Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Archäologie des Mittelalters

The Dawn of LBK-Houses Revisited

Harald Stäuble

It is a general problem, that LBK-houses are so well known since the early half of the last century, whereas knowledge of the genesis and the spread of LBK-culture was basically missing. On the other hand houses of the oldest LBK-phase were discovered only some 30 to 35 years ago in central Europe – that is at the target and not at their presumed starting point ! At that time first ideas about the emergence of house-architecture from the Early Neolithic of southeast Europe arose, which at that time was completely void of any of the typical LBK-houses. This situation has changed considerably during the last 20 years, when large scale excavations in countries thought to be responsible for the development of the LBK-culture yielded many examples. Even though the distribution picture of the LBK-houses in time and space changed a lot, neither the new excavation nor the new chronological data seem to be able to clarify our view on the interdependence between the early neolithic house architecture in Europe.