The settlement of Robenhausen, in the moor which was
formerly the bed of the ancient Lake of Pfäffikon, seems to have
continued in occupation after the introduction of bronze. The
site covers nearly 3 acres, and is estimated to have contained
100,000 piles. In some parts three distinct successions of
inhabited platforms have been traced. The first had been
destroyed by fire. It is represented at the bottom of the lake
by a layer of charcoal mixed with implements of stone and bone
and other relics highly carbonized. The second is represented
above the bottom by a series of piles with burnt heads, and in
the bottom by a layer of charcoal mixed with corn, apples,
cloth, bones, pottery and implements of stone and bone, separated
from the first layer of charcoal by 3 ft. of peaty sediment intermixed
with relics of the occupation of the platform. The piles
of the third settlement do not reach down to the shell marl,
but are fixed in the layers representing the first and second
settlements. They are formed of split oak trunks, while those
of the two first settlements are round stems chiefly of soft wood.
The huts of this last settlement appear to have had cattle stalls
between them, the droppings and litter forming heaps at the lake
bottom. The bones of the animals consumed as food at this
station were found in such numbers that 5 tons were collected
in the construction of a watercourse which crossed the site.
Among the wooden objects recovered from the relic beds were
tubs, plates, ladles and spoons, a flail for threshing corn, a last
for stretching shoes of hide, celt handles, clubs, long-bows of
yew, floats and implements of fishing and a dug-out canoe 12 ft.
long. No spindle-whorls were found, but there were many
varieties of cloth, platted and woven, bundles of yarn and balls
of string. Among the tools of bone and stag’s horn were
awls, needles, harpoons, scraping tools and haftings for stone
axe-heads. The implements of stone were chiefly axe-heads
and arrow-heads. Of clay and earthenware there were many
varieties of domestic dishes, cups and pipkins, and crucibles
or melting pots made of clay and horse dung and still retaining
the drossy coating of the melted bronze.
The settlement of Auvernier in the Lake of Neuchâtel is one of the richest and most considerable stations of the Bronze age. It has yielded four bronze swords, ten socketed spear-heads, forty celts or axe-heads and sickles, fifty knives, twenty socketed chisels, four hammers and an anvil, sixty rings for the arms and legs, several highly ornate torques or twisted neck rings, and upwards of two hundred hair pins of various sizes up to 16 in. in length, some having spherical heads in which plates of gold were set. Moulds for sickles, lance-heads and bracelets were found cut in stone or made in baked clay. From four to five hundred vessels of pottery finely made and elegantly shaped are indicated by the fragments recovered from the relic bed. The Lac de Bourget, in Savoy, has eight settlements, all of the Bronze age. These have yielded upwards of 4000 implements, weapons and ornaments of bronze, among which were a large proportion of moulds and founders’ materials. A few stone implements suggest the transition from stone to bronze; and the occasional occurrence of iron weapons and pottery of Gallo-Roman origin indicates the survival of some of the settlements to Roman times.
The relative antiquity of the earlier settlements of the Stone and Bronze ages is not capable of being deduced from existing evidence. “We may venture to place them,” says Dr F. Keller, “in an age when iron and bronze had been long known, but had not come into our districts in such plenty as to be used for the common purposes of household life, at a time when amber had already taken its place as an ornament and had become an object of traffic.” It is now considered that the people who erected the lake dwellings of Central Europe were also the people who were spread over the mainland. The forms and the ornamentation of the implements and weapons of stone and bronze found in the lake dwellings are the same as those of the implements and weapons in these materials found in the soil of the adjacent regions, and both groups must therefore be ascribed to the industry of one and the same people. Whether dwelling on the land or dwelling in the lake, they have exhibited so many indications of capacity, intelligence, industry and social organization that they cannot be considered as presenting, even in their Stone age, a very low condition of culture or civilization. Their axes were made of tough stones, sawn from the block and ground to the fitting shape. They were fixed by the butt in a socket of stag’s horn, mortised into a handle of wood. Their knives and saws of flint were mounted in wooden handles and fixed with asphalt. They made and used an endless variety of bone tools. Their pottery, though roughly finished, is well made, the vessels often of large size and capable of standing the fire as cooking utensils. For domestic dishes they also made wooden tubs, plates, spoons, ladles and the like. The industries of spinning and weaving were largely practised. They made nets and fishing lines, and used canoes. They practised agriculture, cultivating several varieties of wheat and barley, besides millet and flax. They kept horses, cattle, sheep, goats and swine. Their clothing was partly of linen and partly of woollen fabrics and the skins of their beasts. Their food was nutritious and varied, their dwellings neither unhealthy nor incommodious. They lived in the security and comfort obtained by social organization, and were apparently intelligent, industrious and progressive communities.
There is no indication of an abrupt change from the use of stone to the use of metal such as might have occurred had the knowledge of copper and bronze, and the methods of working them, been introduced through the conquest of the original inhabitants by an alien race of superior culture and civilization. The improved cultural conditions become apparent in the multiplication of the varieties of tools, weapons and ornaments made possible by the more adaptable qualities of the new material; and that the development of the Bronze age culture in the lake dwellings followed the same course as in the surrounding regions where the people dwelt on the dry land is evident from the correspondence of the types of implements, weapons, ornaments and utensils common to both these conditions of life.
Other classes of prehistoric pile-structures akin to the lake dwellings are the Terremare of Italy and the Terpen of Holland. Both of these are settlements of wooden huts erected on piles, not over the water, but on flat land subject to inundations. The terremare (so named from the marly soil of which they are composed) appear as mounds, sometimes of very considerable extent, which when dug into disclose the remains and relic beds of the ancient settlements. They are most abundant in the plains of northern Italy traversed by the Po and its tributaries, though similar constructions have been found in Hungary in the valley of the Theiss. These pile-villages were often surrounded by an earthen rampart within which the huts were erected in more or less regular order. Many of them present evidence of having been more than once destroyed by fire and reconstructed, while others show one or more reconstructions at higher levels on the same site. The contents of the relic beds indicate that they belong for the most part to the age of bronze, although in some cases they may be referred to the latter part of the Stone age. Their inhabitants practised agriculture and kept the common domestic animals, while their tools, weapons and ornaments were mainly of similar character to those of the contemporary lake dwellers of the adjoining regions. Some of the Italian terremare show quadrangular constructions made like the modern log houses, of undressed tree trunks superposed longitudinally and overlapping at the ends, as at Castione in the province of Parma. A similar mode of construction is found in the pile-village on the banks of the Save, near Donja Dolina in Bosnia, described in 1904 by Dr Truhelka. Here the larger houses had platforms in front of them forming terraces at different levels descending towards the river. There was a cemetery adjacent to the village in which both unburnt and cremated interments occurred, the former predominating. From the general character of the relics this settlement appeared to belong to the early Iron age. The Terpen of Holland appear as mounds somewhat similar to those of the terremare, and were also pile structures, on low or marshy lands subject to inundations from the sea. Unlike the terremare and the lake dwellings they do
