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Roundhouse

Monday, December 18, 2017 14:01

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This replica Iron Age roundhouse at Flag Fen is interesting in a number of ways. Apparently the pitch of the roof is too shallow for thatching – rain seeps through because it doesn’t run off quickly enough. The problem has been solved with turf as you can see, but a turf roof has proved to be very heavy. Our guide told us this along with many other fascinating aspects of the Flag Fen site.

As I’m sitting here typing this blog post I see it is just over two degrees centigrade outside so that is another obvious question – how did Iron Age folk survive a British winter? The roundhouse seemed to keep out the wind well enough and had a pleasant earthy aroma, but I wouldn’t call it cosy. Even if a central fire had been kept burning day and night it isn’t easy to see how the interior could ever have been toasty. Smoky but not toasty, so how did they survive winter?

As we know, many didn’t survive and very few reached my age so that may be part of the answer. Perhaps they were constantly busy with the routines of daily life, burning far more calories than we do so generating their own body warmth during the day. Presumably they curled up next to each other under animal skins during long winter nights to preserve that warmth and maybe they curled up with their animals too.

Perhaps they also put on lots of weight during the warmer months so they could exist partly on accumulated fat reserves. In which case nobody would have pointed a finger at them and called them ‘fatty’ because only fatties survived.

Lots of questions, lots of more or less probable answers, lots of speculation. It’s what makes history so endlessly fascinating, but beneath all that is a suspicion that the core of it, the soul of those Iron Age lives cannot be grasped by moderns. Too much lost detail, the myriad daily stratagems which left no trace but everyone knew them, had to know them and used them to survive and even enjoy life where we could not even survive.

On a damp and chilly day the replica roundhouse certainly reminded me of something. Our British climate may be classed as temperate, but is harsh and unforgiving without the technology we now take for granted. How do we make the technology last, or should we learn how to build a roundhouse?

Back in 1978 the BBC broadcast a series where volunteers lived on an Iron Age farm as Iron Age people. I remember watching it. Interesting but somehow unsatisfactory I thought at the time. Moderns gamely trying to grasp what perhaps cannot be grasped.

Source: http://akhaart.blogspot.com/2017/12/roundhouse.html

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