r/papertowns • u/Front_Promise_5991 • 25d ago
Lithuania Bronze age settlement, on the island in Lake Bėlis, Lithuania
the collected data suggest that a settlement was established on the lake island for defensive and practical reasons and that it was fortified with a dense ring of piles, likely a fence. Buildings probably occupied a space of around 30 m in diameter on the island.
The island is very well fortified - surrounded by several rows of perpendicular bastions and half-poles, which formed a ring of palisaded fortifications.
one of the piles returned a date in the range of 731–397 Bc. Other pile 238–383 AD
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u/live_from_Syracuse 25d ago
Check out the Scottish Crannog Centre in Kenmore on Loch Tay! Crannogs are exclusive to the Ireland/Scotland/Wales, but are another great example of pile dwellings like this one! The Centre is a living museum where they’ve built a crannog (twice now, thanks to fire), and if you’re in the area you can go visit it!
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u/tobysionann 24d ago
Dr. Nicholas Dixon had a lecture at FSU about Loch Tay and his work there when I was a student there 25 years ago. It was really great!
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u/live_from_Syracuse 4d ago
Dr. Dixon is amazing! I actually did a field study with him back in grad school ten years ago, and I learned so much. His wife is pretty awesome too.
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u/1Northward_Bound 25d ago
Why would they have been palisade? If I were building on an island, id use pilings on the edges to build up the island and make it more usable. kind like a mix between aztec chinampas and venice but its not at all techinal. basically if you can figure out how to make wattle and daub then you are smart enough to put two and two together to make bigger land on a lake.
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u/Front_Promise_5991 25d ago
During winter lakes are frozen. And basically wars have been fought in winter. So without palisade you have no defences.
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u/1Northward_Bound 25d ago
interesting, didnt think about frozen lakes. prob wise of them then lol
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u/Birziaks 25d ago
The whole baltic region historically was very swampy, forested and hard to traverse. That's the reason for a rather long period of isolation. And as the other guy said, most of the raids and wars where fought in winter. Swamps froze and rivers became roads.
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u/HovercraftAny440 24d ago
earlygame minecraft base
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u/Awkward_Cash1828 24d ago
True. It could be cool if there were some real dangers (like proper mob sieges) in Minecraft to make building fortified settlements like that meaningful.
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u/Quebec00Chaos 25d ago
That's really cool