Incredible Stone Age House: Primitive Technology 3,800BC

Much of the reason we are here today is thanks to our early ancestors who learned to hunt fish, forage, and grow food to survive. Two thousand years ago life was very different, but thanks to the Botsa Ancient Farm team they have created a gateway to the past. Creating a unique experimental archaeological site nestled amongst the rolling countryside of the national park to the south, the working farm gives you a glimpse of life in the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman period and Anglo-Saxon. Incredible historical architecture has been built. Using traditional techniques still used in Britain to this day, join me as I take you on a journey through time and reveal the story of what life was like in ancient Britain.

This 15 by 7 meter Stone Age structure was inspired by the early Neolithic Horton.

house

which was excavated and discovered by Wessex archaeology, it was one of four early Neolithic

house

s found at the Kingsmead quarry in Haunton Berkshire, dating from 3800 BC. C., making it one of the most important Neolithic sites in English history here at the old Butzer farm. The team has reconstructed the layout of Horton House based on the post holes and foundation trench that was excavated by Wessex Archaeology. This is a very impressive build. It was built with a mix of ancient techniques such as wattle and gate and traditional thatched roof when this house was originally built.

The landscape of Britain would have been very different to what it is today, as agriculture is still a very new technique. The landscape would have been largely forested. The community that settled on this site would have fished, farmed, hunted and searched for food here are Simon and Therese, to tell you more about the design and construction of this

incredible

Neolithic house, okay welcome to Sanction Farm and we are standing outside our Stone Age house, Halton House, so The reconstructed Neolithic house that was excavated was excavated at a place called Horton Quarry near Heathrow Airport in Berkshire and Simon said it is Neolithic, so it dates from around 3800 BC.

C., from the early Neolithic and was discovered in what is now a quarry, but in the past it was in one of those bends in the River Thames, so it was a fairly busy place. place archaeologically, that's all, so we return. I think in Wessex archeology 2018 we're digging in the quarry and we found this, uh, breaking up in the gravel as such from this Stone Age house, basically, you can see it straight away. It was a dwelling, what there is is discoloration in the gravel and soil of an outline of the building and where you can see the wear patterns in the entrance, we can usually also find where the chimneys are, so we take that evidence. and we can rebuild it from there.

I said earlier that we were looking at many of our buildings on the site. We have been going for about 50 years. We used to use a lot of oak, a lot of ash. The ash dies because we can't. get it at this time or not at this time we can't get it at all, but it was like that, so we were looking for different materials and the good thing is that we have been using Scots pine in this as an excellent native tree, it is a pioneer tree and also it is super strong it lasts and it's great to work with really nice straight material so it works really well so you can see a lot of Scots pine in the construction of this apart from the doors where there's a little bit of Oak in there as well also Hazel, so it's Whatland Dobbs, so Hazel on the back of this and then the dog made of clay, a little bit of dung, a little bit of hair, you can see all kinds of bits here and then it's covered. with clay paint and different natural pigments and one of the things we like to do is experiment not only with the materials but with the different types of pigments how well they look on these types of surfaces how well they last as you can see in this need a little bit of repair, so it takes a hit during the winter and stuff and then we'll give it an update in the spring.

I think that's pretty interesting, plus we're talking about maintenance is that when we put these buildings under construction they require a lot of maintenance and it's not something that you can go to and it's going to be fine for the next five years. You know you have to check it and you also have to get it winter-hardy. make sure we seal our spaces and keep them nice and warm, nice and safe and just constantly monitor and watch and replace where replacement needs to be done right away. You know it doesn't last forever, but you can make sure it does. lasts a long time if you can stay on top of that maintenance all the time and you're saying before about splitting Hazel, this is not done with the conventional type of hook Bill, no, uh, uh, Darren, our local tree writer, our Corpus expert.

He didn't put the Bullock away from him for the day and used some of Flint's tools, just a simple Flint hand knife, he didn't have any thoughts like it wasn't set in wood or anything like that. handle, just used the Flint blade and split all this Hazel and did it pretty quickly, plus in a few hours he had it done, so they are a nice sight, skins, some of them sewn together and they hold up. the eraser pretty good actually and it's the best line, it's the best line, can't you use it on that? That's brilliant, yeah, and you're saying you obviously can't make tons of Blast line for every berth here, no, the principles are the same.

What we try and do is take elements throughout the build itself, it gets very, very expensive if you go all the way from start to finish, we've done that on certain buildings, but some of this side we just take elements and we see what we do. um at certain points on the frame um we'll use flint tools, we'll use bone uh or chisels to create holes and things like that and we'll use natural fiber and we can recreate that, but to push it in because in modern times, we have financial constraints, we use other means to achieve it, but it seems that, in terms of lots, you have opted for water, read yes, it would have been as you say, available available out there, so like you. we were saying it's near Miranda towards the River Thames or in a large wetland area, so we're assuming that yes, we've certainly been using a lot of water cane there as well, so there's a full six tonnes in this. build, so it's a big investment, yeah, definitely, it was pretty simple actually to build, you know, you know, these uh, the five main A-frames went up quickly, um, with the roof beams crossing to stop that type of shelving, so in terms of construction, the main construction was pretty quick and it was in and out in a few weeks. um, like I said, when it comes to fashion, that's what slows down the whole project, but it's a big building, it's cool with that height. it helps keep the smoke levels above your head so you're not sitting in that smoke all the time so it works really well yeah so we've basically based it on archeology which was pretty sparse but it was one of the challenges. was that in archeology it showed only six main post holes on the outside and one of the big questions was how does such a large structure that is almost 17 meters long work, how does it stand or what does it look like, so we worked with Los Wessex archaeologists brought out all their sort of sophisticated high-tech CAD systems to simulate different possibilities and in the end it was decided that this A-frame worked very well and there was also evidence in the archeology of some kind of slotted ditches for Simon said it was just a shadow so we thought the A-frame fit really well and what would be interesting eventually when the building dies and is gone we'll see what's left and feed it to compare it to the original archeology and then in archeology there was this kind of evidence for this partition so there was a suggestion that there was some partition we don't know exactly why some theories say animals would have been living on one side and then humans on the other um we don't bring in the animals here, but you know that it is a possibility and I suppose one of the important things that we do is that we are in the Experimental Center, so everything we do we explain and, in addition, we explore possibilities, but it is never the definitive answer, really yes , one of the things you can see here are some of the tools that we used, so they are all flint tools that were used in the construction and then we have other things like these really cool tailbone scapulars that have been shaped into hose and then you can turn them the other way to make shovels, yeah, and they work really, really, they work really well, yeah, and then another little one from Flint, that's what this one has been used a lot, yeah, but again, they can be very simple, they don't.

It doesn't have to be complicated, you know, a high quality nap, it's just a really nice sharp edge, yeah, it doesn't take a lot of time in terms of when you're using those tools, you can quickly split the handle and things like that. I see little reason to spend hours and hours and days striving to create the perfect handle so that you just hit the wrong spot or get it wrong and split right away, you just want to make something quick. We're going to have a roof over our heads, basically things like um, the saddle coin down there to, um, grind any grain and we can get all the seeds that we have, so they would have used this um.

It's that kind of action there. This is the earliest form, so you get a lot of rotating currents that you will see in later periods. Yes, this is a type of excitement for any seed that the kernels get crushed again and again. In the Neolithic, we are talking about a period. when cereal cultivation is coming to the country and people are starting to farm, keep animals, that would have been quite an important tool, actually I want to say that we make it more community-based, as I said, we receive visits from thousands of children of age school, so in terms of the seats and the Skins like that they are purely for them, for their needs, really, and that for sitting and that gives them more of a community, but can you imagine if there was a family, an extended family living here, You know?

You just have different areas where you would have had your personal effects, really your dresses, things like those boxes that they certainly find evidence of, so it would have been filled with all kinds of things to make what makes you your home, basically, yeah, there was definitive evidence. for domestic use, so there was evidence of pottery, um, so we know for sure that there were people living here, yes, so we put the Waterland gate there, um and that it was quite thick, but on top of that, this is quite nice and It's great when the sun is shining, that's the window of our skin and we've used fish oil to give it flexibility and that light shining through it just gives you a little bit of extra light through the skin. through the house itself, so it's lovely, isn't it?

Yes, yes, why not, we cannot forget the color. You know, sometimes people hate the past. Has been very. You know it's brown. It is brown. They all use burlap sacks and everything. It's a little dirty and brown but we know for a fact that people really appreciated the color in terms of the use of pigments and I think this one is lovely, as you say when the sun shines it just creates the most glorious light. that's wattle and doll, but here we just tried it because there was no dog evidence or any kind of wall, so we just had the post holes and a couple of pieces of artifacts, but on this side we've used carved planks and He been if you like with things like we've experimented with moss and greases, yeah, clay, or other bits of materials to see how long they last and see how effective they are at keeping all that wind out. and we renew that we monitor it and understand if they work or not, so for example, the clay we find dries very quickly and falls off, it is not of much use, the moss performs quite well and is also fast, it is really good, it stayed there, um. so yeah, it's kind of a work in progress, let's say it's very difficult because we were also affected by the pandemic at the same time, I think I remember it was Christmas 2018, almost you know, early 2019, you know we were we started installing the mainframe and then I think we were fine, we just started thatching as we got into March, now we're not at it every day, we have other tasks to do on site and then we get halfway through and it stopped and I think we had, I don't know, 20 of the patch on that and also then we closed, we weren't allowed to work and we had to keep coming in. um people work on their own basically keeping them away and over the summer I would say by then we were already done yeah join me on the next episode where we look back to the Bronze Age and how various construction techniques could have been implemented during this era, if you enjoyed the video, feel free to subscribe andMake sure to check out more videos like this in the description box below, thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one okay?