page_title: Stilt house
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Stilt house / History
caption_attribution_description: Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen, Freilichtmuseum am Bodensee, in der Gemeinde Uhldingen-Mühlhofen
context_page_description: Stilt houses are houses raised on stilts over the surface of the soil or a body of water. Stilt houses are built primarily as a protection against flooding; they also keep out vermin. The shady space under the house can be used for work or storage.
context_section_description: In the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, stilt-house settlements were common in the Alpine and Pianura Padana (Terramare) regions. Remains have been found at the Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia and at the Mondsee and Attersee lakes in Upper Austria, for example. Early archaeologists like Ferdinand Keller thought they formed artificial islands, much like the Irish and Scottish crannogs, but today it is clear that the majority of settlements were located on the shores of lakes and were only inundated later on. Reconstructed stilt houses are shown in open-air museums in Unteruhldingen and Zürich (Pfahlbauland). In June 2011, the prehistoric pile dwellings in six Alpine states were designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A single Scandinavian pile dwelling, the Alvastra stilt houses, has been excavated in Sweden. Herodotus has described in his Histories the dwellings of the "lake-dwellers" in Paeonia and how those were constructed.
caption: Reconstruction of Bronze Age German stilt houses on Lake Constance, Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen, Germany
exif: {}