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Neolithic architecture refers to structures encompassing housing and shelter from approximately 10,000 to 2,000 BC, theNeolithic period. In southwest Asia, Neolithic cultures appear soon after 10,000 BC, initially in theLevant (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A andPre-Pottery Neolithic B) and from there into the east and west. Early Neolithic structures and buildings can be found in southeast Anatolia, Syria, and Iraq by 8,000 BC withagriculture societies first appearing in southeast Europe by 6,500 BC, and central Europe by ca. 5,500 BC (of which the earliest cultural complexes include theStarčevo-Koros (Cris),Linearbandkeramic, andVinča.[citation needed]
Architectural advances are an important part of theNeolithic period (10,000-2000 BC), during which some of the major innovations of human history occurred. The domestication of plants and animals, for example, led to both new economics and a new relationship between people and the world, an increase in community size and permanence, a massive development of material culture, and new social and ritual solutions to enable people to live together in these communities. New styles of individual structures and their combination into settlements provided the buildings required for the new lifestyle and economy, and were also an essential element of change.[1]
The Neolithic people in theLevant,Anatolia,Syria, northernMesopotamia and central Asia were great builders, utilisingmud-brick to construct houses and villages. AtÇatalhöyük, houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of humans and animals.
In Europe, theNeolithic long house with a timber frame, pitched,thatched roof, and walls finished inwattle and daub could be very large, presumably housing a whole extended family. Villages might comprise only a few such houses.
Neolithicpile dwellings have been excavated in Sweden (Alvastra pile dwelling) and in the circum-Alpine area, with remains being found at theMondsee andAttersee lakes inUpper Austria. Earlyarchaeologists likeFerdinand Keller thought they formed artificial islands, much like the Scottishcrannogs, but today it is clear that the majority of settlements was located on the shores of lakes and were only inundated later on. Reconstructed pile dwellings are shown inopen-air museums inUnteruhldingen andZürich (Pfahlbauland).[citation needed]
In Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, Neolithic settlements included wattle-and-daub structures with thatched roofs and floors made of logs covered in clay.[2] This is also when theburdeipit-house (below-ground) style of house construction was developed, which was still used by Romanians and Ukrainians until the 20th century.[citation needed]
Neolithicsettlements and "cities" include:
Tombs range from simple to elaborate. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the British Isles builtlong barrows andchamber tombs for their dead andearthworks such ascausewayed camps,henges andcursus monuments.
Megaliths found in Europe and the Mediterranean were also erected in the Neolithic period. These monuments include megalithic tombs,temples and several structures of unknown function. Tomb architecture is normally easily distinguished by the presence of human remains that had originally been buried, often with recognizable intent. Other structures may have had a mixed use, now often characterised as religious, ritual, astronomical or political. The modern distinction between various architectural functions with which we are familiar today, now makes it difficult for us to think of some megalithic structures as multi-purpose socio-cultural centre points. Such structures would have served a mixture of socio-economic, ideological, political functions and indeed aesthetic ideals.
The megalithic structures ofĠgantija,Tarxien,Ħaġar Qim,Mnajdra,Ta' Ħaġrat,Skorba and smaller satellite buildings onMalta andGozo, first appearing in their current form around 3600 BC, represent one of the earliest examples of a fully developed architectural statement in which aesthetics, location, design and engineering fused into free-standing monuments.Stonehenge, the other well-known building from the Neolithic would later, 2600 and 2400 BC for the sarsen stones, and perhaps 3000 BC for the blue stones, be transformed into the form that we know so well. At its height Neolithic architecture marked geographic space; their durable monumentality embodied a past, perhaps made up of memories and remembrance.
In the Central Mediterranean, Malta also became home of a subterraneanskeuomorphised form of architecture around 3600 BC. At theĦal-Saflieni Hypogeum, the inhabitants of Malta carved out an underground burial complex in which surface architectural elements were used to embellish a series of chambers and entrances. It is at the Neolithic Ħal-Saflieni Hypogeum that the earliest known skeuomorphism first occurred in the world. This architectural device served to define the aesthetics of the underworld in terms that well known in the larger megaliths. On Malta and Gozo, surface and subterranean architecture defined two worlds, which later, in the Greek world, would manifest themselves in the myth ofHades and the world of the living. In Malta, therefore, we encounter Neolithic architecture which is demonstrably not purely functional, but which was conceptual in design and purpose.
Early Neolithic water wells from theLinear Pottery culture have been found in central Germany nearLeipzig. These structures are built in timber with complicatedwoodworking joints at the edges and are dated between 5,200 and 5,100 BC.[3]
The world's oldest known engineered roadway, theSweet Track in England, also dates from this time.[4]
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