Present-day Denmark with its 44 000km2 is geographically small but rich in natural resources, such as fertile soils and high-yielding fishing waters around its nearly 9000km of coastline. Together with northern Germany and southern Sweden (Scania), it represented one of the most fertile areas for prehistoric farming populations in Europe. Farming arrived late (after 4000 BC), but once established, populations prospered; throughout later prehistory the region became rich in settlements and well-furnished burials. This book summarises for the first time all excavated two-aisled houses from the onset of the Neolithic to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age around 1700–1600 BC, when the architecture changed from two- to three-aisled farm houses. More than 1000 excavated farm buildings have been assembled in this richly illustrated two-volume monograph.
The monograph is divided into the main text (volume I), which discusses the evidence county by county, and a catalogue (volume II) that documents the evidence in the same manner. The production is of high quality, and all excavations are described in the catalogue. It is indeed a feat to assemble all of this information in such a comprehensive, well-structured and well-interpreted format. An instant classic.
The introductory chapter in Part I, by Poul Otto Nielsen, is an extended discussion of the current state of research that situates the Danish results within the larger Scandinavian and European contexts. It is an extensive chapter (40 pages) that discusses house developments through time. Many well-preserved houses from the fourth millennium BC were found beneath long barrows or megaliths, which accounts for their preservation. During this period, houses were mostly small. While large causewayed enclosures constructed for communal purposes, as well as impressive megaliths, demonstrate that the capacity to build large, complex structures was surely present, it has so far not materialised in house structures. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the living and the dead during this period, and perhaps also tells us something of interest about the relationship between humans and animals, the latter being reared in the open, sometimes in enclosures.
The question of the (missing) settlements from the Single Grave Culture also represents a challenge, as there are virtually no house remains from the first 200 years or so of this period, which has led to various suggestions that these still rather pastoral people were mobile, or that their houses were log houses without embedded posts. From the later part of the third millennium BC there appear houses with sunken floors filled with debris of various kinds, which also represents an interpretive challenge—were these houses filled up after abandonment or during use? The biggest change occurs around 2000 BC with the emergence of large, well-constructed mega-farmhouses, around 40m long or more, and sometimes 7–8m wide. They are situated in the wider European context of the Unetice Culture, which also provided most of the Bronze objects found in Denmark during this period. Finally, the change from two- to three-aisled houses is discussed, largely to be understood as a response to a new need to divide the interior space in houses according to function, but also to present more stable and impressive constructions. Thus, early hybrid forms would use the three-aisled construction for the living area, and once it was realised that this construction was superior it became standard, and continued right into late historical times.
There follow 24 chapters that present and interpret local and regional evidence, many with strikingly good illustrations and interpretations. Here I shall mention only two themes that stand out: the first is the introduction of the large houses around 2000 BC, which also seems to represent the introduction of the farmhouse proper, including space for storage and perhaps animals. Several of these large houses exhibit a rather open gable at one end that has been interpreted as providing easy access for animals (the discussion features in Signe Toft Jensen's chapter with good illustrations in figs 10–12, but additional relevant examples are also included in Niels Axel Boas's chapter on north Djursland). A large number of houses were excavated in northern Jutland, including late Single Grave houses and Bell Beaker houses. Torben Sarauw's chapter discusses in more detail the development of the sunken-floor phenomenon linked to these houses, which still defies an easy explanation, as postholes are often missing. This might perhaps indicate a different architectural construction, such as log houses. The second theme I want to highlight is the relationship between single farmsteads vs hamlets of several farms, originally suggested by the famous Fosie excavation in Scania, but also well illustrated in Danish cases; the eastern Zeland examples are discussed by Lotte Reedtz Sparrevohn. How far should the distance between farms be before we consider them part of a hamlet, and is it at all possible to separate individual, closely spaced farm buildings chronologically by 14C? This is well illustrated in Per Borup's chapter by a 3D figure of a local settlement pattern with added 14C dates. Several authors suggest that two to three houses could be contemporaneous in some of the denser settlement areas, forming a hamlet. This is based on an average lifespan of houses for one generation of occupants.
The interpretations of individual cases in the 24 chapters comprising volume I can be evaluated against the catalogue of all excavations in volume II, which may also serve as a statistical source for further analyses. Here it would have been helpful to have a digital version, or a link to a database that could facilitate the quantitative use of the data.
This is, however, a landmark publication, which further demonstrates the enormous expansion of knowledge brought about by rescue archaeology during the last generation in Denmark, and in large parts of Europe. The challenge will now be to summarise this evidence and collate it in a shared European database, a desiderata for the future, and perhaps something the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) could engage in one way or another. It demands collaboration between national agencies for archaeological heritage throughout Europe, and this is perhaps a task for their leaders in the European Archaeological Council, who also meet at the EAA annual conference.
