Orientations and origins: a symbolic dimension to the long house in Neolithic Europe

Abstract

The long houses of the Linear Pottery Culture and its immediate successors are usually interpreted in functional terms, but they have certain anomalous features. This paper considers the processes by which they were built, lengthened, abandoned and replaced and suggests that they may have charted the development of the households who lived inside them. The buildings in Linear Pottery settlements were generally orientated towards the areas of the origin of the communities who lived there.