Mesolithic Huts

[BMFHL]

Hi all,

I was recently comissioned to design and build a film set for a documentary about Mesolithic Ireland. Rather than building chicken wire huts and thatching them with plastic grass,as you might expect from them oul' hollywood types, we went for the real deal, and built some small but perfectly formed shelters from hazel and esturine reeds.Took a few days, since it was my first foray into thatching, and we had to cut all the hazel and drag it through a forest and up a hill. They're pretty comfortable, and can sleep about three each, with a small fire. I used charcoal in the fire for cleanliness and to keep the smoke down, but we did leave a small gap under the 'eaves' for smoke to escape, and a small fire of dry wood is pretty tolerable. They're sited about 300m from an original mesolithic site, on the banks of the mighty Shannon river.

I guess the ladder was the only real non bushcrafty element in our construction. The rest was done with an axe, a folding saw, and two pocket knives. We also cheated and used jute string rather than bark for most of the knots, but did use yucca (which happened to be growing in a garden locally) for many of the visible ones. Not Irish Mesolithic I know, but looks like bark lashings on camera.


Enjoy.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25jntbLJ-AA

[loz.]

Whens the program on ?

[BMFHL]

Late next year Loz. Only starting, they still have a lot of overseas filming to do, in France and Africa.

[PaleoHunterGatherer]

BMFHL, nice stuff that, well done. Here in Canada we've made something very similar, but instead of thatch, we had used bark from downed trees in the forest.
And yes when is the program airing?
Cheers
Alex

[PaleoHunterGatherer]

Tell them to come and film here in Canada, the wilderness is about as Mesolithic as it gets...and so are some of the blokes I bushcraft with... ;)
Alex

[Matt Weir]

Thanks for the link. I'll look forward to Blood of the Irish next year :)

[fishfish]

looks intresting is it on in britain or eire?

[oops56]

Nice but if there is a fire in their what keeps it from burning down when sparke fly up ??

[BMFHL]

Show will be broadcast in Ireland.


As for sparks, that's why I used charcoal rather than wood, but good dry small wood like willow seems to burn fine with little sparks. thing is, because the huts are made from thatch, a small, well tended fire will heat up the air inside and it stays cosy for a long time, and the the hearth is lined with rocks too, so it acts like a very small storage heater. No real need for a blazing inferno all night long.

On a very cold night, one could build a big fire outside, heat up some fairly hefty stones, and bring them inside at bedtime, like a more substantial storage heater.

[spamel]

I spent a night in a thatched hut I helped make as part of my history lessons as a child in Somerset. I was at a boarding school at the time, and the frame was a simple uprights and leanto type roof. The florr was cut into the turf and the turf was stacked aside for use as part of the roof. Wattle and daub walls where done on one side and woven straw on the other, the roof was thatched for one half and turfed on the other. It was a learning and experience thing showing different ways of constructing the hut. We didn't have a fire, but four of us slept in it one night, another four for the next night and it was a fantastic nights sleep. In fact, there is a picture somewhere in the family of me and a friend dressed in hessian sacks on a school open day pretending to be all ancient!

[Ogri the trog]

Nice but if there is a fire in their what keeps it from burning down when sparke fly up ??

One thing I remember from visiting a Celtic site in west Wales,
was the absence of any form of chimney. When I asked the same question the reply I got was so ingenious, I near fell to the floor. Without a chimney, the air up in the top of the thatch is depleted of oxygen, meaning that sparks cannot burn anything as there simply isn't the spare O2 to support further combustion. Furthermore the lack of O2 keeps the bugs down in the thatch itself, meaning that the roof covering actually lasts longer. Most of the time you are inside the hut/roundhouse etc you'd be sitting or laying down anyway, so the occupants would not suffer any effects of reduced oxygen themselves.

Ingenious

Ogri the trog

[Scots_Charles_River]

Nice stuff. In south america they only crop the reeds at either full or new moon to avoid too much water content, was in a Ray Mears show.

Nick

[ForgeCorvus]

I spent a night in a thatched hut I helped make as part of my history lessons as a child in Somerset.
All I got to do was the Tudours, and only the 'big picture' rather the the day to day stuff I'd of found more interesting


I was at a boarding school at the time, So was I, mind you mine was a state school


Back on subject, I like it, I might have to replace my shed with something like.....if I can get my SOP the agree :D

[spamel]

I thought the reason you don't need a chimney in a roundhouse/thatched roof abode such as this was because the thatch will allow the smoke to pass through. Regardless, I have had many fires and not suffered the masses of sparks flying up, normally because they are relatively small fires, but the type of wood can have a serious effect on this. Sweet chestnut, for example, spits out red hot sparks all over the place.

[Ogri the trog]

I thought the reason you don't need a chimney in a roundhouse/thatched roof abode such as this was because the thatch will allow the smoke to pass through.

Thats it Spam,
In slowing down to pass through the thatch, the localised area at the top of the inside of the roof, suffers oxygen depletion leading to........... etc etc etc

I don't know if this was by trial or design, maybe the roundhouses with chimneys all burnt down; who knows?

Ogri the trog

[Toddy]

Now that's a work :D They look like they could be really comfortable too.
Is there a chance the programme may be shown in the UK?

Several years ago I went to an Archaeological conference at Glasgow University which discussed roundhouses. One of the speakers was Dr Chris Lynn of the Deer Park Farms centre in Northern Ireland, and he had been building basket woven re-constructions. It sounded fascinating then, and is still a subject that generates a great deal of continuing interest.
I'll see if I can find some links.

cheers,
Toddy

[spamel]

I was surprised at the strength of the frame, showing that it can support the weight of a man thatching the roof and also performing monkey stunts inside! I can't see there being any problems with structural integrity, but I'm not too sure about that top piece of thatching due to it being very flat, although I am probably wrong. I'd be interested to see how that copes with the infamous irish rain!

[Scots_Charles_River]

Now that's a work :D They look like they could be really comfortable too.
Is there a chance the programme may be shown in the UK?

Several years ago I went to an Archaeological conference at Glasgow University which discussed roundhouses. One of the speakers was Dr Chris Lynn of the Deer Park Farms centre in Northern Ireland, and he had been building basket woven re-constructions. It sounded fascinating then, and is still a subject that generates a great deal of continuing interest.
I'll see if I can find some links.

cheers,
Toddy

'Long Way Down' tv show on sunday, had Obi Wan and his young Padwan staying in a village using this hut construction method, semi nomadics. Setting up camp for boys circumcision.:tapedshut

Nick

[spamel]

'Long Way Down' tv show on sunday, had Obi Wan and his young Padwan staying in a village using this hut construction method, semi nomadics. Setting up camp for boys circumcision.:tapedshut

Nick

I just watched that earlier, the huts were pretty amazing. I think I'll pass on the circumcision though!

[Eric_Methven]

Now that's a work :D They look like they could be really comfortable too.
Is there a chance the programme may be shown in the UK?

Several years ago I went to an Archaeological conference at Glasgow University which discussed roundhouses. One of the speakers was Dr Chris Lynn of the Deer Park Farms centre in Northern Ireland, and he had been building basket woven re-constructions. It sounded fascinating then, and is still a subject that generates a great deal of continuing interest.
I'll see if I can find some links.

cheers,
Toddy

Hmmmm, do you think we may have found a thatcher for the crannog Toddy?
Excellent work there.

Eric

[Toddy]

http://www.scottisharchaeologicalforu m.org.uk/html/roundhouses.asp

and

http://www.biab.ac.uk/online/results1.asp?ItemID=62750

cheers,
Toddy

[Gailainne]

Fascinating

In Patricks parachute set up at the weekend there was a definate interface between the smoke filled top of the parachute and below, as Patrick said the poles needed to be between 4 to 6 ft longer as some of the taller guys standing up were in the smoke zone, whereas the people sitting were a couple of feet below. Another interesting thing was, after it rained all night the smoke zone was dry, on the outside, whereas the lower portion of the parachute was still quite wet.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a thermodynamic model of the varients to get the best design, or perhaps more importantly how good the crannog design was.

Stephen

[Scots_Charles_River]

Was the peak of the chute just tied up or did it have a pole ?

I hope the Merryment and drinking did not bring down the Loch Tay Grendel !

Nick

[BMFHL]

"but I'm not too sure about that top piece of thatching due to it being very flat, although I am probably wrong"

Well, time will tell. I guess if they were permanantly occupied, or at least seasonally, they would be more waterproof, since the 'dry parachute effect' mentioned above also holds true for thatch.

Also, the thatch is double thick at the top, so hopefully that'll help. Finally, they're built right at the base of a large tree, in a reasonably good forest canopy. That'll also count for some shelter, especially when the leaves return.

[spamel]

Indeed. I wasn't knocking your work, hopefully my post didn't read like that although we all know how the written word can so often be misconstrued! I will be very interested to see how it fairs, but as you say it does look to be in a very sheltered place. In fact, i would love to spend a few weeks in a hut like that, just to see what it was like.

[BMFHL]

Don't worry Spamel, I didn't read it that way. In fact, that's one of the reasons I posted in the first place, so other, perhaps more experienced, eyes could see it, and tease out some ideas and comments.

Perhaps a fully conical roof would be even better, and might shed the rain more effectively.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Hoodoo]

Very nice work! Looked like fun too. :) Who was the bloke with the Micigan State sweatshirt? I did my graduate and postdoc work at MSU.

[OzaawaaMigiziNini]

Tell them to come and film here in Canada, the wilderness is about as Mesolithic as it gets...and so are some of the blokes I bushcraft with... ;)
Alex

The film "Quest for fire" had several scenes filmed on the Bruce Peninsula of Ontario, where I grew up. From what I can tell, most of the rocky scenes were from the Colpoys Bay/Cyrpus Lake region.

Yeah I know the film isn't 100% accurate by a long shot, but still a favourite of mine :o

[BMFHL]

Michigan State guy is me. My wife played a concert there once, and picked up one of their cool hoodies for me. Alas, I was never there.

[Dave Budd]

Thats it Spam,
In slowing down to pass through the thatch, the localised area at the top of the inside of the roof, suffers oxygen depletion leading to........... etc etc etc

I don't know if this was by trial or design, maybe the roundhouses with chimneys all burnt down; who knows?

Ogri the trog

Funny you should say that :o Butser Iron Age farm in Hampshire (the first experimental archaeology centre in the UK) built the first accurate reconstructed roundhouses at the end of the 60's (or early 70's) and the first couple had smoke holes. It takes less than 20 minutes to go from pretty cooking fire to house sized pile of ash! :eek:

My little shelter I use in the woods is the same sort of design, but about twice the size and covered with plastic tarps. I adjust how much space there is under the top tarp (like the horizontal thatch in the film) so that I can get the smoke to rise and escape freely, but maintaining a certain level of smoke at the of the roof as an estiguisher ;) Sometimes when teh wind drops I have to run outside and ope the gap a bit wider before the smoke gets too low :D


NIce job there btw. Do you happen to know what was found at the Mesolithic site up the road?

[BMFHL]

"Do you happen to know what was found at the Mesolithic site up the road?"

I do indeed. They found a few circles suggestive of huts, a few hundred flint and chert flakes, and three cremations. This is possibly one of the most significant mesolithic sites in Ireland, after Mount Sandel, in that it gives good solid evidence for what the these people were doing with their dead. Before this, all we had was a few remains from a midden, and some bones from a cave. Now, we know they took the time, and had the expertise, to cremate the dead, and bury the ashes. Not only that, but the site also revealed polished stone axes, one of which was recovered from a pit containing a cremation, and a substantial post hole. This suggests that the buried cremations were marked above ground with markers. These may or may not have been decorated.
It also pushes the date for polished stone axes way back into the earlier mesolithic, so all in all, a very inportant site.

[BMFHL]

And, after reviewing the above, i might just plug that vent hole.

[Toddy]

I agree with the others about the roof. No hole in the crannog roof since the draught produced by it would draw the heat and fire upwards like a chimney and set the reeds alight.
Some of the older thatched houses had a hinging lum to act as a remote chimney for just that reason. The fire is at floor level but the base of the wooden hinging lum is above head height.

For a long time archaeologists interpreted arcs of small stake holes as being only used for hunting blinds or occasional shelter; it took a sea change of opinion to see that a (relatively) flimsy structure could indeed be a comfortable and very stable family home even in our wet, cold climate. It isn't necessary to use massive timber posts to support the roof.

cheers,
Toddy

[ForgeCorvus]

The basic shape reminds me of one thing, an eggshell....now thats one incredibly strong shape in anyones book

A well made Ger should be strong enough for a man to hang from the star-wheel, works the same way