40 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



its causes may have been, can be traced in an uninterrupted line. Though some 

 of the settlements are supposed to have been abandoned toward the beginning 

 of the Christian era, it is notable that they are not mentioned by Caesar, who 

 had become acquainted with the Helvetians by his wars, nor by Pliny, an author 

 particularly fond of dwelling on details. No account, no tradition, alludes to 

 these peculiar structures, which evidently were designed to protect their occu- 

 pants from the attacks of wild beasts and human enemies. 



A detailed description of the lake-dwellings pertaining to neolithic times 

 would be out of place in this publication, which is devoted to a special subject ; 

 and I therefore confine myself to a general account of these early lacustrine 

 structures. 



They were located in shallow places, and never very far from the shore, with 

 which each communicated by means of a narrow bridge, as before stated. The 

 upright piles were mostly whole stems of trees growing in the neighborhood, 

 usually from four to eight inches in diameter, and roughly pointed at the lower end 

 by means of fire or the stone hatchet. Upon these piles, brought to a level several 

 feet above the water, and strengthened by cross-timbers, rested the platform, often 

 merely composed of unbarked stems lying parallel to each other, but sometimes 

 consisting of boards two inches thick, which were fastened with wooden pegs into 

 the frame-work, thus forming an even and solid floor. The lacustrine settlement 

 near the German village of Wangen, on the Untersee, the northwestern detached 

 part of the Lake of Constance, contained from forty to fifty thousand posts, and 

 formed a parallelogram seven hundred paces long and one hundred and twenty 

 broad ; but in other lake-villages at Robenhausen, for instance probably 

 twice as many piles were required. When the bottom of the lake. was rocky, or 

 afforded no sufficient hold to the stakes, stones were heaped up between and 

 around them, in order to consolidate the erection. These stones, of course, had 

 to be brought in boats to the designated spots. Some dwellings were not erected 

 on piles, but on a kind of fascine-work, formed by layers of sticks and stems of 

 trees, stones, and loam, built up from the bottom of the lake until the foundation 

 was high enough to receive the platform. The upright piles found in these 

 substructures only served to give them steadiness. These fascine-structures, 

 reminding one of the Irish and Scottish crannogs, only occur in small lakes. 

 The huts erected on the platforms, it has been ascertained, were mostly of a 

 rectangular shape, and consisted of a wooden frame-work wattled with rods or 

 twigs, and covered both inside and outside with a layer of clay from two to three 

 inches thick. The roofs, it seems, were made of bark, straw, or rushes, the 

 remains of which have often been found in a carbonized state. A plaster of clay 

 mixed with gravel was spread on the floor of the hut to fill the chinks, and a 

 rude hearth, composed of several slabs of sandstone, occupied the middle of each 

 cabin. 



