The evidence suggests that something was going on politically and socially in order to manage a denser population, a larger local population, and a larger household. After 1635, disease disrupted families so much that fictive kinship was invented to allow the repackaging of people into Ionghouses once again. New relationships were created to regroup the half-destroyed population, but these seventeenth century innovations are long forgotten. Oral tradition says little of the change. Archeology is the only source of such understanding.
Archeology reveals other details.
The width of the longhouse and the length of each compartment was three fathoms. Storage compartments for corn could be found at either end. In the Mohawk Valley each Ionghouse also had a large post that was apparently moved from place to place, not abandoned to rot in place. Quite possibly those posts had clan carvings on them, but no surviving examples exist. When the Iroquois Ieft the bark longhouse for log structures, they had the hearth in the center of the floor, with a central smoke hole.