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What have Reconstructed Roundhouses Ever Done for Us..?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2014

Stephen Townend
Stephen Townend*
Affiliation:
Entec UK Ltd, Canon Court, Abbey Lawn, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury SY2 5DE
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Extract

The reconstructed roundhouse is everywhere: on the television, in the literature, in the landscape. It has powerful currency in both the public and academic understandings of the vernacular architecture of later British prehistory, in particular for the Iron Age. However, because the focus of these reconstructions is normally on technologies and engineering principles on the one hand, or on the experience of their occupation on the other, the roundhouse reconstruction — even after more than 30 years research around them — in fact currently tells us remarkably little about the past and a great deal about who we understand ourselves to be. This paper will explore what insight roundhouse reconstructions currently do and do not give into later British prehistory and what they may be able to indicate if the act of building is taken as a theme over the technologies of their construction or the experience of their space.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 73 , 2007 , pp. 97 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 2004

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