On invitation by Dr Geoff Abbott Wednesday 18th January McCord coffee will join Biogeochemistry Group, in Drummond Building, Room 4.01, at 9:30 AM. Dr Tanja Romankiewicz (University of Edinburgh) has been invited to present her research on "Dynamic prehistoric architecture? A view from Scotland on materials, methods and mobility"

In low-lying, fertile areas prehistoric architecture often only survives as negative features, with any superstructure and floor deposits removed or truncated by the ploughing of later generations. But even such ephemeral archaeological remains of prehistoric buildings can be studied to understand and reconstruct individual buildings and their materials, and wider concepts of prehistoric architecture. Such architectural analysis takes a micrological approach that analyses postholes as if they were artefacts and reads architectural processes from wear patterns, trapped sediments and macroplant remains. In upland areas, prehistoric houses survive as upstanding features, but later landuse and peat growth have often compromised their stratigraphy. The modern perspective of interpreting these landscapes as marginal wastelands masks the riches of the upland resource for prehistoric building and grazing.

The very concept of Bronze Age architecture postulated here may also be a contributing factor to the survival of the house remains. This approach defines prehistoric architecture as process, which started with conceptualising prehistoric space via a structure, but did not stop once this structure was built. Prehistoric architecture continuously evolved by planned and unplanned events during construction, use life and abandonment of built space, and houses seemingly formed important material components in prehistoric agricultural processes, resource management and resource creation. Based on recent architectural analysis of Bronze Age roundhouses in northeast and northwest Scotland this presentation proposes that building and rebuilding of houses seems to have been a key element in the cycle of production and provision of surplus. These houses are physically as well as metaphorically embedded in prehistoric life cycles.

These new concepts raise a few questions for discussion:

·         How far is prehistoric domestic architecture determined by resources and environment?

·         How much is it part of agricultural cycles, and how sustainable is this management of resources?

 

·         What do different concepts of domestic architectures mean for the social models that we have developed for these periods?