Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
it introduced into speculative building in Rome from observation of its occurence
and utility in the northern provinces of the Empire? It may well be that wattle
and daub is better suited to detached building rather than high density urban
terrace building.
Appendix: Timber Circles
In the interest of maintaining a homogenous subject discussion has been limited
as far as possible to the dictionary meaning of buildings, i.e. enclosed and shel-
tered spaces where man may shelter or store their possessions; and in principle
other constructions, e.g. roads and bridges, have been excluded. h erefore the
following remarks are added rather as an appendix, since they concern construc-
tions which neither enclose space nor provide shelter to man or beast. However
they are evidently public as opposed to domestic “constructions”. Furthermore
they are the direct forbears of renowned stone monuments. Spoken of here are
Neolithic “timber circles” of temperate Europe (Britain, Holland, Germany etc.)
formed from solid posts or tree trunks set upright in the soil to give in plan a
circle or concentric circles. It is possible that they may have incorporated some
rooi ng, but more likely they did not. And while they may have been set within
an enclosure (a temenos), it is unlikely that they incorporated enclosure walls in
their design. According to recent pronouncement, the essential type of the timber
circle is revealed in the stone circle which was its successor (e.g. Stonehenge) both
in time and, on occasion, in place.
h ese timber circles articulated sacred space, they did not shelter it nor enclose
it. h ey are arch-typal examples of the “rural sanctuary” where it is the space
which is sacred not any building erected there. h is tradition was long lived in
the ancient world, e.g. Herodotus (I.131) remarked on it as “subsisting among the
Persians of his day—and strange to Greeks”. Traces of it can also be seen in the
(otherwise bizarre) custom recorded by Strabo (IV.4.3) concerning the priestesses
of a temple on an island of the mouth of the Loire. He states that one day each
year the priestesses removed the roof of the temple and then set it back in place
before the end of the day. h is would seem a rite connected with sun worship,
but he says the “priestesses of Dionysos”.
h e “timber circles” are monuments of religious, funerary and ceremonial pur-
pose, exactly parallel to their better known megalithic counterparts; and sometimes
(like them) they are associated with “barrows”, earth mounds (v Gibson, pp. 81-97).
Also in Holland, in the region of Drenthe, waterlogged timbers indicated a small
“skeleton” square temple of timber posts and beams (ca 1400 BC). Equally the
tradition of skeleton timber construction may be preserved in the wooden skeletons
Neolithic
timber
circles
ancestral
to Mega-
lithic
construc-
tion
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107
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109
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