NEOLITHIC, BRONZE, AND IRON AGES. 371 



employed in strengthening the foundations of the dwellings. 

 These are believed by Keller to have been brought in boats and 

 thrown down between and around the piles, and he mentions 

 that at Peter's Island in the Lake of Bienne a boat filled with 

 stones is to be seen in the spot where it had sunk with its too 

 heavy freight. The Frame Pile-Dwellings are very rare. " The 

 distinction between this form and the regular pile -settlement 

 consists in the fact that the piles, instead of having been driven 

 into the mud of the lake, had been fixed by a mortise-and-tenon 

 arrangement into split trunks, lying horizontally on the bed of 

 the lake. This plan was chiefly followed where the bottom of 

 the lake consisted of very soft mud, such as would hardly allow 

 of a hold for the piles." In the Fascine Dwellings, as Dr. Keller 

 terms his third group of lake-habitations, the substructure con- 

 sisted of successive layers of sticks or small stems of trees built 

 up from the bottom of the lake till they reached above the lake- 

 level. Upright piles occur commonly in this curious foundation ; 

 they did not, however, support the platform, but appear to have 

 been used simply as stays or guides for the great mass of sticks, 

 which were built up between and around them. The founda- 

 tions of the lake-dwellings are, as might be supposed, better 

 known than the superstructures, of which, however, enough has 

 been ascertained to give us a more or less definite idea of their 

 character. The platform upon which they stood was covered 

 over with clay, probably tramped or beaten down upon the 

 rough surface of wood, and sometimes the clay enclosed a layer 

 of pebbles. The walls or sides of the huts were formed of a 

 wattle- or hurdle- work of small branches woven in between 

 upright piles or stakes, and covered with a thick coating of clay. 

 According to Keller, all the evidence hitherto obtained proves 

 that the huts were rectangular, although some may possibly have 

 been round. It is not known, he says, whether they were 

 divided into several rooms or not. They would appear to have 

 been thatched with reeds and straw, the remains of which are 

 abundantly met with in every lake-dwelling. " Every hut had 

 its hearth, consisting of three or four large slabs of stone ; and 



