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Dwelling-houses in Jutland in the Iron Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Gudmund Hatt
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Extract

For natural reasons it is somewhat difficult to find remnants of prehistoric dwellings in Denmark. Our early forefathers utilized perishable materials in their house building, such as wood and straw. They made use also of clay and sod and, to a small extent, of natural stones. However, Denmark is one of the most intensely cultivated lands of Europe. The plough has been almost everywhere; and when the ploughshare has gone through the remnants of a hut of sod and clay the site is generally spoilt for the archaeologist. As a rule, we cannot expect to find any house-site intact unless it has been covered with a layer of soil, sufficient for protection against the plough.

While our knowledge of the prehistoric dwellings is, on the whole, very incomplete, we know something about the dwellings of the Iron Age for the cultural deposits are comparatively thick. It was probably not until the Early Iron Age—i.e. the La Tène and Roman periods—that agriculture reached such a stage of development that successive generations might dwell on the same site. Our best finds are from the northern part of Jutland. In Thy and Himmerland there are a number of deposits of Roman and the pre-Roman Iron Age with a depth of 1–2 m., containing several dwelling-sites above each other. Evidently, there existed in northern Jutland small village-sites, in the Roman period and probably somewhat earlier, of permanent habitation and occupied for several generations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 11 , Issue 42 , June 1937 , pp. 162 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1937

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References

1 Hatt, Gudmund ‘Deux trouvailles de stations habitées de l’ancien àge du fer (Mors et Himmerland)’. Mém de la Soc. Roy. des Antiq. du Nord, 1928.Google Scholar

2 Hatt, Gudmund ‘En Jernalders Hustomt i Troldtoft’. Aarbeger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 1935.Google Scholar

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5 Hans Kjaer in Congressus Soc. Arch. Bait. Rigae, 1930, p.163 ff.;Google Scholar Proc. Congress of Preh. and Prot. Sciences, 1932 (Oxford 1934), p. 287 ff.Google Scholar

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12 Among the important works should be mentioned:-

Shetelig, Haakon En aeldre jernalders gaard paa Jaederen. (Bergens Museums Aarbeg, 1909).Google Scholar

Petersen, Jan ‘Gamle Gàrdsanlegg i Rogaland’, 1–2, 1933 and 1936. (Instituttet for sammenlignende Kulturforskning, serie B, 23 and 31).Google Scholar

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