37o PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



siderably more advanced phase of civilisation than the kitchen- 

 middens, and are further important from the fact that they 

 reveal the successive stages through which the primitive in- 

 habitants of Switzerland passed from the Neolithic through the 

 Bronze into the Iron Age. Dr. Keller has given us an elaborate 

 and detailed account of these remarkable dwellings, 1 and has 

 arranged them in three groups according to the character of 

 their substructure. Those of the first group, the Pile Dwellings, 

 are, he tells us, by far the most numerous in the lakes of 

 Switzerland and Upper Italy. In these the substructure con- 

 sists of piles of various kinds of wood, sharpened sometimes by 

 fire, sometimes by stone hatchets or celts, and in later times by 

 tools of bronze, and probably of iron, the piles being driven into 

 the bottom of the lake at various distances from the shore. 

 Upon the heads of the piles platform -beams were laid and 

 fastened by means of wooden pins ; in other cases, however, the 

 cross-beams were fitted into mortises cut in the heads of the 

 vertical piles. Occasionally cross-timbers united the piles below 

 the platform, to steady and strengthen the structure. The 

 platform consisted generally of one or two layers of unbarked 

 stems laid parallel one to another, but in a few cases it was 

 composed of boards split out of the trunks of trees. Frequently 

 the outer row of piles appears to have been protected by a kind 

 of hurdle-work of small twigs or branches. The dwellings were 

 probably connected with the shore by means of a narrow plat- 

 form also laid on piles, the remains of which have in some cases 

 been detected. Dr. Keller remarks that, so far as can be 

 ascertained, the same mode of construction characterised the 

 pile-buildings of each of the three Ages of Stone, Bronze, and 

 Iron, the only difference being that those which were occupied 

 during the Bronze Age appear frequently to have been farther 

 from the shore and deeper in the lakes than those which belong 

 to the Age of Stone. Occasionally large numbers of stones were 



i The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and other parts of Europe, by Dr. 

 Ferdinand Keller (translated and arranged by John Edward Lee). 2d edition, 

 1878. 



