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chapter 5
bronze age settlements
joanna brück and harry fokkens
Introduction
For much of the twentieth century our understanding of the European Bronze Age was dom-
inated by evidence from burials and hoards, and in many regions few settlements were
known. As developer-funded archaeology has increased in recent decades, however, our
knowledge of the Bronze Age settlement record has dramatically improved. Th is paper will
examine what this evidence can tell us about the social, economic, and material worlds of
European Bronze Age communities. Rather than attempting to provide a general overview,
it will adopt a thematic and problem-oriented approach, although we will also consider
aspects of chronological and regional variation.
Inevitably the character and quality of the dataset is highly variable for a number of rea-
sons. Factors such as diff erential preservation limit the interpretative potential of sites in
certain regions: contrast, for example, the waterlogged lakeside settlements of the Alpine
foothills, which have produced large numbers of organic fi nds, with sites on the North
European Plain, where occupation levels and the tops of features such as pits and post-
holes have oft en been lost through intensive ploughing. Diff erent research traditions have
also had an impact. Some regions, for example Scandinavia, have long histories of research
on prehistoric settlement going back to at least the 1930s. Here, and in areas such as the
Low Countries, large-scale open-area excavation has long been the norm, but in parts of
south-eastern Europe, where deeply stratifi ed tell settlements produce huge volumes of
fi nds from even the smallest trenches, this is rarely feasible and plans for sites of this class
are frequently unavailable. In some areas, research priorities remain focused on construct-
ing chronologies and typological frameworks, and little attention is devoted to questions
such as the organization of settlement space. Notwithstanding these diffi culties, however,
the settlement record for the European Bronze Age raises a variety of interesting ques-
tions, and this paper will attempt to identify some of the most important ones. Many of the
examples that will be discussed in the following pages are from north-west Europe, as that
is the region with which we are most familiar, but we believe that the same themes and
issues are of relevance to sites in other areas. For reasons of space, we will focus on houses
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bronze age settlements 83
and settlement sites, rather than attempting to discuss regional settlement patterns or
models of landscape organization.
Houses and Households in Anthropological
Perspective
We will begin by considering the set of ideas and expectations that implicitly infl uence
archaeological approaches to prehistoric settlement. Th e ideological signifi cance of the
home in recent European history undoubtedly aff ects how we view prehistoric houses. All
too rarely are the concepts that we use subjected to critical analysis: we believe we know what
a house is, who should live in it, and what should happen there. It is therefore easy for mod-
ern Western ideas regarding the character of domestic practice and the domestic domain to
be imposed onto the past. However, anthropological research on houses and households
calls many of our assumptions into question. Far from being the locus of supposedly ‘natu-
ral’ activities such as reproduction and food consumption—as they are characterized in our
own cultural context—houses are a key arena in which social identities and cultural values
are constructed, maintained, and transformed (e.g. Parker Pearson and Richards 1 994) : the
homes of middle-class families in Victorian England, for example, gave material form to his-
torically specifi c forms of gender ideology.
Anthropological studies of houses and households in non-Western contexts demonstrate
that not only does domestic architecture vary dramatically across space and time, but so too
do the structure and composition of the household group. Houses may be inhabited by one
or more families or by groups of unrelated people (such as student houses in contemporary
university towns). Families themselves take highly varied forms—they may be nuclear or
extended; monogamous, polygamous, or polyandrous; matrilineal or patrilineal; patrilocal
or matrilocal. Husbands and wives may live apart, while in some matrilineal societies chil-
dren reside with their mother’s brother rather than with their father.
In the contemporary western world, our homes are spatially distinguished from places of
work and of worship, as well as from seats of political power. However, this sharp divide
between domestic, ritual, economic, and political practice is not a feature of every society.
Elsewhere, particularly in rural communities where little industrialization has taken place,
the household is oft en the primary economic unit, organizing productive activities such as
farming and craft work, and managing the transmission of goods and materials through
exchange and inheritance (Netting, Wilk, and Arnould 1984 ). Where the household plays a
signifi cant economic role, it is hardly surprising that it may also form a locus of political
action, as did the elite houses of feudal Japan and Medieval Europe. Of course, political and
economic activities are sanctioned and safeguarded by ritual practice, and shrines are a fea-
ture of houses in places as far apart as Mexico and Bali (e.g. Waterson 1990 ). Indeed, domes-
tic architecture may embody cosmological referents. For example, the layout of Barasana
longhouses in Colombia mirrors the structure of the universe: diff erent architectural ele-
ments are identifi ed with the sky, earth, and underworld and with signifi cant geographical
feature such as rivers and mountains, so that men, women, ancestors, and outsiders are each
assigned their rightful place in the order of things ( Hugh-Jones 1996 ).
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Although it may be diffi cult, if not impossible, to reconstruct aspects of prehistoric socie-
ties such as forms of kinship, we must remain sensitive to the fact that Bronze Age houses
and households—and the cultural values and beliefs they enshrined—were very diff erent in
character and organization to our own homes. On the other hand, as we shall see, there is
good evidence that economic, ritual, and political activities were central elements of domes-
tic practice in the European Bronze Age and that the house played a key role in the construc-
tion and negotiation of social identities. With these provisos, we will turn now to the
archaeological record.
Bronze Age House Architecture
If, as we have argued above, houses are so oft en central to the construction of identity, it is
hardly surprising that the European Bronze Age is characterized by a number of quite dis-
tinctive traditions of domestic architecture. Across the lowlands of northern Europe, includ-
ing southern Scandinavia, longhouses dominate the settlement record ( Fig. 5.1 ). Most
buildings of this class are between 15 m and 35 m in length and around 5–8 m wide; typically,
they have apsidal ends and are oriented north-west–south-east. In some regions, longhouses
provide evidence for internal cattle-stalling aft er 1500 cal bc .
Th e houses of central and south-east Europe are also rectangular, but they tend to be
shorter in length and smaller in area than the longhouses of the north: the buildings at
Tiszaug-Kéménytető in south-central Hungary, for example, were 7–9 m long and 3.5–5 m
wide ( Csányi and Stanczik 1992 ). Elsewhere, very diff erent traditions of domestic architec-
ture prevail: in Ireland, Britain, and areas of north-west France such as Normandy, for exam-
ple, roundhouses of c .8–12 m diameter were the norm ( Fig. 5.2 ; see Brück 1999 ). Across much
of Britain, but also on some parts of the continent, it is during the Bronze Age that houses
fi rst become archaeologically visible, replacing megalithic tombs and other forms of ceremo-
nial architecture as the key locus of architectural elaboration. Th e ‘monumentalization’ of
domestic architecture in the British Isles suggests that the domestic domain was increasingly
a focus of ideological concern—a place where key forms of social identity and cultural values
were performed and negotiated. Th is was also the case in parts of lowland north-west
Europe; here, as we shall see below, animal stalls were incorporated into the house itself,
indicating that cattle meant more to people then just ‘meat on legs’.
Th e signifi cance of these diff erences in traditions of domestic architecture is diffi cult to
discern. In Britain the barrows and ceremonial enclosures (henges, timber circles, and
the like) characteristic of the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age were circular in form
and it is tempting to suggest that roundhouse architecture was rooted in a set of cosmo-
logical principles with an already lengthy history ( Bradley 1998 , Chapter 7 ). In other
regions, however, for example where Corded Ware cultures developed out of earlier meg-
alithic traditions, house architecture of both the Neolithic and Bronze Age is dominated
by rectangular buildings, although contemporary barrows and ceremonial structures
were circular. As such, the relationship between domestic and ceremonial architecture,
and the cosmological principles embodied in houses and monuments, appear to have
been complex and regionally specifi c.
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bronze age settlements 85
Entrance
Stall (?)
Fireplace
N
Firepit
0 1 5 10M
fig. 5.1 Two of the longhouses at Bjerre site 2, northwest Jutland. Th ey were probably not
contemporary but may have been occupied sequentially.
Source: Bech 1997.
In general, Bronze Age houses were post-built structures ( Fig. 5.3 ): in many regions, an open
framework of substantial timber posts, usually set in postpits, supported a thatched roof, while
the outer walls were normally wattle and daub or comprised contiguous upright wooden
planks set in a foundation trench (as at Ochtmissen in north Germany: Gebers 1997) ; in other
areas, the outer walls themselves were load-bearing. In some parts of central Europe, log cabins
were constructed: although the timber superstructures of such buildings have not generally
survived, the stone footings on which they were laid have been excavated at sites such as
Savognin-Padnal in Graubünden, Switzerland ( Rageth 1986 ). Daub caulking used to seal the
joints between logs has also been found and this preserves the shape of the original timbers.
Elsewhere, other construction materials were employed. In many areas of upland Britain, such
as Dartmoor, houses were surrounded by drystone walls (though their roofs were still sup-
ported on an internal setting of timber uprights: Fleming 2008 ), while in parts of south-west
France houses of unbaked mud-brick dating to the Late Bronze Age have been identifi ed, for
example at Laprade ( Billaud 2005 ). Floors were generally of beaten earth, although examples of
stone fl agging and timber fl ooring are also widely known. Occasionally, there is tantalizing
evidence that houses may have been painted: for instance, the internal walls of the substantial,
centrally placed house at Tiszaug-Kéménytető were decorated with spiral designs ( Csányi and
Stanczik 1992 ): we might suspect that only the most socially signifi cant buildings would be
considered worthy of this sort of elaboration. Internally, houses were provided with a range of
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Structure A
(1666–1494 cal. BC)
Roasting pits
F404
F190
F187
Fence 2
F203
Roasting pit (F179)
F246
Entrance gap
Entrance F215
Later ditches
Later gully
Fence 1
Roasting pit
fig. 5.2 House A at Cloghbreedy, County Tipperary, Ireland. Image: Margaret Gowen &
Co. Ltd, courtesy of the National Roads Authority. A load-bearing circular setting of posts
supported the roof of this building, while a slot trench defi ned its outer wall.
Source: McQuade, Molloy, and Moriarty 2009.
fi xtures and fi ttings including drying-racks, storage pits, hearths, ovens (for example, the well-
preserved oven at Gandus in the Drôme region of south-east France: Daumas and Laudet
1992 ), settings for upright weaving looms and benches (for instance the benches around the
walls of the roundhouses at La Muculufa, Sicily: McConnell 1992 ).
Th e social signifi cance of the house is further indicated by the intimate links—on both a prac-
tical and a symbolic level—between the life of the house and that of its inhabitants. In southern
England and the Low Countries, for example, houses appear to have been occupied for only a
few decades—roughly the length of a single human generation. In these regions, it can be sug-
gested that the creation of a new household group (perhaps on marriage or shortly thereaft er)
was marked by the construction of a new house; conversely, the death of a senior member of the
household may have provided the catalyst for house abandonment ( Brück 1999 ; Gerritsen 2 003) .
In such a context, it is hardly surprising that both house construction and abandonment were
sometimes ritualized. In Britain and Ireland, foundation and abandonment deposits were oft en
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bronze age settlements 87
fig. 5.3 Reconstruction of a house from the tell at Százhalombatta, overlooking the Danube
in northern Hungary.
Source: Artursson 2010.
placed in pits, postholes, and ditches; these include animal burials, small bronze objects, and
whole and broken quernstones, as well as more unusual items such as the chalk phallus found in
one of the porch postholes of house D at Itford Hill in Sussex ( Burstow and Holleyman 1 957) .
Th e metaphorical links between people and houses are perhaps best illustrated by the activities
that surrounded house abandonment. In southern England, just as cremation facilitated the
fragmentation and burning of human bodies, so too certain houses appear to have been deliber-
ately burnt down, while others were dismantled and buried ( Brück 2006 ). At Trethellan Farm in
Cornwall, for example, the roundhouses had their posts removed and the empty postholes
sealed with large slabs or deliberately blocked with smaller stones; the buildings were then cov-
ered by thick layers of rubble and burnt stone, not unlike the burial cairns in the same region
( Nowakowski 1991 ). Elsewhere in southern England, houses were left standing, their gradually
rotting remains acting as visible evidence for particular occupational histories. Th is variability is
interesting as it has implications for the ways in which diff erent places were constituted and
maintained in both personal and communal memory.
Explaining Size Differences Between Houses
In many areas, there is a signifi cant degree of variability in house size and this can be inter-
preted in diff erent ways. It has been suggested that in northern Denmark large houses
belonged to local chiefs—men who had access to the resources and connections required for
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such building projects—so that architecture provided a means of expressing social status.
A large house at Legård, for example, with animal stalls in the centre, is interpreted as a
chiefl y hall for twin rulers because of the two equal-sized rooms at either end of the building
( Kristiansen and Larsson 2005 : 277–90). However, the problem with this interpretation is
that in Drenthe (the Netherlands), for instance, this type of house is the norm, in terms of
both size and structure (see Kooi 2008 ). Moreover, north-west European settlements usually
comprise no more than two or three houses together, and provide little other evidence for
social stratifi cation.
Th ere are other ways of explaining size diff erences too. Some larger buildings may have
played a special role, for instance as community meeting houses. Th e ethnographic literature
provides many examples of men’s and women’s houses, and similar structures may have been
present in at least some regions of the European Bronze Age: for example, Ernst Lauermann
( 2003: 479) has suggested that the unusually large house at Šumice in Moravia, which meas-
ured 56.6 x 7 m in size, may have been an assembly hall. Factors such as the size and character
of the household group were undoubtedly also important: some houses may have been built
to accommodate ageing parents or unmarried siblings (see Fokkens 2005 ). Houses may have
been abandoned at diff erent stages in the household life cycle. A newly married couple, with
few children or dependent relatives, may have had neither the requirements nor the resources
to build a large house; over time, however, their circumstances are likely to have changed.
Larger houses may therefore be the result of rebuilding and enlargement ( Arnoldussen 2 008:
205–12). Th ese may have been extended over time as families increased in size and house-
holds reached economic and social maturity: for example, the house at Rodenkirchen-
Hahnenknooper Mühle in Lower Saxony was originally 21 m long but was subsequently
extended by a further 6 m ( Strahl 2005 ).
In certain regions, the average house size changed over time, although the pattern is far
from uniform. In parts of the Alpine foreland, for example, there was an increase in house
size over the course of the Bronze Age (D avid El-Biali 1992 ), whereas in Scandinavia and the
Low Countries houses decreased in size from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age ( Bech 1997 ;
Fokkens 1999 ). Th e signifi cance of such trends is hard to establish, but they doubtless
refl ected changes in the character and organization of household activities, the composition
of the household group, and the relationship between households and the wider community.
For example, there may have been a change from nuclear to extended families or vice versa;
activities that were originally undertaken communally, outside the house, may have become
the preserve of the individual household, so that both architectural and social boundaries
were redrawn. Th e implications of such changes for concepts of privacy as well as for the
control of particular activities and those who carried them out are clearly interesting.
The Organization of Household Space
In continental Europe houses were oft en internally divided into two or three rooms. In houses
3 and 4 at Croce del Papa, near Nola in southern Italy, internal walls separated the principal living
space from a storage area in the apse-shaped north-western end ( Livadie et al . 2005 ). Th e main
room in house 4 was furnished with a central oven surrounded by serving vessels, cups, and
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bronze age settlements 89
quernstones, while in house 3 a large clay grain bin was found to the left of the doorway in the
south-eastern corner of the building. Storage vessels were also ranged along the walls of these
buildings. At Százhalombatta in north-central Hungary most houses were built as single-room
dwellings of approximately 5 x 10 m ( Sørensen 2010 ). Th ey were provided with one or more
hearths and ovens, usually located towards the northern (back) wall of the house and away from
the probable location of the doorway in the south wall. In some houses, there was also a further
centrally placed hearth, suggesting diff erentiation of tasks relating to food preparation or serving.
In some cases a second smaller room to the north is likely to have served as a storage area.
In north-western Europe, houses are not generally as well-preserved, but there are occa-
sional exceptions. Th e houses of phase 1 at Apalle in southern Sweden were two-roomed and
were oriented north-west–south-east ( Fig. 5.4 ; Ullén 1994 ). Th e room at the north-west end,
which was entered by a door on the south-western side, was fl oored with clay and produced
most of the ceramic, stone, bone, and metal fi nds. Separated from this by a wooden partition
was a second room at the south-eastern end of each house; this had a central hearth but pro-
duced few fi nds. Th at this division was signifi cant in both symbolic and practical terms is
indicated by the deposition of animal bone along the south-western wall of house 13: to the
left of the doorway, and marking the edge of the north-western room, the mandibles of cattle
were deposited, while to the right of the doorway, sheep mandibles delimited the boundary of
the room containing the hearth. As such, depositional practice provided a means of distin-
guishing spaces, objects, activities and—most importantly—diff erent categories of people,
perhaps providing, for example, a way of conceptually dividing public from private space.
Elsewhere in north-west Europe longhouses were sometimes provided with an area spe-
cifi cally for the stalling of cattle. In some cases, houses were divided into three spaces: the
fig. 5.4 House 13 at Apalle, central Sweden.
Source: Ullén 1994.
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central part of the building was the byre, while the living areas were located to either side of
this ( Kooi 2008 ). Th e tripartite house at Trappendal on Jutland, for example, was furnished
with two hearths, one placed centrally in each living space ( Boysen and Andersen 1 983) ,
hinting that the house may have been the dwelling of an extended family, each occupying
opposite ends of the building. Such buildings oft en had two or three doorways and these
could be placed in either the long or short sides: the presence of diff erent doorways may
indicate a concern to distinguish diff erent activities and people.
On other settlements, for example at Elp and Angelslo in the Netherlands ( Kooi 2 008) ,
houses were divided into two by opposing doors placed in the long sides: the byre was located
to the east or south-east end of this thoroughfare, while the living area was placed at the west
or north-west end of the building. Th e appearance of internal cattle-stalling aft er c .1500 bc
has been explained in a variety of ways: it may indicate a change to private ownership of cat-
tle, an increase in raiding, or a change in animal management practices such as more organ-
ized collection of manure ( Zimmermann 1 999 ) . However, it can be argued that cattle-stalling
inside a house was not necessary for functional reasons, and was probably not even healthy;
it can therefore be suggested that internal stalling indicates that cattle acted as a form of
‘social capital’ during the period ( Fokkens 1999 ; 2005 ).
It has been suggested that roundhouse architecture in Britain and Ireland was rooted in cos-
mological principles, refl ecting key social distinctions and cultural values. Bronze Age round-
houses were primarily oriented to the east or south-east (see Fig. 5.2 ; Brück 1999 ). Although it
has been suggested that doorways were placed to face away from the south-westerly winds so
prevalent in this region, ideological factors may also have been important. Facing towards the
rising sun, the doorway may have been symbolically associated with light, life, and associated
concepts of cyclical rebirth. Indeed, roundhouse entrances were oft en architecturally elabo-
rated; they were usually provided with porches and some were marked out by votive deposits.
At Cladh Hallan in western Scotland (Parker Pearson et al. n.d.) the movement of the sun over
the course of the day was mapped onto the internal space of three roundhouses, so that the
southern halves of these buildings formed a focus for the activities of the living such as food
preparation and craft production while the northern halves were associated with sleeping, stor-
age, and the ancestors—several deposits of human remains were found in the northern parts of
these houses. It seems likely that such spatial distinctions may have helped to maintain social
divisions between, for example, women and men or the young and the old.
The Bronze Age Farmstead
Across most of northern and western Europe scattered farmsteads dominate the archaeo-
logical record and nucleated settlement is extremely rare. In northern Denmark and in the
Low Countries (see Chapter 31 ) large-scale surveys have identifi ed farmsteads every few
hundred metres and excavated examples suggest that each of these was occupied by a single
household group (e.g. Earle and Kolb 2010 ). Here and elsewhere, the Bronze Age farmhouse
was oft en accompanied by a range of other structures and features including barns, grana-
ries, wells, and waterholes; the preserved wooden wellhead at Zwenkau in north Germany is
one such example ( Stäuble and Campen 1998 ).
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bronze age settlements 91
Pits and hearths are found both inside and outside Bronze Age houses, suggesting a degree
of fl uidity in areas where activities such as cooking and craft production could be carried out.
In some regions there are interesting changes over time in such patterns. In Ireland external
hearths are common on Middle Bronze Age settlements (see Fig. 5.2 ), but in the Late Bronze
Age hearths were predominantly located inside roundhouses. Th is may have implications in
terms of changing concepts of privacy and suggests an increasing concern to defi ne and con-
trol particular activities and the people associated with them—here, perhaps women and the
preparation of food. Fenced stock pens have been identifi ed at sites such as Elp in the
Netherlands ( Waterbolk 1964) , while the edges of the farmstead are oft en defi ned by banks,
ditches, and fence-lines. Votive deposits were frequently placed in boundary features, under-
scoring their signifi cance in social as well as spatial terms ( Brück 1995 ). At Chancellorsland in
County Tipperary, Ireland, for example, part of the skull of a young adult was recovered from
the basal fi ll of one of the ditches that surrounded the settlement ( Doody 2008 : 331).
It has been argued that the relatively short lifespan of some houses in parts of north-west
Europe may have resulted in a pattern of generational movement of farmsteads within a defi ned
‘territory’ ( Roymans and Fokkens 1991 ). Recently, however, this model has been challenged
(see Arnoldussen 2008 : 88–92), and it is clear that some settlements were occupied over longer
periods: for example, at Reading Business Park in Berkshire, southern England, roundhouses
were rebuilt several times on virtually the same location ( Moore and Jennings 1992 ). Such prac-
tices suggest the maintenance of long-term, intimate, and personalized relationships with place
that may have—among other things—provided one way of legitimating claims over land.
Of course, while it would be easy to project a familiar picture of rural life drawn from our
own recent history onto the Bronze Age, it would be a mistake to do so. As we have seen, rit-
ual activity formed an integral element of the life of Bronze Age farmsteads and it is hardly
surprising that at least some of this appears to have been concerned with agricultural fertil-
ity. Votive deposits are frequently encountered in wells, waterholes, and storage pits, for
example the pierced and shaped roundel of human skull found in a waterhole at Green Park
in Berkshire ( Boyle 2004) . Likewise, even the scattered farmsteads of north-west Europe will
on occasion have formed a key locus for inter-group meetings. For instance, a large dump of
burnt fl int (some 4 x 7.5 m) was found at the Middle Bronze Age settlement at South Lodge
Camp in Dorset, southern England ( Barrett, Bradley, and Green 1991 : 161). Th is may repre-
sent the remains of feasting: it is widely accepted that burnt fl int is the by-product of cooking
activities and, if so, the size of this deposit suggests the provision of foodstuff s on a large
scale. In the Late Bronze Age in the same region, specialized tablewares including decorated
fi neware cups and bowls appear, suggesting that the entertainment of guests may have been
an important component of household activities. As such, settlements doubtless played a
signifi cant role in the political life and inter-group negotiations of Bronze Age communities.
Bronze Age Villages
Nucleated settlements are rare in north-west Europe and dispersed single farmsteads are the
norm. Bovenkarspel in West Frisia is one of the few examples known in the Netherlands
( IJzereef 1988 ), but even there the number of contemporaneous houses is diffi cult to estimate
