolved in Eurasia only with the
rise of metallurgy, and most Neolithic societies on the whole were relatively simple
and egalitarian.[26] Most clothing appears to have been made of animal skins, as
indicated by finds of large numbers of bone and antler pins which are ideal for
fastening leather. Wool cloth and linen might have become available during the later
Neolithic,[27][28] as suggested by finds of perforated stones that (depending on size)
may have served as spindle whorls or loom weights.[29][30][31]

BRONZE AGE

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An image of an ox-drawn plow is accompanied by script, Egypt, c. 1200 BCE
The Bronze Age is the earliest period in which some civilizations have reached
the end of prehistory, by introducing written records. The Bronze Age or parts thereof
are thus considered to be part of prehistory only for the regions and civilizations who
adopted or developed a system of keeping written records during later periods.
The invention of writing coincides in some areas with the Bronze Age. Soon after the
appearance of writing, people started creating texts including written accounts of
events and records of administrative matters.
The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the
most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) included
techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of ores,
and then combining them to cast bronze. These naturally occurring ores typically
included arsenic as a common impurity. Copper and tin ores are rare, as reflected in
the fact that there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before 3000 BCE. The
Bronze Age forms part of the three-age system for prehistoric societies. In this
system, it follows the Neolithic in some areas of the world.
While copper is a common ore, deposits of tin are rare in the Old World, and
often had to be traded or carried considerable distances from the few mines,
stimulating the creation of extensive trading routes. In many areas as far apart as
China and England, the valuable new material was used for weapons but for a long
time apparently not available for agricultural tools. Much of it seems to have been
hoarded by social elites, and sometimes deposited in extravagant quantities,
from Chinese ritual bronzes and Indian copper hoards to European hoards of unused
axe-heads.
By the end of the Bronze Age large states, which are often called empires, had
arisen in Egypt, China, Anatolia (the Hittites), and Mesopotamia, all of them literate.

IRON AGE

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 The Iron Age is not part of prehistory for all civilizations who had introduced written
records during the Bronze Age. Most remaining civilizations did so during the Iron
Age, often through conquest by the empires, which continued to expand during this
period. For example, in most of Europe conquest by the Roman Empire means that
the term Iron Age is replaced by "Roman", "Gallo-Roman", and similar terms after
the conquest.
In archaeology, the Iron Age refers to the advent of ferrous metallurgy. The
adoption of iron coincided with other changes in some past cultures, often including
more sophisticated agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles, which
makes the archaeological Iron Age coincide with the "Axial Age" in the history of
philosophy. Although iron ore is common, the metalworking techniques necessary to
use iron are very different from those needed for the metal used earlier, and iron was
slow-spreading and for long mainly used for weapons, while bronze remained typical
for tools, as well as art.

DWELLINGS CAVE

Cave Dwellings. Cave dwellings are common in certain areas of northern

China where they serve as homes for more than 40 million people. In the provinces
of Shaanxi and Shanxi where the yellow earth (called loess) is quite compacted,
cave houses have been in use for centuries.

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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. Since water can erode and change landscapes quite drastically, many of
these campsites have been destroyed. Our understanding of Paleolithic dwellings is
therefore limited.

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

Other types of houses existed; these were more frequently campsites in caves or in
the open air with little in the way of formal structure. 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.

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CAVES
Caves are the most famous example of Paleolithic shelters, though the number
of caves used by Paleolithic people is drastically small relative to the number of
hominids thought to have lived on Earth at the time. Most hominids probably never
entered a cave, much less lived in one. Nonetheless, the remains of hominid
settlements show interesting patterns. In one cave, a tribe of Neanderthals kept a
hearth fire burning for a thousand years, leaving behind an accumulation of coals
and ash. In another cave, post holes in the dirt floor reveal that the residents built
some sort of shelter or enclosure with a roof to protect themselves from water
dripping on them from the cave ceiling. They often used the rear portions of the cave
as middens, depositing their garbage there.

In the Upper Paleolithic (the latest part of the Paleolithic), caves ceased to act
as houses. Instead, they likely became places for early people to gather for ritual and
religious purposes.

LASCAUX
Lascaux (circa 15,000 BCE), in southwestern France, is an interconnected
series of caves with one of the most impressive examples of artistic creations by
Paleolithic humans.

Discovered in 1940, the cave contains nearly two thousand figures, which can
be grouped into three main categories—animals, human figures, and abstract signs.
Over nine hundred images depict animals from the surrounding areas, such as
horses, stags, aurochs, bison, lions, bears, and birds—species that would have been

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hunted and eaten, and those identified as predators. The paintings contain no
images of the surrounding landscape or the vegetation of the time.

The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave (circa 30,000 BCE) in the Ardèche department of

southern France contains some of the earliest known paintings, as well as other
evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. The Chauvet Cave is uncharacteristically large,
and the quality, quantity, and condition of the artwork found on its walls have been
called spectacular. Hundreds of animal paintings have been catalogued, depicting at
least thirteen different species—not only the familiar herbivores that predominate
Paleolithic cave art, but also many predatory animals, such as cave lions, panthers,
bears, and cave hyenas.

Drawings of horses from the Chauvet Cave in France: The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc

Cave in the Ardèche department of southern France is a cave that contains some of
the earliest known cave paintings.

As is typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures
in Chauvet. There are a few panels of red ochre hand prints and hand stencils made
by spitting pigment over hands pressed against the cave surface. Abstract markings
—lines and dots—are found throughout the cave.

The artists who produced these unique paintings used techniques rarely found
in other cave art. Many of the paintings appear to have been made after the walls
were scraped clear of debris and concretions, leaving a smoother and noticeably
lighter area upon which the artists worked. Similarly, a three-dimensional quality and
the suggestion of movement are achieved by incising or etching around the outlines
of certain figures. The art also includes scenes that were complex for its time—
animals interacting with each other. For instance, a pair of wooly rhinoceroses are
seen butting horns in an apparent contest for territory or mating rights.

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TIPI
Tepee, also spelled tipi, conical tent most common to the North
American Plains Indians. Although a number of Native American groups used similar
structures during the hunting season, only the Plains Indians adopted tepees as
year-round dwellings, and then only from the 17th century onward. At that time the
Spanish introduction of horses, guns, and metal implements enabled Plains peoples
to become mounted nomads. The tepee was an ideal dwelling for these groups, as it
could be easily disassembled and transported.

The tepee was generally made by stretching a cover sewn of dressed buffalo
skins over a framework of wooden poles; in some cases reed mats, canvas, sheets
of bark, or other materials were used for the covering. Women were responsible for
tepee construction and maintenance. In raising a tepee, a woman would begin with 3
or 4 poles, depending upon her tribe’s preferences. These first few poles acted as
the keystones of a conical framework that was augmented by some 20 to 30 lighter
poles, all leaning toward a central point and tied together a short distance from the
top. An adjustable flap was left open at the top to allow smoke to escape, and a flap
at the bottom served as a doorway. Tepees were usually 12 to 20 feet (3.5 to 6
metres) high and 15 to 30 feet (4.5 to 9 metres) in diameter, although larger
structures were not uncommon. When very large shelters were needed, two pole
frameworks could be set adjacent to one another in a figure-eight shape, with poles
and covers left out of the adjoining walls. Many examples are known of small tepees
sized for children’s playhouses and very small tepees sized for dollhouses.

It was common for Native Americans to devote much of the winter season to
decorating their tepees with colourful paintings of animals and the hunt. The beauty
and gracefulness of the tepee made it the popular image of the home of all
indigenous Americans, although
the wickiup (wigwam), hogan, igloo, longhouse, pueblo, and earth lodge were
equally important examples of Native American dwellings.

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WIGWAM

A wigwam is a domed or cone-shaped house that was historically used

by Indigenous peoples. It was prevalent in the eastern half of North America before
the era of colonization. Today, wigwams are used for cultural functions and
ceremonial purposes. (See also Architectural History of Indigenous Peoples in
Canada.)

A wigwam was a type of house used mainly by Algonquian peoples but also
other Indigenous peoples in the eastern half of North America in precolonial days.
(See also  Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Woodlands in Canada.) Wigwams had
a cone shape (or a dome shape among some Subarctic Indigenous peoples) and
were typically made out of wood. Sometimes, animal hides would cover the outer
walls of the structure. Wigwams were built for easy disassembling and reassembling
so that hunting parties and travelling families could have shelter in their new location.

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HOGAN

Hogan, traditional dwelling and ceremonial structure of the Navajo Indians of

Arizona and New Mexico. Early hogans were dome-shaped buildings with log, or
occasionally stone, frameworks. Once framed, the structure was then covered with
mud, dirt, or sometimes sod. The entrance generally faced east, toward the rising
sun, and was usually covered with a blanket. Except for a circular opening in the roof
to allow smoke to escape, traditional hogans were without windows or interior
divisions.

By the early 21st century, hogan architecture had changed somewhat to

accommodate new construction materials and techniques. Typically hexagonal or
octagonal buildings with notched-log or balloon-frame construction, they maintained
traditional design elements such as the generally circular floor plan and eastward-
facing door.

TRULLO

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 Trullo ,plural Trulli,conical,stone-roofed building unique to
the regione of Puglia (Apulia) in southeastern Italy and especially to the town of
Alberobello, where they are used as dwellings. Upon a whitewashed cylindrical wall,
circles of gray stone, held in place by lateral opposition and gravity and without
mortar, were piled to a pinnacle. Probably originating with a local Stone Age culture,
the trulli have been perpetuated as a folk tradition, possibly because of the local
shortage of lumber and the abundance of stone fragments that must be removed to
permit land cultivation. Trulli are protected by Italian law as national monuments.

MENHIR

A menhir (from Brittonic languages: maen or men, "stone" and hir or hîr,

"long"[1]), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large man-made upright stone,
typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found
individually as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar stones. Menhirs' size can
vary considerably, but often taper toward the top.
They are widely distributed across Europe, Africa and Asia, but are most
numerous in Western Europe; particularly in Ireland, Great Britain and Brittany,
where there are about 50,000 examples, [2] and there are 1,200 menhirs in northwest
France alone.[3] Standing stones are usually difficult to date. They were constructed
during many different periods across pre-history as part of the
larger megalithic cultures in Europe and near areas.
Some menhirs have been erected next to buildings that often have an early
or current religious significance. One example is the South Zeal Menhir in Devon,
which formed the basis for a 12th-century monastery built by lay monks. The
monastery later became the Oxenham Arms hotel, at South Zeal, and the standing
stone remains in place in the ancient snug bar at the hotel.
Where menhirs appear in groups, often in a circular, oval,  henge or
horseshoe formation, they are sometimes called megalithic monuments. These are
sites of ancient religious ceremonies, sometimes containing burial chambers. [4] The

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exact function of menhirs has provoked more debate than practically any other issue
in European pre-history. Over the centuries, they have variously been thought to
have been used by Druids for human sacrifice, used as territorial markers, or
elements of a complex ideological system, used as mnemonic systems
for oral cultures,[5] or functioned as early calendars. [6] Until the nineteenth century,
antiquarians did not have substantial knowledge of prehistory, and their only
reference points were provided by classical literature. The developments
of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology have significantly advanced scientific
knowledge in this area.
The word menhir was adopted from French by 19th-century archaeologists.
The introduction of the word into general archaeological usage has been attributed to
the 18th-century French military officer Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne.[7] It
is a combination of two words of the Breton language: maen and hir. In modern
Welsh, they are described as maen hir, or "long stone". In modern Breton, the
word peulvan is used, with peul meaning "stake" or "post" and van which is a soft
mutation of the word maen which means "stone". In Germany and Scandinavia the
word Bauta is used (e.g.de:Bautastein and no:Bautastein) and this occasionally
makes its way into English with the term "bauta stone".

DOLMEN
Dolmen, a type of stone monument found in a variety of places throughout the
world. Dolmens are made of two or more upright stones with a single stone lying
across them. The most widely known dolmens are found in northwest Europe,
notably in the region of Brittany, France; southern Scandinavia; Britain; Ireland; and
the Low Countries. The term dolmen is also used in relation to sites in central and
southern Europe, particularly central and southern France, the Iberian
Peninsula, Switzerland, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean. Dolmens are also
known from parts of Africa and Asia. More than 30,000 such monuments, making up
some two-fifths of the world’s total, are in Korea alone, and in 2000 three of the
Korean dolmen sites—at Koch’ang (Gochang), Hwasun, and Kanghwa (Ganghwa) in
South Korea—were designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The dolmens of northwest Europe were built in the early Neolithic

Period (New Stone Age), which began in Brittany about 5000 BCE and in
Britain, Ireland and southern Scandinavia about 4000 BCE. Sites in central and
southern Europe were constructed at a similar date, but that corresponds to the
middle or late Neolithic in those areas. Outside Europe, dolmens were built over a
broad date range, and they continue to be constructed in some parts of the world—
such as the island of Sumba, Indonesia—up to the present day.

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 The Breton word dolmen was originally used to describe the wide variety of
stone monuments or, “megaliths” (meaning large stones), being discovered across
the world. There is considerable diversity in those monument types, but they
nevertheless share a number of common characteristics. All consist of a large
capstone or capstones supported by a number of smaller upright stones. That
collection of stones creates an enclosed chamber area. The chambers of dolmens
can vary in both shape and size. Some are the size of small boxes, while others are
tall and long enough for people to not only stand but also walk and move around
inside them. When many dolmen sites were excavated, archaeologists determined
that the chambers were often used for the burial of the dead. Moreover, it was not
uncommon for many people to have been buried in those monuments and their
bones to have been mixed together in a communal deposit. For that reason,
dolmens are often referred to as chambered tombs, and archaeologists believe
those collections of bones to be ancestral remains.

Because dolmen sites vary so significantly by region and history,

archaeologists in many areas use the term dolmen only in a very generalized sense.
Many prefer to use more-specific descriptive names. In Britain, for example, portal
dolmen indicates that a monument exhibits a distinctive pair of stones, the portals, at
the entrance to the chamber. Most sites called dolmens in Brittany are more
precisely passage graves, so called because a passage leads to the chamber area.

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 One of the most-distinctive and extraordinary aspects of dolmen monuments is
the massive size of the stones—particularly the capstone or capstones—used in
their construction. The builders clearly chose what seem to have been the largest
and chunkiest stones they could find, many of which were shaped before they were
put in place. In some cases the builders chose to shape as capstones large boulders
that had been moved to their resting place by glaciers. The capstone at Brownshill,
Ireland, for example, weighs approximately 150 tonnes and is the biggest capstone
in Ireland. Such a large stone would surely have commanded
considerable prestige for the person who was able to sponsor such a feat of
engineering. Some capstones seem to have been carefully quarried from outcrops
nearby. Some—such as those in Locmariaquer, Brittany—incorporate as capstones
the documented remains of menhirs (standing stones).

Much planning would have been required prior to the construction of a dolmen, and
it seems likely that considerable numbers of people would have been required to
gather together the necessary resources not only to build a site but also to feed the
workforce. Although there is no direct evidence for how these sites were built,
researchers assume that the builders used timber, rope, cattle, and a large number
of people to maneuver the stones into place. For the most part, the dolmen builders
seem to have known what they were doing, as many dolmens are still standing in the
21st century, but there are also a few sites—such as Garn Turne
in Pembrokeshire, Wales—where dolmens very likely collapsed while being built.
Those events would likely have had potentially life-threatening results as well as
having the serious social implications of a failed monument build.

Archaeologists continue to debate whether dolmens, once built, were encased

in a mound, or cairn. In some cases (e.g., in France) dolmens were clearly
incorporated into large mounds of earth and stone, but in other areas the stone
chambers were open to the elements, albeit sometimes enclosed by a small knee-
high area of stones. That stone enclosure may have been built to reduce ease of
access to the chamber by setting aside the immediate area as sacred. It is clear that
some dolmens were used for burial, some of those over the course of hundreds of
years. At Poulnabrone in County Clare, Ireland, for example, carbon-14 dating of
bones indicated that burials took place over the course of about 600 years, from
3800 to 3200 BCE. Whereas the deposition of human remains is common at the
sites, archaeologists have also found such artifacts as pottery, animal bones, and

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hearths, indicating that dolmens were the sites of other activities, possibly including
feasting. Unlike the burial event, the feasting took place outside the monument and
likely was associated with burial rituals and commemoration of the ancestors. Yet
some groups of dolmens contain no evidence of human remains. Whatever the
particular purpose of their construction, dolmens are so distinctive in the landscape
that their presence continued to fascinate even in the 21st century, as much as
7,000 years after they were built.

CROMLECH

A cromlech (sometimes also spelled "cromleh" or "cromlêh"; cf Welsh crom,

"bent"; llech, "slate") is a megalithic construction made of large stone blocks. The
word applies to two different megalithic forms in English, [1][2] the first being an altar
tomb (frequently called a "dolmen"), as William Borlase first denoted in 1769.[3] A
good example is at Carn Llechart. [4] The second meaning of the name "cromlech" in
English refers to large stone circles such as those found among the Carnac
stones in Brittany, France.[5][6]
Unlike in English, the word "cromlech" in many other languages (such as
Azerbaijani, Armenian, French, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, and Spanish) exclusively
denotes a megalithic stone circle, whereas the word "dolmen" is used to refer to the
type of megalithic altar tomb sometimes indicated by the English "cromlech". Also,
more recently in English, scholars such as Aubrey Burl use "cromlech" as a synonym
for "megalithic stone circle".[7]

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REFERENCES:

1.https://architecturecompetitions.com/4-simple-concepts-of-prehistoric-architecture
2.https://brewminate.com/prehistoric-architecture
3.https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/greekpast/
4694.html
4.https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/stone-age
5.https://architecturecompetitions.com/4-simple-concepts-of-prehistoric-architecture
6.https://brewminate.com/prehistoric-architecture
7.https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/stone-age
8.https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/the-paleotithic-
period/
9.https://www.britannica.com/technology/tepee
10.https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/wigwam
11.https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hogan
12.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir
13.https://www.britannica.com/topic/dolmen
14.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromlech

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