A pit-house (or ''pit house'', ''pithouse'') is a house built in the ground and used for shelter. Besides providing shelter from the most extreme of
weather conditions, these structures may also be used to store food (just like a
pantry
A pantry is a room or cupboard where beverages, food, and sometimes dishes, household cleaning products, linens or provisions are stored within a home or office. Food and beverage pantries serve in an ancillary capacity to the kitchen.
Etym ...
, a
larder
A larder is a cool area for storing food prior to use. Originally, it was where raw meat was larded—covered in fat—to be preserved. By the 18th century, the term had expanded. Now a dry larder was where bread, pastry, milk, butter, or cooked m ...
, or a
root cellar
A root cellar (American English), fruit cellar (Mid-Western American English) or earth cellar (British English) is a structure, usually underground. or partially underground, used for storage of vegetables, fruits, nuts, or other foods. Its na ...
) and for cultural activities like the telling of stories, dancing, singing and celebrations. General dictionaries also describe a pit-house as a
''dugout'', and it has similarities to a ''half-dugout''.
In
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts ...
, a pit-house is frequently called a ''sunken-featured building'' and occasionally (grub-)hut or ''grubhouse'', after the German name ''Grubenhaus'' They are found in numerous cultures around the world, including the people of the
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...
, the
ancestral Pueblo
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, ...
, the ancient
Fremont and
Mogollon cultures, the
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, th ...
, the
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, ...
, the people of the Plateau, and archaic residents of Wyoming (Smith 2003) in North America;
Archaic residents of the Lake Titicaca Basin (Craig 2005) in South America;
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
in Europe; and the
Jōmon people
is the generic name of several peoples who lived in the Japanese archipelago during the Jōmon period (). The Jōmon people may have consisted of multiple groups, which arrived and merged at different times in the Japanese archipelago, using multi ...
in Japan. Anglo-Saxon pit-houses may have actually represented buildings for other functions than just dwellings.
Usually, all that remains of the ancient pit-house is a dug-out hollow in the ground and any
posthole
In archaeology a posthole or post-hole is a cut feature used to hold a surface timber or stone. They are usually much deeper than they are wide; however, truncation may not make this apparent. Although the remains of the timber may survive, mos ...
s used to support the roof. In the nineteenth century, it was believed that most prehistoric peoples lived in pit-houses, although it has since been proved that many of the features thought of as houses were in fact food
prehistoric storage pits
Storage pits are underground cists that were used historically to protect the seeds for the following year's crops, and to stop surplus food from being eaten by insects and rodents. These underground pits were sometimes lined and covered, for ...
or served another purpose.
Mammoth bone dwellings
The oldest pit dwellings were discovered in
Mezhyrich,
Central Ukraine
Central Ukraine ( uk, Центральна Україна, ''Tsentralna Ukraina'') consists of historical regions of left-bank Ukraine and right-bank Ukraine that reference to the Dnipro River. It is situated away from the Black Sea Littoral ...
. Dating back 15,000 years to the
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coi ...
age, the houses were made of
mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and ...
bones. The base is circular or oval in shape, in diameter, with limb bones used for walls and lighter, flat bones used for the roof. Presumably,
animal hide was stretched around the exterior for insulation. Each dwelling had a
hearth
A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a low, ...
. Groups of houses were arranged around a base camp layout, occupied by families or relatives for weeks or months.
[Hoffecker, John ''A Prehistory of the North: Human Settlement of the Higher Latitudes'' Rutgers, 2005, , ur]
/ref>
Early medieval Europe
Pit-houses were built in many parts of northern Europe between the 5th and 12th centuries AD. In Germany they are known as ''Grubenhäuser'', and in the United Kingdom, they are also known as grubhuts, grubhouses or sunken featured buildings.
Archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...
evidence indicates they were built in a shallow sub-rectangular pit and vary in depth (often relating to the preservation of the site). Some may measure 0.25m by around 2m by 1.5m, whilst examples from excavations from the 1950s onwards at West Stow in the United Kingdom are 3.7m-4.44m long x 2.72m-3.5m wide x 0.58m-0.97m deep. Within this pit were placed two (but sometimes 0, 4, or 6) substantial wooden posts in posthole
In archaeology a posthole or post-hole is a cut feature used to hold a surface timber or stone. They are usually much deeper than they are wide; however, truncation may not make this apparent. Although the remains of the timber may survive, mos ...
s at either end of the long axis. Some archaeologists have suggested that a suspended wooden floor lay over the pit and that the cavity beneath was used for storage or to control dampness, although others have disputed this, suggesting that grubenhäuser did not have suspended floors at all. A gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aest ...
d roof supported by the timber posts covered the hut, which likely had no windows and had a single entrance at one end. Excavations at West Stow (UK) in the 1970s found preserved evidence of charred planks, suggestive of suspended floors. Hearths were also found, which sat partially over the edge of the sunken pits and appeared to have collapsed downwards when the structure supporting their overhanging sections (possibly a suspended floor) was removed.
Grubenhäuser are often understood to have been domestic dwellings. However, their use may have varied, especially on a regional basis. In Western Europe their small size and the fact that they can be found near other buildings and associated finds of loom weights has led to theories that they had a specialised purpose such as for weaving
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudin ...
sheds. In the Slavonic regions of Eastern Europe, Grubenhäuser are larger and often have a fireplace. In most settlements there have been no features of buildings at ground level.
There are reconstructions of pit-houses in several open-air museums, e.g. in the Hitzacker Archaeological Centre, the Kalkriese Museum and Park, the Oerlinghausen Archaeological Open Air Museum, and the Hochdorf Chieftain's Grave
The Hochdorf Chieftain's Grave is a richly-furnished Celtic burial chamber near Hochdorf an der Enz (municipality of Eberdingen) in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, dating from 530 BC in the Hallstatt culture period. It was discovered in 1968 by an ...
.
In North America
Throughout the inland Pacific Northwest, indigenous people were nomadic during the summer and gathered resources at different spots according to the season and tradition, but overwintered in permanent semi-subterranean pit houses at lower elevations. The winter was often the only time families saw others—even if they were from the same village and tribe—and congregated in any numbers before the arrival of trading post
A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded.
Typically the location of the trading post would allow people from one geographic area to tr ...
s. Often these houses were located along major rivers and tributaries like the Columbia and Fraser; were typically round and fairly small, and were covered in layers of tule
''Schoenoplectus acutus'' (syn. ''Scirpus acutus, Schoenoplectus lacustris, Scirpus lacustris'' subsp. ''acutus''), called tule , common tule, hardstem tule, tule rush, hardstem bulrush, or viscid bulrush, is a giant species of sedge in the pla ...
mats to keep out the weather and keep in the heat. There was a smoke hole in the center, and the interior, though warm in winter, was exceptionally smoky.
In the northwestern Great Plains and the Plateau region located nearby, climate changes and extreme temperature and weather conditions made it difficult to live year-round. Hot summers led to the building of simple tent-like structures that were portable and could be packed up to move. For cold winter months, pit-houses provided the warm, protected shelter necessary for survival.
Cross-cultural patterning
A cross-cultural middle range model of pit-house architecture using George Murdock
George Peter ("Pete") Murdock (May 11, 1897 – March 29, 1985), also known as G. P. Murdock, was an American anthropologist who was professor at Yale University and University of Pittsburgh. He is remembered for his empirical approach to eth ...
's 1967 ''Ethnographic Atlas'' found that 82 of the 862 societies in the sample occupy pit structures as either their primary or secondary dwellings.[(Gilman 1987:540)]
All but six of the 82 societies live above 32° north latitude, and four of the six cases in this sample that are below 32° north latitude are from "high mountain" regions in east Africa, Paraguay, and eastern Brazil.[(Gonzalez 1953)] The last example is from the Yami[Kano and Segawa (1956)] who occupied a small island south of Formosa.
Three conditions were always present among groups in the sample: 1) non-tropical climate during the season of pit structure habitation; 2) minimally a biseasonal settlement pattern; 3) reliance on stored food during the period of pit structure occupation. These conditions may be related to other factors of society and the presence of any or all of these three elements in society does not pre-condition occupation of pit structures. Nonetheless, these three conditions were present in all cases of pit structure occupation present in the ''Ethnographic Atlas''. Other cultural patterns were common, but not universal across the sample. These commonalities include: cold season of occupation, low population estimates, and simple political and economic systems.
The ethnographic sample is based almost entirely on case studies from societies located in northern latitudes. The period of pit structure occupation is generally during the cold season, probably due to their thermal efficiency. Dug into the ground, pit structures take advantage to the insulating properties of soil, as well as having a low profile, protecting them from exposure to wind-induced heat loss.[Gilman (1987:542)] Since less heat is lost by transmission than is in above ground structures, less energy is required to maintain stable temperatures inside the structure.[Farwell (1981)]
Out of the 82 ethnographic cases in the ''Ethnographic Atlas'', 50 societies had population estimates. Of these, 64% had fewer than 100 people per settlement.[Gilman (1987:544)] In only 6% of cases were there more than 400 persons per settlement. The cases with the highest population densities were the Arikara and Hidatsa of the North American Great Plains and the Konso of Ethiopia. Gilman attributes high population densities among the Arikara to the availability of buffalo.
Pit structure occupations are generally associated with simple political and economic systems. For 86% of the sample, class stratification or social distinctions based on non-hereditary wealth were reported as absent.[Gilman (1987:547)] However, some pit-dwelling societies are characterized by chiefdom level complexity. In terms of economic organization, 77% of the societies who occupy pit structures had a hunting and gathering economy.[Gilman (1987:545)] This is a large fraction of the sample, but is not considered a universally consistent feature like biseasonal settlement and a reliance on stored foods during pit structure occupation.
During the part of the year when people are not living in pit structures, activities should be focused on acquiring foods to store.[ Based on the sample from the ''Ethnographic Atlas'', this may be through either hunting and gathering or agricultural activity.
Many different prehistoric groups used pit houses. Although generally associated with the American southwest cultures, such as Fremont, Pueblo, Hohokam, and Mogollon, pit houses were used by a wide variety of people in a wide variety of places over the past 12,000 years. Large pit house formations have been excavated in British Columbia, Canada, such as at Keatley Creek Archaeological Site.
]
See also
* Burdei
* Dugout (shelter)
* Earth shelter
An earth shelter, also called an earth house, earth bermed house, or underground house, is a structure (usually a house) with earth ( soil) against the walls, on the roof, or that is entirely buried underground.
Earth acts as thermal mass, maki ...
* Earth lodge
An earth lodge is a semi-subterranean building covered partially or completely with earth, best known from the Native American cultures of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. Most earth lodges are circular in construction with a dome-li ...
* Kekuli
A quiggly hole, also known as a pit-house or simply as a quiggly or kekuli, is the remains of an earth lodge built by the First Nations people of the Interior of British Columbia and the Columbia Plateau in the United States The word ''quiggly'' ...
* Kiva
A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circular and undergroun ...
* Larder
A larder is a cool area for storing food prior to use. Originally, it was where raw meat was larded—covered in fat—to be preserved. By the 18th century, the term had expanded. Now a dry larder was where bread, pastry, milk, butter, or cooked m ...
* Pantry
A pantry is a room or cupboard where beverages, food, and sometimes dishes, household cleaning products, linens or provisions are stored within a home or office. Food and beverage pantries serve in an ancillary capacity to the kitchen.
Etym ...
* Quiggly hole
* Root cellar
A root cellar (American English), fruit cellar (Mid-Western American English) or earth cellar (British English) is a structure, usually underground. or partially underground, used for storage of vegetables, fruits, nuts, or other foods. Its na ...
* Sinagua
* Zemlyanka
* Timber framing
Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...
*
Notes
References
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External links
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{{Authority control
Archaeological features
House types
Puebloan architectural elements
Semi-subterranean structures