Settlements, houses, households, and homes

There’s no place like home 

The daub fragments, that is, pieces of fired clay plaster from the wall of a burnt-down house, found in excavations often feature imprints of twigs, stakes, planks, beams, bundles of reed, or matting, as well as parts of decoration, all giving clues on the structure and look of the one-time building.

Besides, one can rely on depictions (rock carvings and house models) and, in historical periods, written sources when attempting to reconstruct a past dwelling. Technical (and culinary) development is marked in the archaeological record by the appearance of interior ovens in the Neolithic, portable stoves in the Bronze Age, and smoking pits in the Iron Age (albeit this invention, consisting of a fire pit connected by a tunnel to another pit where the food to be smoked was hanged, only became widespread with Sarmatians a period later). Wells dug at water supply points for people and their animals were essential to every settlement.

The most frequent settlement finds are potsherds. The highly diverse vessels they come from once served various purposes: the ones with a bigger capacity, thick walls, and a narrow mouth were used for storing, fermenting, and mixing liquids, but there were also finer, smaller serving vessels in tableware sets which, together with some special kitchen equipment (sieves, marinading vessels, fish plates), attest to sophisticated eating habits and the major role of alcohol consumption in some periods.