Cherokee
The Cherokee are one of the indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, the tips of western South Carolina and northeastern Georgia; the Cherokee language is part of the Iroquoian language group. In the 19th century, James Mooney, an American ethnographer, recorded one oral tradition that told of the tribe having migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, where other Iroquoian-speaking peoples lived. Today there are three federally recognized Cherokee tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. By the 19th century, European settlers in the United States classified the Cherokee of the Southeast as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes", because they were agrarian and lived in permanent villages and began to adopt some cultural and technological practices of the European American settlers.
The Cherokee were one of the first, if not the first, major non-European ethnic group to become U. S. citizens. Article 8 in the 1817 treaty with the Cherokee stated that Cherokees may wish to become citizens of the United States; the Cherokee Nation has more than 300,000 tribal members, making it the largest of the 567 federally recognized tribes in the United States. In addition, numerous groups claim Cherokee lineage, some of these are state-recognized. A total of more than 819,000 people are estimated to claim having Cherokee ancestry on the US census, which includes persons who are not enrolled members of any tribe. Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the UKB have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma; the UKB are descendants of "Old Settlers", Cherokee who migrated to Arkansas and Oklahoma about 1817 prior to Indian Removal. They are related to the Cherokee who were forcibly relocated there in the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act; the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina.
A Cherokee language name for Cherokee people is Aniyvwiyaʔi, translating as "Principal People". Tsalagi is the Cherokee word for Cherokee. Many theories, though none proven, abound about the origin of the name "Cherokee", it may have been derived from the Choctaw word Cha-la-kee, which means "people who live in the mountains", or Choctaw Chi-luk-ik-bi, meaning "people who live in the cave country". The earliest Spanish transliteration of the name, from 1755, is recorded as Tchalaquei. Another theory is; the Iroquois Five Nations based in New York have called the Cherokee Oyata'ge'ronoñ. The word Cherokee means “people of different speech.” Anthropologists and historians have two main theories of Cherokee origins. One is that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, are relative latecomers to Southern Appalachia, who may have migrated in late prehistoric times from northern areas around the Great Lakes, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee nations and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples.
Another theory is. Researchers in the 19th century recorded conversations with elders who recounted an oral tradition of the Cherokee people migrating south from the Great Lakes region in ancient times, they may have moved south into Muscogee Creek territory and settled at the sites of mounds built by the Mississippian culture and earlier moundbuilders. In the 19th century, European-American settlers mistakenly attributed several Mississippian culture sites in Georgia to the Cherokee, including Moundville and Etowah Mounds. However, other evidence shows that the Cherokee did not reach this part of Georgia until the late 18th century and could not have built the mounds; the Connestee people, believed to be ancestors of the Cherokee, occupied western North Carolina circa 200 to 600 CE. Pre-contact Cherokee are considered to be part of the Pisgah Phase of Southern Appalachia, which lasted from circa 1000 to 1500. Despite the consensus among most specialists in Southeast archeology and anthropology, some scholars contend that ancestors of the Cherokee people lived in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for a far longer period of time.
During the late Archaic and Woodland Period, Native Americans in the region began to cultivate plants such as marsh elder, pigweed and some native squash. People created new art forms such as shell gorgets, adopted new technologies, developed an elaborate cycle of religious ceremonies. During the Mississippian culture-period, local women developed a new variety of maize called eastern flint corn, it resembled modern corn and produced larger crops. The successful cultivation of corn surpluses allowed the rise of larger, more complex chiefdoms consisting of several villages and concentrated populations during this period. Corn became celebrated among numerous peoples in religious ceremonies the Green Corn Ceremony. Much of what is known about pre-18th-century Native American cultures has come from records of Spanish expeditions; the earliest ones of the mid-16th-century encountered people of the Mississippian culture, the ancestors to tribes in the Southeast such as
Posthole
In archaeology a posthole or post-hole is a cut feature used to hold a surface timber or stone. They are much deeper than they are wide although truncation may not make this apparent. Although the remains of the timber may survive most postholes are recognisable as circular patches of darker earth when viewed in plan. Archaeologists can use their presence to plot the layout of former structures as the holes may define its corners and sides. Construction using postholes is known as post in ground construction. Although a common structure, one of the most basic found in archaeology, correct interpretation relies on being able to tell the subtle differences that distinguish the parts of the posthole; the components of an archaeological posthole are listed in order of creation and, in ideal circumstances, the reverse order of their excavation. Posthole cutThe cut, it is cut from the ground surface level at time of construction. The sides of the hole may be distorted by pressure on the post, or disturbance.
Only careful excavation will be able to distinguish between the original cut profile and any distortion. The cut needs to be distinguished from the fill in any detailed stratigraphic analysis, in the same way that any pit fill has to post-date the cutting of the pit if by minutes. Dug up soilSoil excavated from the hole sitting in a pile next to the hole ready for backfilling. Ideal sequence will be that the dug up soil will have material dug through first at the bottom of the pile, with material from deeper down on top of the pile. In optimal situations, the location of dug up soil can be detected adjacent to filled postholes where subsoil differs markedly from the surface material. PostNormally a round or squared timber placed in the hole. Sometimes a stone may be set in the hole below the post to prevent the post sinking in soft ground or sticks and stones to keep the post properly aligned until it is filled. Many cultures charred their posts to slow down rate of decay in situ; this is sometimes mistaken for burning in situ.
Posts may, in modern times, be soaked in creosote or other decay inhibitors or termite preventatives. The post may have decayed, or been removed. If decayed there should be a dark organic stain that matches the original dimensions and extent of the post. Posthole fill / Post packingThe dug up soil goes back in the hole once the post is in place. Sometimes structural needs require that the hole is packed with rocks or smaller sticks to keep the post in desired position. Ideally dug out material returns to the pit in its original stratigraphic order but mixing occurs so that ground layers and posthole layers are distinguishable. Logically not all of the contents of the hole will fit back once the post is emplaced, so remaining soil may be left in a pile or scattered. Postpipe or post mouldThe decayed buried section of the post; some archaeologists prefer pipe where it is predominantly still organic material and mould where this has been replaced by sediment. Post voidWhere; this may be uncovered as a cavity, although this is rare and a combination of slumping of posthole fill and inwashed deposits fill the position of the post, termed post mould.
PostholeThis is the generic term for all of the archaeological evidence contained within the cut when seen in plan view, including any artefacts that have been introduced during the cutting and filling sequence. To excavate a posthole a series of steps must be taken. First, the postholes are sprayed with water to prevent them from drying out and to make the edges show up more clearly; the postholes are measured to see where the widest point is. One half of the post hole and part of the surrounding soil is dug out in a rectangular shape until the bottom of the post hole is visible on the wall of the intact half; this wall is the profile wall of the post hole. The post hole is measured of its width and height and the profile wall is drawn, with important features like rocks or bones being marked. Postholes are different from stake holes in that the cut is dug for the post rather than created by the driving in of the stake; this means. This material is post packing and is one of the main ways of differentiating postholes from stake holes in plan.
The shape and structure of the contexts within a posthole can shed light on past activity. If a post was purposely removed the action of rocking it back and forth leaves tell-tale evidence in the profile of the posthole which archaeologists can recognise. A post may have rotted in place leaving a postpipe or still be surviving. Archaeologists can use their presence to plot the layout of former structures as the holes may define its corners and sides. Postholes may be dug on alignments of backfilled ditches where boundaries have been upgraded from simple ditch enclosures into structural ones; the relative frequency of postholes as a feature in most eras combined with a lack of good information on the phasing of postholes, which occurs onsite due to horizontal truncation or a failure to spot postholes at the level they were cut from, can lead to a clutter of postholes that invites imaginative interpretations. The human mind seems quite capable of creating patterns and the temptation to see structures that are not there or tenuous at best is quite strong.
It is considered good practice that supporting evidence from multiple sources on site like the perceived structures alignments with other features onsite should be taken into account before a
Burdei
A burdei or bordei is a type of half-dugout shelter, somewhat between a sod house and a log cabin. This style is native to forest steppes of eastern Europe. In the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture burdei houses were characterized by elliptical shapes; these houses would have a wooden floor, about 1.5 meters below ground, which would place the roof at just above ground level. The term used by western historians, for burdei-type housing on the Lower Danube and in the Carpathians during the 6th–7th centuries AD, is Grubenhaus. Poluzemlianki is used by Russian researchers; the Russian term refers to a structure dug into the ground less than 1 m deep. The Grubenhaus was erected over a rectangular pit, ranging in size from four square meters to twenty-five square meters of floor area. During the 6th and 7th centuries the sunken buildings east and south of the Carpathians, were under 15 square meters in floor surface; the experiments of the Archeological Open-Air Museum in Březno near Louny have reconstructed the living and temperature conditions in the dug houses.
The building experiment consisted of two houses, which were exact replicas of two sunken buildings excavated on the site, one of the late sixth or early seventh century, the other of the ninth. The sixth- to seventh-century feature was large and deep; the excavation of the rectangular pit represented some fifteen cubic meters of earth. The excavation, as well as other, more complex, such as binding horizontal sticks on the truss or felling and transport of trees, required a minimum of two persons; the building of the house took 860 hours, which included the felling of trees for rafters and the overall preparation of the wood. Building the actual house required 2.2 cubic meters of wood. In itself, the superstructure swallowed two cubic meters of wood. Three to four cubic meters of clay were necessary for daubing the walls and reeds harvested from some 1,000 square meters, for the covering of the superstructure. Assuming sixty to seventy working hours per week and a lot more experience and skills for the early medieval builders, the house may have been built in three to four weeks.59 -Florin Curta.
In countries like Romania, the burdei was built to constitute a permanent housing place and could accommodate a whole family. Thus, a Romanian burdei could have multiple rooms a fire-room where the stove was installed, a cellar, a living room; this type of shelter was created by many of the earliest Ukrainian Canadian settlers as their first home in Canada at the end of the 19th century. The first step was to peel back and save the sod excavate the earth to a depth of a metre. A poplar roof frame was created, over which the saved sod would be laid. A window, a door, a wood stove, a bed platform would be installed. A typical burdei measured no more than two by four metres; the burdei was a temporary refuge until a "proper" home of poplar logs and mud/straw plaster could be built. Mennonites from Imperial Russia settled in the Hillsboro region of Kansas, built burdei housings as temporary shelters; this type of shelter was called a zemlyanka or a saraj. The March 20, 1875, issue of the national weekly newspaper Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper described the structures:...is the quaint brand-new village of Gnadenau, where there are some twenty small farmers, who have built the queerest and most comfortable cheap houses seen in the West, with the least amount of timber, being a skeleton roof built on the ground and thatched with prairie-grass.
They serve for beast, being divided on the inside by a partition of adobe. ASTRA National Museum Complex Culture of Romania Cucuteni-Trypillian culture Dugout Earth sheltering Pit-house Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village Vernacular architecture of the Carpathians Village Museum Vernacular architecture Zemlyanka Shelter from the Rain Article and pictures of Ukrainian burdeis in Canada
Root cellar
A root cellar is a structure underground or underground, used for storage of vegetables, nuts, or other foods. Its name reflects the traditional focus on root crops stored in an underground cellar, still true, although a wide variety of foods can be stored, for weeks to months, depending on the crop and the conditions, the structure may not always be underground. Root cellaring has been vitally important in various places for winter food supply. Although present-day food distribution systems and refrigeration have rendered root cellars unnecessary for many people, they remain important for many people who value self-sufficiency, whether by economic necessity or by choice and for personal satisfaction, thus they are popular among diverse audiences, including gardeners, organic farmers, DIY fans, preppers, subsistence farmers, enthusiasts of local food, slow food, heirloom plants, traditional culture. Root cellars are for keeping food supplies at steady humidity. Many crops keep longest just above freezing and at high humidity, but the optimal temperature and humidity ranges vary by crop, various crops keep well at temperatures further above near-freezing but below room temperature.
A few crops keep better in low humidity. Root cellars keep food from freezing during the winter and keep food cool during the summer to prevent spoilage. A variety of vegetables are placed in the root cellar in the autumn, after harvesting. A secondary use for the root cellar is as a place to store wine, beer, or other homemade alcoholic beverages. Vegetables stored in the root cellar consist of potatoes and carrots. Other food supplies placed in the root cellar over the winter months include beets, jarred preserves and jams, salt meat, salt turbot, salt herring, winter squash, cabbage. A potato cellar is sometimes called a potato potato house. Separate cellars are used for storing fruits, such as apples. Apples are one of the crops that give off enough ethylene gas to hasten the overripening or spoilage of other crops stored nearby, although this effect is variable and many farms store vegetables without segregating their apples. Water, butter and cream are sometimes stored in the root cellar also.
In addition, items such as salad greens, fresh meat, jam pies are kept in the root cellar early in the day to keep cool until they are needed for supper. The ability of some vegetables and fruit to keep for months in favorable cellar conditions stems in part from the fact that they are not inanimate after picking. Although they may no longer qualify as living, the plant cells continue to respire in some impaired but nonzero way, resisting bacterial decomposition for a time; the effect can be compared to the way that cut flowers in a vase of water last much longer than cut flowers lying on a table: the flowers in the vase are not dead yet and continue to respire. The analogy is not exact, but the high humidity that supports many cellared crops is involved in this residual respiration. In some cases plants are transplanted from the field to the dirt floor of a cellar in autumn, they continue living in the cellar for months; the fact that they cannot thrive or grow larger in the low-light, low-temperature conditions is not a problem.
This is a form of season extension in which the growing season is not extended but the harvest season is extended. Closets, garages and attics have all been used for storage of at least some kinds of crops; the space under a bed can store some crops for several weeks. Before rural electrification, farms with springhouses have used them for root cellar duty. Common construction methods are: Digging down into the ground and erecting a shed or house over the cellar. Digging into the side of a hill. Building a structure at ground level and piling rocks, and/or sod around and over it; this may be easier to build on rocky terrain. Most root cellars were built using stone, wood and sod. Newer ones may be made of concrete with sod on top. Bubel, Nancy.
Kiva
A kiva is a room used by Puebloans for religious rituals and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo people, kivas are square-walled and underground, are used for spiritual ceremonies. Similar subterranean rooms are found among ruins in the North-American Southwest, indicating uses by the ancient peoples of the region including the ancestral Puebloans, the Mogollon, the Hohokam; those used by the ancient Pueblos of the Pueblo I Period and following, designated by the Pecos Classification system developed by archaeologists, were round and evolved from simpler pithouses. For the Ancestral Puebloans, these rooms are believed to have had a variety of functions, including domestic residence along with social and ceremonial purposes. During the late eighth century, Mesa Verdeans started building square pit structures that archeologists call protokivas, they were 3 or 4 feet deep and 12 to 20 feet in diameter. By the mid-10th and early 11th centuries, these had evolved into smaller circular structures called kivas, which were 12 to 15 feet across.
Mesa Verde-style kivas included a feature from earlier times called a sipapu, a hole dug in the north of the chamber, thought to represent the Ancestral Puebloan's place of emergence from the underworld. When designating an ancient room as a kiva, archaeologists make assumptions about the room's original functions and how those functions may be similar to or differ from kivas used in modern practice; the kachina belief system appears to have emerged in the Southwest around AD 1250, while kiva-like structures occurred much earlier. This suggests that the room's older functions may have been changed or adapted to suit the new religious practice; as cultural changes occurred during the Pueblo III period between 1150 and 1300 AD, kivas continued to have a prominent place in the community. However, some kivas were built above ground. Kiva architecture became more elaborate, with tower kivas and great kivas incorporating specialized floor features. For example, kivas found in Mesa Verde were keyhole-shaped.
In most larger communities, it was normal to find one kiva for each six rooms. Kiva destruction by burning, has been seen as a strong archaeological indicator of conflict and warfare among people of the Southwest during this period. Fifteen top rooms encircle the central chamber of the vast Great Kiva at Aztec Ruins National Monument; the room's... purpose is unclear.... Each had an exterior doorway to the plaza.... Four massive pillars of alternating masonry and horizontal poles held up the ceiling beams, which in turn supported an estimated 95-ton roof; each pillar rested on four shaped-stone disks. These discs are of limestone. After 1325 or 1350, except in the Hopi and Pueblo region, the ratio changed from 60 to 90 rooms for each kiva; this may indicate a religious or organizational change within the society affecting the status and number of clans among the Pueblo people. Great kivas differ from regular kivas. Whereas the walls of great kivas always extend above the surrounding landscape, the walls of Chaco-style kivas do not, but are instead flush with the surrounding landscape.
Chaco-style kivas are found incorporated into the central room blocks of great houses, but great kivas are always separate from core structures. Great kivas always have a bench that encircles the inner space, but this feature is not found in Chaco-style kivas. Great kivas tend to include floor vaults, which might have served as foot drums for ceremonial dancers, but Chaco-style kivas do not. Great kivas are believed to be the first public buildings constructed in the Mesa Verde region. False Kiva Fogou Koshare Indian Museum and Dancers Pit-house Pueblo clown Sipapu Souterrain Temenos Citations Bibliography Cordell, Linda S.. Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Exploring the Ancient World. Smithsonian Books. ISBN 978-0895990389. LeBlanc, Steven A.. Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest. University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-0874805819. Rohn, Arthur H. & Ferguson, William M. Puebloan Ruins of the Southwest. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0826339706. La Kiva tradicional de Oscar Freire Perfect Kiva on YouTube Mule Canyon Kiva on YouTube
Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. Starting c. 7500 BCE Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, the Rio Grande Valley. Archaic people established semi-permanent rockshelters in and around the mesa.
By 1000 BCE, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, by 750 CE the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture. The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting and subsistence farming of crops such as corn and squash, they built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including Rio Chama, Pajarito Plateau, Santa Fe; the first occupants of the Mesa Verde region, which spans from southeastern Utah to northwestern New Mexico, were nomadic Paleo-Indians who arrived in the area c. 9500 BCE. They followed herds of big game and camped near rivers and streams, many of which dried up as the glaciers that once covered parts of the San Juan Mountains receded.
The earliest Paleo-Indians were the Clovis culture and Folsom tradition, defined by the way in which they fashioned projectile points. Although they left evidence of their presence throughout the region, there is little indication that they lived in central Mesa Verde during this time. After 9600 BCE, the area's environment grew warmer and drier, a change that brought to central Mesa Verde pine forests and the animals that thrive in them. Paleo-Indians began inhabiting the mesa in increasing numbers c. 7500, though it is unclear whether they were seasonal occupants or year-round residents. Development of the atlatl during this period made it easier for them to hunt smaller game, a crucial advance at a time when most of the region's big game had disappeared from the landscape. 6000 BCE marks the beginning of the Archaic period in North America. Archaeologists differ as to the origin of the Mesa Verde Archaic population; the Archaic people developed locally, but were influenced by contact and intermarriage with immigrants from these outlying areas.
The early Archaic people living near Mesa Verde utilized the atlatl and harvested a wider variety of plants and animals than the Paleo-Indians had, while retaining their nomadic lifestyle. They inhabited the outlying areas of the Mesa Verde region, but the mountains, mesa tops, canyons, where they created rockshelters and rock art, left evidence of animal processing and chert knapping. Environmental stability during the period drove population migration. Major warming and drying from 5000 to 2500 might have led middle Archaic people to seek the cooler climate of Mesa Verde, whose higher elevation brought increased snowpack that, when coupled with spring rains, provided plentiful amounts of water. By the late Archaic, more people were living in semi-permanent rockshelters that preserved perishable goods such as baskets and mats, they started to make a variety of twig figurines that resembled sheep or deer. The late Archaic is marked by increased trade in exotic materials such as turquoise. Marine shells and abalone from the Pacific coast made their way to Mesa Verde from Arizona, the Archaic people worked them into necklaces and pendants.
Rock art flourished, people lived in rudimentary houses made of mud and wood. Their early attempts at plant domestication developed into the sustained agriculture that marked the end of the Archaic period, c. 1000. With the introduction of corn to the Mesa Verde region c. 1000 BCE and the trend away from nomadism toward permanent pithouse settlements, the Archaic Mesa Verdeans transitioned into what archaeologists call the Basketmaker culture. Basketmaker II people are characterized by their combination of foraging and farming skills, use of the atlatl, creation of finely woven baskets in the absence of earthen pottery. By 300, corn had become the preeminent staple of the Basketmaker II people's diet, which relied less and less on wild food sources and more on domesticated crops. In addition to the fine basketry for which they were named, Basketmaker II people fashioned a variety of household items from plant and animal materials, including sandals, pouches and blankets, they made clay pipes and gaming pieces.
Basketmaker men were short and muscular, averaging less than 5.5 feet tall. Their skeletal remains reveal signs of hard labor and extensive travel, incl
Timber framing
Timber framing and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs. It is commonplace in wooden buildings from the 19th century and earlier. If the structural frame of load-bearing timber is left exposed on the exterior of the building it may be referred to as half-timbered, in many cases the infill between timbers will be used for decorative effect; the country most known for this kind of architecture is Germany. Timber framed houses are spread all over the country except in the southeast; the method comes from working directly from trees rather than pre-cut dimensional lumber. Hewing this with broadaxes and draw knives and using hand-powered braces and augers and other woodworking tools, artisans or framers could assemble a building. Since this building method has been used for thousands of years in many parts of the world, many styles of historic framing have developed.
These styles are categorized by the type of foundation, walls and where the beams intersect, the use of curved timbers, the roof framing details. A simple timber frame made of straight vertical and horizontal pieces with a common rafter roof without purlins; the term box frame has been used for any kind of framing. The distinction presented here is. Purlins are found in plain timber frames. A cruck is a pair of curved timbers which form a bent or crossframe. More than 4,000 cruck frame buildings have been recorded in the UK. Several types of cruck frames are used. True cruck or full cruck: blades, straight or curved, extend from ground or foundation to the ridge acting as the principal rafters. A full cruck does not need a tie beam. Base cruck: tops of the blades are truncated by the first transverse member such as by a tie beam. Raised cruck: blades land on masonry wall, extend to the ridge. Middle cruck: blades land on masonry wall, are truncated by a collar. Upper cruck: blades land on a tie beam similar to knee rafters.
Jointed cruck: blades are made from pieces joined near eaves in a number of ways. See also: hammerbeam roof End cruck is not a style, but on the gable end of a building. Aisled frames have one or more rows of interior posts; these interior posts carry more structural load than the posts in the exterior walls. This is the same concept of the aisle in church buildings, sometimes called a hall church, where the center aisle is technically called a nave. However, a nave is called an aisle, three-aisled barns are common in the U. S. the Netherlands, Germany. Aisled buildings are wider than the simpler box-framed or cruck-framed buildings, have purlins supporting the rafters. In northern Germany, this construction is known as variations of a Ständerhaus. Half-timbering refers to a structure with a frame of load-bearing timber, creating spaces between the timbers called panels, which are filled-in with some kind of nonstructural material known as infill; the frame is left exposed on the exterior of the building.
The earliest known type of infill, called opus craticum by the Romans, was a wattle and daub type construction. Opus craticum is now confusingly applied to a Roman stone/mortar infill as well. Similar methods to wattle and daub were used and known by various names, such as clam staff and daub, cat-and-clay, or torchis, to name only three. Wattle and daub was the most common infill in ancient times; the sticks were not always technically wattlework, but individual sticks installed vertically, horizontally, or at an angle into holes or grooves in the framing. The coating of daub has many recipes, but was a mixture of clay and chalk with a binder such as grass or straw and water or urine; when the manufacturing of bricks increased, brick infill replaced the less durable infills and became more common. Stone laid in mortar as an infill was used in areas where mortar were available. Other infills include bousillage, fired brick, unfired brick such as adobe or mudbrick, stones sometimes called pierrotage, planks as in the German ständerbohlenbau, timbers as in ständerblockbau, or cob without any wooden support.
The wall surfaces on the interior were “ceiled” with wainscoting and plastered for warmth and appearance. Brick infill sometimes called nogging became the standard infill after the manufacturing of bricks made them more available and less expensive. Half-timbered walls may be covered by siding materials including plaster, tiles, or slate shingles; the infill may be covered by other materials, including weatherboarding or tiles. or left exposed. When left exposed, both the framing and infill were sometimes done in a decorative manner. Germany is famous for its decorative half-timbering and the figures sometimes have names and meanings; the decorative manner of half-timbering is promoted in Germany by the German Timber-Frame Road, several planned routes people can drive to see notable examples of Fachwerk buildings. Gallery of infill types: Gallery of some named figures and decorations: The collection of elements in half timbering are sometimes given specific names: The term half-timbering is not as old as the German name Fachwerk or the French name colombage, but it is the standard English name for this style.
One of the first people to publish the term "half-timbered" was Mary Martha Sherwood, who employed it in her book, T
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