Lake Dwellings, sometimes called Alpine Lake Dwellings or Pile Dwellings (Pfahlbauten in German), are a type of house found in villages at lakeshores in the Alps or other mountainous regions. They range in date between the early Neolithic through Iron Age villages and, because of their location at lake margins often exhibit excellent preservation of organic materials.
Lake dwellings are perhaps more properly called pile dwellings, because they represented houses that were erected atop wooden pilings pounded into the ground and sometimes supported by a web of horizontal pilings to anchor the structures. Lakeside homes were attractive to their residents, particularly in the mountains, because they were located in places where a wide variety of food and other resources could be retrieved from nearby. People who lived in the lake dwelling settlements practiced animal husbandry and farming, as well as relied on hunting and fishing.
Organizing Lake Dwellings
Lake dwellings were organized in a variety of ways; some were isolated structures; others were small communities of a handful of structures built and rebuilt over time; still others were part of fairly large villages. A typical village was located at Lake Chalain in the Jura region of France during the 32nd-30th centuries BC. There, the small 4x8 meter wooden buildings were placed on oak pilings in close rows. The buildings were exposed to seasonal flooding from the lake, and the pilings kept the floor above the lake water. A wooden plank causeway connected the village to the shore. An open space on the shore served as a communal space.
Because of their constant exposure to water, most lake dwellings required frequent rebuilding, and archaeological evidence suggests that 15 years is about the maximum that a particular set of pilings could be expected to hold up without re-buttressing. Movements of the lake shore also affected the structures, which had to be moved out from or back in towards the shoreline with climatic variations.
Lake Dwellings and Otzi
Recently, lake dwellings have been associated with Otzi the Iceman. Otzi was a Neolithic/Chalcolithic aged individual who died between 3320 and 3050 cal BC; he was discovered in an excellent state of preservation eroding out of a Alpine glacier in the 1990s. Lake dwellings are being examined for information about Otzi, in part because they were used in many locations throughout the Alpine region when Otzi lived, and in part because the ethnobotanical evidence found on Otzi at the time of his death matches that found in lake dwellings. Finally, the preservation of the lake dwelling deposits permits such comparisons to things we have learned from Otzi.
One close comparison for how Otzi might have lived at home is Arbon Bleiche 3, a lake dwelling settlement on Lake Constance in Switzerland, only 100 km from where Otzi was found. The Ljubljansko Moor of western Slovenia, where about 40 sites dated to the Neolithic, Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age have been identified, is also a possible base from which Otzi may have come. Early isotopic studies suggested that he came from near Brixen, Italy, near the confluence of the Eisack and Rienz rivers. Any one of these locations cannot be definitively pinned down as the specific home for Otzi, although the sites' dwellings and lifestyle can be seen as contemporaneous with Otzi and probably reflecting the way Otzi lived.
Lake Dwellings Sites
- Switzerland: Arbon Bleiche 3, Saint-Blaise, Egolzwil
- Spain: La Draga
- France: Chindrieux, Tresserve
- Slovenia: Ljubljansko Moor, Stare gmajne
- Italy: Stagno
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Neolithic Period, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
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Gauthier E, and Richard H. 2009. Bronze Age at Lake Bourget (NW Alps, France): Vegetation, human impact and climatic change. Quaternary International 200(1-2):111-119.
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Richard H. 1993. Palynological Micro-Analysis in Neolithic Lake Dwellings. Journal of Archaeological Science 20(3):241-262.
Tolar T, Jacomet S, Velušcek A, and Cufar K. 2011. Plant economy at a late Neolithic lake dwelling site in Slovenia at the time of the Alpine Iceman. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 20(3):207-222.
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