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Ruth Tringham
98
11. Weaving house life and death into places:
a blueprint for a hypermedia narrative
Ruth Tringham
Introduction
In creating the presentation on fire for the conference
(un)settling the Neolithic, I was impressed by two things.
First, I could not believe that fire and its manipulation
had been so greatly under-theorized and under-
problematized. Second, I was overwhelmed both by the
intricacy of the ways in which fire must have entered
deeply into the lives of the Neolithic people of south-east
Europe, and by the challenge that faces archaeologists
trying to comprehend and express this intricacy. It is the
latter phenomenon that has encouraged me to create this
paper as a hypermedia expression, presented here as a
blueprint or storyboard, rather than as a straight linear
narrative.
When I first wrote about the prevalence of burned
houses in the south-east European Neolithic, I assumed
that everyone who had excavated, interpreted and
published these houses had been as impressed as I by the
fact that they were all burned. Mirjana Stevanović and I
did not think that we were the first to problematize the
destruction of the majority of these houses by burning
(Stevanović 1996, 2002; Stevanović and Tringham 1998;
Tringham 1991; 1994; Tringham et al. 1992; Tringham
and Stevanović 1990). We were not quite the first, but
almost. I had drawn attention to the phenomenon of
burned houses in 1971 (Tringham 1971, 179) and, in
passing, suggested an explanation. As with most authors,
however, it was the ground-plan of the houses and
construction methods that drew my attention, rather than
the cause of their destruction. Alan McPherron and Chris
Christopher (McPherron and Christopher 1988, 477–8)
had discussed possible reasons for house burning and,
more recently, John Chapman and Mirjana Stevanović
have devoted articles to them (Chapman 1999; Stevanović
2002). The earliest discussion about burned houses
referred to the houses of the Tripolye culture in Moldavia
and the Ukraine (Krichevski 1940; Passek 1949; Paul
1967). Even scholars, such as Marija Gimbutas with her
Kurgan invasions, who could have benefited from the
idea of burning as a sign of destruction by invading
agents, veered away from arson in favour of other forms
of evidence (Gimbutas 1973; 1991).
Mirjana Stevanović has called the Neolithic and
Eneolithic of south-east Europe ‘the age of clay’
(Stevanović 1996). It is clay modified by fire, however,
that creates the really spectacular face of Neolithic south-
east Europe and that has earned the name burned-house
horizon.
Fire is such a hugely creative force, inspiring our
imaginations and emotions to express metaphors that have
relevance for almost every aspect of our lives (Rossotti
1993). In 1938, the French philosopher and polymath
Gaston Bachelard (who later wrote the Poetics of space
so loved by phenomenologists) wrote a small book, La
psychanalyse de feu (Bachelard 1964). La psychanalyse
de feu builds on and critiques Frazer’s Myths of the origin
of fire (Frazer 1911–1915) and describes fire as powerful,
transformative, renewing, purifying, magic, and fearful.
Fire is the force that gives the entropic energy (the
irreversible movement forward) to buildings now and in
prehistory (Fernandez-Galiano 2000). How is it possible
that we have never thought to use the evidence of its
manifestation as a stimulus for interpreting Neolithic
south-eastern Europe (Gheorgiu 2002, 5)?
Weaving house life and death into places 99
Places of fire in south-east Europe
If I have to start somewhere in
this complex web of observations
and interpretations, a good place
would be the empirical evidence
of fire in the settlements of
Neolithic south-east Europe. Fire
in the unsettled landscape would
also be a possibility, but not for
this story. How better to start than
with the places where fire is born.
Craig Cessford and Julie Near
have eloquently suggested that
fires have life-histories (Cessford
and Near in press). A fire, of
whatever scale, is created,
nurtured; it grows. It is maintained and it will die unless
its life is prolonged by re-kindling with more food (fuel).
On the other hand, removal of food or oxygen (by using
sand, earth or water) can put out a fire while it is raging
in the middle of its life. To live, fire needs ignition (a
spark, an accelerant), energy (air and wind), and
combustibles or fuel (food) (Rossotti 1993). Energy and
fuel frequently occur with or without human action. But
what about the initial spark? What is its source?
Lightning cannot be responsible for all fires. Is
spontaneous combustion possible (Bachelard 1964;
Rossotti 1993, 21–32)? Once alight, how long can a fire
last without the addition of more fuel/food? Rossotti
describes how the finite duration of fire was used to tell
the time in historical contexts (Rossotti 1993, 154);
Bachelard notes how far the idea of a fire being fed has
entered into our subconscious (Bachelard 1964, 64). The
birth of fire is difficult; it is significant enough to
comprehend and practise that, once achieved, in many
places the aim is not to let the fire go out, but to keep it
alive.
In our society, we take for granted these questions of
a fire’s birth and lifespan, but in other societies they were
mysteries that required explanation. Bachelard and Frazer
(amongst others) drew attention to the dominating sexual
themes that run through the explanations recorded in
historical, ethnographic and folklore literature (Bachelard
1964; Frazer 1911–1915). Even now we have all ex-
perienced the sniggers from students as we tell of creating
fire by rubbing two sticks together.1
This minor tangent puts into context the creation of
fire in various places in a south-east European Neolithic
household. Places of fire are often given a neutral term
such as ‘fire installation’ or ‘thermal structure’, since the
terms ‘oven’, ‘kiln’, ‘hearth’, or ‘fireplace’ have various
cultural connotations and technological requirements. In
a ‘hearth’, the fire was not closed over, the temperature
was not controlled, and its illuminations, its colours and
its movements were clearly visible. Such hearths have
been identified within and outside of Neolithic south-
east Europe houses, as at Divostin (Bogdanović 1988,
85) where three houses had open hearths, each placed
either against the corner of a room or against one wall.
The term ‘oven’ describes a single heating chamber,
created by a wall and roof that form a wattle-and-daub
dome. In the south-east European Neolithic, the chamber
could rise to 50cm above the floor of the firebed. The
firebed itself (i.e. the floor of the chamber) was carefully
prepared of refractory materials, layers of clay, cobbles,
or ceramic sherds, and it contains evidence of multiple
renewals. The ovens were round, oval, horseshoe-shaped,
and frequently exceeded a metre in diameter. They occur
in all the Neolithic and Eneolithic settlements of south-
east Europe, both in- and outside houses. Like open
hearths, the ovens were set against corners or side walls
of a room. At Divostin, some houses had an oven or
hearth in each room (Bogdanović 1988, 79–82). It is
assumed, by evidence of their low firing temperatures
(>350ºC) that these ovens were used in the preparation of
food (e.g. baking breads) where the oven would be heated
to the required temperature, the fuel removed and
replaced by the material to be baked. Ovens of this design
continue to be used in many parts of the world (Boily-
Blanchette 1979). They are distinct from open hearths in
that their flame is not the most obvious or visible aspect,
although it would have been possible to keep the small
mouth at the base of the dome open. With their frequent
elaboration and lively ‘mouths’, it is not surprising that
in European folklore ovens take on a significance far
beyond their meaning as ‘thermal structures’.
This discussion of birth-places of fire in Neolithic
south-east European houses could lead us in several
directions; here we have to make choices in a linear
format. Discussion could lead in the direction of the oven
or hearth as the centre of communication and central life
Ruth Tringham
100
in a house. There is much to be said on this subject, of the
oven as a central location for the preparation of food, for
the telling of stories and therefore, indirectly as a
guardian of social memory, as well as the source of light
and heat to rival the sun (Ashley 2004). There is nothing
to contradict the likelihood that as they looked into
fireplaces or the bright mouths of ovens, the residents of
Neolithic houses saw fires that were as full of contra-
dictions in their Neolithic minds as they are for you
reading this article. Fire is gentle, life-giving and
comforting when controlled. But it is also cunning; it can
easily become unruly and it is always alive. When it
touches you, or you touch it, its physical experience can
be very painful. Yet in that very pain, Bachelard (like
Frazer) describes fire as exciting, as alive, as sexual and
highly sensual (Bachelard 1964). For the purposes of this
article, however, I move in another direction, towards
the death as well as the life of buildings.
Fire transformations and pyrotechnology in
Neolithic south-east Europe
The transformative properties of fire (and the harnessing
of these transformations through the control of air intake,
fuel quality, and fire chamber construction) form a bridge
to the death of buildings. Pyrotechnology harnesses the
transformative properties of fire to create materials which
could not otherwise be obtained in nature. Fire trans-
formation includes liquification, vitrification, carbon-
ization, drying, softening, hardening, and colour
changing (Rossotti 1993, 85–97). Many of these trans-
formations could have been achieved in the ovens used
for food-preparation. For example, we have suggested
that in the Vinča culture settlement of Selevac ceramics
could have been fired and copper ore smelted without the
need for closed kilns (Glumac and Tringham 1990;
Kaiser 1990). It is also clear, however, that some ceramics
and copper artifacts from the early Eneolithic of south-
east Europe required the production of temperatures of at
least 1000ºC; this almost certainly was achieved by the
use of kilns possessing a controlled air flow (Bailey 2000,
227–8; Ellis 1984, 157; Evans 1978). Linda Ellis has
pointed out that since kilns would have been located on
the edges of settlements, and because the archaeologists
have been so focused on architecture, few remains of
kilns have been found. Nevertheless Ellis demonstrates
the presence of high temperature kilns at several sites
from this period in Moldova and north-east Romania
(Cucuteni A, AB, B and Tripolye B and C; Ellis 1984,
130–58).
Neither are the transformations that fire achieves
always controllable, nor are they even intended by the
humans who give them birth. One of the archaeologist’s
tasks is to reconstruct the intentions of prehistoric fire-
makers. For example, to what extent was scorching and
carbonization a negative transformation for the pre-
historic ceramicist? To transcend our own understanding
of the perfect product of fire, to imagine the significance
(for the fire-makers and their families) of the process of
fire transformation is to open great possibilities for
archaeologists. In a similar manner, Heather Lechtmann
has written about the ritual performance that imbued
every task in the metallurgical process in Andean Incan
culture (Lechtmann 1984). Throughout European history,
the interwoven threads of experimentation, pyro-
technology and the sister discipline of alchemy were
similarly imbued with symbolic expression and ritual
performance (Bachelard 1964, 59–82; Rossotti 1993,
255–60). There is no need to deny the south-east
European ceramicists and metallurgists a similar level of
attempts to understand and control the transformational
process of fire. But this is where I leave this direction of
the discussion and follow another one that leads towards
buildings.
The ultimate fire transformation: ash is not
just ash
Apart from ceramics, four products of fire transformation
are ubiquitous on settlements of Neolithic south-east
Europe: ash, burned soil (carbonized, scorched),
Weaving house life and death into places 101
carbonized wood (charcoal), and burned building clay.
These materials are vastly under-theorized and greatly
taken for granted by the archaeologists who excavate
them. By making them the focus of research they could
provide a wealth of information for understanding the
fire process, the symbolic significance that fire had in
different social contexts, and the intentions of the fire-
makers (Chapman 2000a).
For example, ash is deposited in pits often as a clear
horizontal layer and at regular intervals. What kind of
ash? What significance did this type of deposition have?
Marakwet families gave such symbolic significance to
ash of different origins that Henrietta Moore devoted a
chapter in her book Space, text and gender to discussing
the different locations of ash deposition and the ritual
practices associated with each (Moore 1986, chapter 6,
111–18). Bachelard describes many places where ash is
deposited in fields and other locations where ash is mixed
with cattle’s fodder to improve fertility. Keeping with his
(and Frazer’s) theme of sexual excitement and the power
of fire, Bachelard argues that regardless of whether or
not an animal is being fed or which fields are being
fertilized, there is (above any utility), a more intimate
dream: the dream of fertility in its most sexual form.
‘The ashes of the bonfire make fertile both animals and
fields, because they make women fertile. It is the
experience of the flame of love which forms the basis of
the objective induction’ (Bachelard 1964, 32–33).
House fires: the burned house horizon
Burned clay rubble from buildings is an ubiquitous
phenomenon of Neolithic and Eneolithic settlements in
south-east Europe. Here we come face to face with
questions of intention (or not) of starting the fire; these
are the same questions that fire investigators ask in our
own society. At sites where post-Neolithic ploughing has
not spread the rubble, it is concentrated in an area that
corresponds to the area of a building. The localization is
such that the area between rubble concentrations is
frequently devoid of rubble; it is easy, for example at
Divostin, to pick up buildings in sub-surface mag-
netometer surveys (Mužijević and Ralph 1988). This
characteristic leads to the conclusion that building walls
collapsed inwards during the conflagration and formed a
rubble heap on top of floors (Shaffer 1993; Stevanović
1997; 2002; Stevanović and Tringham 1998). With this
in mind, at Gomolava and Opovo in Serbia, Mirjana
Stevanović and I devised a strategy for excavating and
mapping the rubble layer, by layer, until we had revealed
the underlying floor (Tringham et al. 1992).
Although I have referred to the ubiquity of burned
building rubble in south-east European Neolithic
settlements as the burned house horizon (Tringham 1984;
1990, 609), it is clear from Stevanović’s, Chapman’s and
my own analyses, that ‘the burned house horizon’ is
neither a chronologically nor regionally homogenous
phenomenon (Chapman 1999; Stevanović 1996, 2002;
Stevanović and Tringham 1998). For example early
Neolithic houses have more artifacts deposited in them,
Ruth Tringham
102
and it is in these early Neolithic phases that burned
human remains are most likely to occur (Chapman 1999).
Human remains occur again in the late Eneolithic
(Gumelniţa/Karanovo VI). The presence or absence of
human remains in the rubble of burned houses is clearly
of great significance.
Modern fire investigation
Every modern house fire is subject to a fire investigation.
In order to determine whether it was set deliberately or
accidentally, fire investigators 1) create fire maps to
record the presence and distribution of hot spots that
indicate a fire’s point of origin, 2) examine accelerants
that were used to start the fire and the fuel that was added
to keep it going, and 3) consider what objects were burned
within the house and what were not (e.g. family photos
are often removed before fire-setting) (Kirk 1969; Rossotti
1993, 213–16; Scott 1974, 33–40).
Archaeological fire investigation
The only way to create archaeological fire maps is to map
the burned rubble of floor and wall collapse and to
determine the temperature of the fire (Stevanović 1996;
1997; 2002). Mirjana Stevanović created fire maps using
the data she collected at Opovo in Serbia and she
documented firing temperatures of 800ºC to 1200ºC (i.e.
vitrification of the daub).
Accelerants are unlikely to have been present in the
Neolithic households. Apart from the lucky finds of
preserved wood charcoal, carbonized grains or vitrified
textile, the presence of combustibles must be recon-
structed from the expected elements of a Neolithic
building: wood frame (found as a negative impression in
daub), roofing material (reeds or thatch), and house
contents (including textiles, grain, straw, herbs, hay,
matting). Experiments in Serbia, Denmark, and France,
however, suggest that it is not easy to keep a wattle-and-
daub building burning and to produce the rubble firing
results that we see in Neolithic houses (Bankoff and
Winter 1979; Hansen 1962). So far no modern experi-
ment has reproduced the results of a burned south-east
European Neolithic house.
Investigating what is burned and what is not burned
inside the house requires looking at the artifacts that are
found in different parts of the rubble: amongst the
collapsed walls, on a lower floor, on an upper floor. Are
these artifacts whole or broken fragments of incomplete
or whole vessels (Chapman 2000a)? Have they been
placed in association or seemingly randomly? Are there
burned bodies (animal or human) in the rubble? If so, are
they complete, articulated or fragmentary?
First matrix for an archaeological fire
investigation
John Chapman (1999) has set out the arguments for and
against different explanations for the burned house
horizon. The matrix in Table 11.1 is a simplified way of
looking at those variables in terms of three sets of options.
Evidence for single or multiple events comes from
detailed stratigraphy and the presence/absence of burning
between houses. Where this question has been investi-
gated, the conclusion has been that the fires were
predominantly single events (Stevanović 2002; Tringham
et al. 1992).
Evidence for the stage of houses’ life-histories or even
use-lives has rarely been analyzed in south-east European
archaeology (Tringham 1994). Our work at Gomolava
and Opovo was one of the first (Brukner 1988; Stevanović
Weaving house life and death into places 103
and Tringham 1998; Tringham, et al. 1992), as was
Douglass Bailey’s analysis of Ovcharovo in Bulgaria
(Bailey 1990). In mud-brick architecture, for example at
Çatalhöyük, Turkey, it is relatively easy for archaeologists
to follow different phases of a house’s life-history: posts
are dug out, openings are blocked, new walls put in
(Hodder and Cessford 2004). By contrast, with wattle-
and-daub architecture, the biography of a house is difficult
to follow. Modifications during the life of the house
(adding a second storey, adding to the length, adding
outhouses, changing its meaning) are based in the wooden
frame, and leave traces in the form of postholes, the
interpretation of which is more ambiguous (Kalicz and
Raczky 1987). As seen in the two matrices offered in this
paper, information on the life-history of houses is a vital
variable in determining the cause of the burning but it is
information that is unavailable.
Expectations and implications of accidental
house fires
Vivid accounts of the great fires of relatively recent times
(e.g. the 1666 Fire of London; Scott 1974, 14–22) inspires
our expectations for accidental burning of wattle-and-
daub houses. Potential causes of the Great Fire of London
include lack of space between houses, garbage piled in
the streets, flammable building materials, and the
presence of many flammable artifacts (e.g. furniture,
curtains, wall coverings). The fire may have spread so
successfully because many of the houses had been
abandoned or not repaired in the wake of the Great Plague
of 1665 that had decimated London’s population.2 Many
similar, horrific experiences must have occurred in the
early urban contexts of Europe. Rossotti and others even
suggest that the vision of Hell as fireful was fuelled by
these experiences, particularly those of Mediaeval times
in Europe (Rossotti 1993).
An expectation gathered from accidental fires, even
urban ones, and one which is appropriate to archaeo-
logical contexts, is that fires can quickly become village-
wide events, especially if strong winds are blowing.
Indeed, providing there is sufficient fuel, an energetic
fire creates its own wind and increases its own size. Roofs
made of flammable material (e.g. thatch) make ideal
igniters. An important archaeological expectation is that
for accidental fires, houses at various stages of use-life
(including new houses) will be represented in the
excavated record.
A number of archaeologists have argued that some of
the houses in the burned house horizon are the result of
accidental fires (Brukner 1990; Chapman 1999;
McPherron and Christopher 1988, 477–8). According to
them, a house was burned by an accidental fire if the
following conditions were met: 1) houses were located
close to each other (1–1.5m apart); 2) grain, textiles and
other combustibles were stored in or furnished the houses;
3) grain was present and would have increased the
possibility of spontaneous combustion.
While accidental ignition may have been responsible
for some fires, there are many reasons why I downplay
the importance of accidental fires in the burned house
Accidental
Single event
Beginning life
Deliberate
Village-wide event
Mid-life End-life
Intentionality in the fire
Scale of the fire
Stage of life-history of houses
Table 11.1
Ruth Tringham
104
horizon (Chapman 1999, 116): strips of unburned soil
are found between burned houses; there is no evidence
showing that fires were simultaneous village-wide events
(indeed the opposite seems to be the case); there is no
conclusive evidence that houses are at different stages of
their use-lives; the vast majority of excavated burned
houses do not contain animals or humans caught in the
fire; and, finally, results of experiments have shown that
when a fire is allowed to run its course (i.e. fuel is not
added) it is very difficult to burn wattle-and-daub
structures as thoroughly as we find them archaeologically.
This is especially the case considering the thickness of
the daub on inner and outer wall surfaces (Bankoff and
Winter 1979; Stevanović 2002, 56–57).
The second matrix: expectations and
implications of deliberate house fires
In order to determine why a house has been burned, a fire
investigation must determine the motive for burning and
what the house burners would have gained. Another
important question is whether or not the burners’
intentions were achieved by what actually happened or
whether the fire ‘got out of control’. Although the act of
burning the house is not necessarily a criminal act, in an
archaeological fire investigation there is still motive and
motivation to be considered. The intended result of
burning may not have been gain in our terms of profit or
greed, but may have been something much less direct,
such as social reproduction. The matrix in Table 11.2
expresses some of the motives and their archaeological
expectations suggested by investigators of the burned
Neolithic houses of south-east Europe.
I have always found the explanation of aggression by
neighbours or long-distance marauders to be overrated as
the motivation behind the burned houses (Chapman 1999,
115–16; Keeley 1996). The means of resolving conflicts
by negotiation may certainly have included raised voices,
emotional gesticulations, threats, fancy weapon flashing,
and even physical (if ritualized) personal combat. In the
same ways, the palisades and embankments around
villages in the east Balkans in this period were probably
a means of demarcating ‘us’ versus ‘you’. I do not favour
the idea that neighbours or ‘others’ would burn houses
and steal movables in order to satisfy immediate desires
that could have been satisfied through long and fruitful
negotiation. Moreover, the evidence in the south-east
European Neolithic does not support the explanation of
aggression for the same reason that it does not support
village-wide accidental fires. But I cannot say that houses
were never burned down by jealous neighbours in
Neolithic south-east Europe; it just was not a common
event.
When the thick floors of Tripolye culture houses were
first excavated in the Ukraine, it seemed to the archaeo-
logists that the wooden planks plastered in clay had been
burned before wall construction in an attempt to
strengthen the structure and insulate the floor against
damp and other natural agents (Krichevski 1940). There
is no evidence from later excavations of Tripolye houses
that this method of construction was in use (Chernysh
Explanation Scale of Fire Stage of life-history Associated artifacts
Aggression Village All stages Many burned
Weatherproofing Single Beginning Many unburned
Recycling rubble Single End None
Fumigation Single Mid- and End None or Many
burned
Symbolic End of
House
Single Mid- and End None or Many
burned
Enchainment and
fragmentation
Single Mid- and End Many burned
Table 11.2
Weaving house life and death into places 105
1954). From excavation drawings and photos it appears
that burned rubble originated from wall collapse as well
as from floor construction. Furthermore, artifacts were
burned along with the floors and this does not fit in with
Krichevski’s reconstruction (Chapman 1999, 116–17).
While excavating burned daub that contained large
fragments of recycled burned clay in Neolithic south Italy,
Gary Shaffer used archaeomagnetic and experimental
studies to argue that buildings were burned at the end of
their use-lives in order to recycle the clay for later building
construction (Shaffer 1993). As there is no evidence in
Neolithic south-east Europe for such recycling, this
practice may have been specific to south Italy. However,
fragments of ceramics, bone, flint (frequently burned),
and sometimes very small fragments of old burned rubble
were mixed with the new daub. The idea of recycling
parts of houses into later buildings is attractive in terms
of the continuity of place, and has been successfully
studied in the recent excavations at Çatalhöyük (Hodder
and Cessford 2004) and by Douglass Bailey at the
Ovcharovo tell (Bailey 1990).
The concept of recycling burned clay fragments in
later buildings resonates with the idea that fire is the
source of rebirth and renewal which has been expressed
in a multitude of past and present mythology (Rossotti
1993, 239–54). Related to this role is fire’s role as a
purifying and healing agent. A popular explanation for
the single event of burning a house in Neolithic south-
east Europe comes from Native American practice of
burning a house to purify it after the death of a resident
(Brugge 1978; Heizer 1978, 209, 216, 296, 367, 392,
502). A less drastic but related practice is to smoke or
fumigate a building to rid it of insects, pests, disease, and
witches. Smoke and its symbolic power to purify and act
as a visible medium of communication to the supernatural
have been under-theorized in the context of the ex-
planation of house-burning, and I am grateful to Sonya
Atalay (pers. comm.) for pointing this out to me.
These explanations for the burned houses lead me to
consider the contradictory emotions with which we view
fire and its results. On the one hand, we know that
burning cleans, heals and revitalizes. This applies not
only to burning houses but also to landscapes through the
firing of brush and of forests (Head 2000). On the other
hand, in Western society we regard the products of fire as
dirty: the soot, the charred wood of our burned houses,
the ash. We could turn these emotions around (and
perhaps in prehistory people might have done) so that
what appears to be dirty is in fact clean (i.e. purified).
The archaeological expectations for purification and
rebirth explanations are identical to the two motives
discussed below (cremating, euthanising houses), and
there is little that archaeologists can do to prove that
either of these explanations are more plausible than the
one just discussed. On the other hand, they take us into
more interesting realms of social and political practice
where we must consider motivation beyond purification
and rebirth.
Transforming (killing) houses
There is a consensus in the study of Neolithic and
Eneolithic Europe that the majority of burned houses
were intentionally set alight. Without information on the
life-history of the buildings, the problem remains that a
vital variable in determining the motive behind the
burning is still missing. Mirjana Stevanović and I have
favoured a motive that sees house burning as a ritual
performance marking the end of a house (or household)
in social memory and coinciding with the death of a
significant person (who is not burned or buried in the
house) (Stevanović 2002; Stevanović and Tringham 1998;
Tringham 2000; Tringham and Stevanović 1990, 114–
17). John Chapman’s explanation builds on this idea,
Ruth Tringham
106
focusing on intentional planning and preparation of the
burning event and the careful placing of artifacts
(especially broken fragments of objects) in the building
before burning (Chapman 1999; Chapman 2000b). For
John Chapman (and many arson investigators) the
particular artifacts deposited and the structured way in
which they are deposited are significant aspects in the
interpretation of a house-burning, perhaps even more
important than the burned remains of the building itself.
In his model for the symbolic burial of fractal things,
John Chapman refers to the many cases where broken
fragments (normally part of domestic refuse) have been
placed deliberately in houses to be burnt, and points out
that the quantity of these exceeds what would normally
be expected for a dwelling (Chapman 1999). Chapman
suggests that the objects might represent a mortuary-set
laid out as an idealized representation of the household
or community. The fragments themselves (deposited by
different members of the household) would enchain the
other fragments into a whole inventory. Problematizing
the fragments in this way is an extremely important point.
Traditionally, excavation of the burned houses has
focused on the complete (or, at least, crushed) artifacts
(ceramic vessels, stone tools, bone tools, clay weights,
clay balls, a few figurines) rather than on the fragments,
since the location of complete objects provides infor-
mation on activities of the living, rather than meaning
for the dead and his/her descendants and community
(Kalicz and Raczky 1987; Madas 1988; Todorova et al.
1983).
Two aspects of the fractal-house model have potential
for more detailed investigation. First, to what extent is
the pairing of burning events a more common occurrence
than is commonly admitted? An example of pairing
comes from Gomolava where houses H4 and H7 (that
contained very few fragments of any artifacts) were
located adjacent to houses H3 and H8 (that were rich in
movable fragments and immovable furniture). In both
cases the ‘deaths’ of the pairs of buildings were very
close in time (Brukner 1988). Another example comes
from the settlement of Opovo. Here House 2 (Feature 4)
(when compared to the adjacent House 1 – Feature 2 –
which was rich in both movable fragments as well as
immovable furniture) appears to have been stripped of its
immovable furniture as well as most of its movable
artifacts (Tringham et al. 1985).
The second aspect of the fractal-house model which
has the potential for more detailed investigation comes
with the question, where are the bodies? Where are the
fractal individuals? As mentioned above, the burned
house horizon is not uniform with respect to the inclusion
of human bodies. Even though human remains have been
found in the burned houses of the early Neolithic
(Karanovo 1) and late Eneolithic (Karanovo VI), the cases
are few. Moreover, in late Neolithic and early Eneolithic
burned houses, no human remains have been found.
Separate cemeteries are found near settlements (Bailey
2000, 193; Chapman 2000b, chapter 5) but these cases
are rare in the early Eneolithic. In the early Eneolithic
settlement of Opovo we found burned fragments of human
bones in secondarily deposited rubble that had most likely
eroded from the rubble topping of a pit (Feature 31)
(Tringham et al. 1992). In fact it appears that, after the
early Neolithic, inhumations within settlements and the
destruction of houses by fire may have been mutually
exclusive activities.
Domicide, domithanasia and the continuity of
place
Thinking about the relationship of body and house
burning has led me in various directions (especially the
major contrast I faced in excavating early Neolithic
Çatalhöyük). One result was to consider both deliberate
house burning and human burial within houses as
strategies for ensuring the continuity of place and the
construction of social memory (Tringham 2000). The
life-history of a house can be ended in a number of ways,
depending on what the building is made of and depending
on what is planned for the future of that place (Brand
1994). A wattle-and-daub house can be abandoned and
allowed to rot, it can be dismantled and some of its parts
recycled, or it can be destroyed (killed) by burning. A
frequent question has been, why use fire to kill the house
(and the fractal objects)? It leaves a permanent mess on
the landscape and, as experiments have shown
(Stevanović 2002), it is hard work to actually achieve.
An obvious answer is that, although the fire performance
itself was ephemeral, its effect and reminder of the village
on the landscape was permanent: the mess on the
landscape was a desired result. Burning the houses (and
the artifacts and fragments inside them) in a high
temperature fire (and/or one that lasted several hours)
ensured that they would be frozen as a permanent
Weaving house life and death into places 107
reminder that a house had once lived here. Even now,
modern farmers are well aware of these memorials in
their fields as they blunt their ploughs against them.
The motivation to use fire to kill a house would have
been much more than the establishment of a physical
memorial on the landscape. In his book Domicide,
Douglas Porteous has written that killing a house is an
act that binds people together, nurtures memories, and
contributes to the continuity of place (Porteous and Smith
2001). We can imagine that the buildings (perhaps 30–
50 years old) are what Stuart Brand describes as fractal,
buildings in which people are happiest where change
occurs at every scale from weeks to decades. ‘An organic
process of growth and repair must create a gradual
sequence of changes...distributed...across every level of
scale. Such buildings are fractal in time’ (Alexander
1979, xiii; Brand 1994, 208). In other words, many
personal histories, household memories, emotions and
passions were invested in these houses. In such a context,
the use of fire would have doubled the drama of killing a
house.
In a fire, all senses are brought to life. The colours and
sounds of a building on fire (very different from a forest
fire) create the drama. The gases that are burned create
flames of red, yellow, white and black: changing,
ephemeral, not repeated in nature (except with some
tropical flowers and birds and the sun and volcanoes). At
night-time the performance would have been especially
spectacular, though this might have hidden the effects of
combustibles that (rich in organic materials such as
textiles) burn with colours that reach the deepest black.
The roaring sound of the wind generated in a fire can be
terrifying. I imagine much movement at the periphery as
mice and other small creatures escape the flames. The
smoke (that can be tangibly opaque) attacks the sense of
smell and brings tears to the eyes. And then there is the
heat! Only fire (or its by-product), the sun and another
living body can provide our bodies with heat. Fire
stimulates our sense of touch more effectively than
anything else. Yet fire is the one thing that cannot be
touched (unless you are a witch or a fire-walker)! A
double drama is created by killing a house and by doing
it with fire. Bachelard, Frazer, and many others have
repeatedly reminded us of the passion, fear, and sexual
excitement of fire, all of which must have added drama to
the ritual performance of burning a house (Bachelard
1964; Rossotti 1993; Scott 1974).
However many times a person might witness it, a house
killed by fire would have been a memorable and a
shocking event, celebrated along with the stories of the
life of the house (Porteous and Smith 2001). I have used
two words that both can involve killing houses with fire.
Domicide, introduced by the geographer Douglas
Porteous, is the deliberate, planned destruction of a home
that causes suffering to the dweller (Porteous 1995).
Porteous and Smith eloquently and poetically describe
the effect of a global issue that is currently carried out at
many different scales, from the destruction of a single
home because it lies in the path of a new library or
shopping mall, to the destruction of villages to make
room for a tourist development, to the destruction of
whole cities in order to develop an urban plan. Domicide
is not a new phenomenon,3 but one that is associated with
urban contexts and the legitimization of power.
I have coined the related term domithanasia: the
killing of a house by the residents or their friends or
agents, because it is time for the fractal house to die.
Modern domithanasia by fire is a voluntary act of the
owners in order to destroy an unwanted/old house4 (I am
not sure where arson for insurance fraud fits into this
pattern). I am suggesting that the ritual burning of a
Neolithic house in the middle or end of its life-history is
a good example of domithanasia.
Although the shock and outrage resulting from
domicide is very different from that experienced in
domithanasia, they hold in common important results for
social memory and community that are accentuated by
the process and medium of fire. As Porteous and Smith
describe, domicide may result in the destruction of a place
of attachment and refuge, the loss of security, partial loss
of identity, a radical de-centering from place, family and
community; there may be a loss of historical connection,
a weakening of roots, and partial erasure of the sources of
memory, dreams, nostalgia, and ideals (Porteous and
Ruth Tringham
108
Smith 2001). If the home has multiple complex meanings
that are interwoven, then so do domicide and
domithanasia.
After the fire
By far the most obvious and permanent by-product of
house-fires is the rubble itself. The Neolithic tells of
south-east Europe are built up of their debris either
through partial vertical superimposition or intentional
creation of a mound. The piles of debris can be 35cm or
more, frequently as a mass of vitrified clay as hard as
concrete. Unburned garbage (i.e. ceramic fragments,
animal bones) was frequently deposited in a burned house
after the fire. This rubble was left to be weathered by
exposure, or it might have been buried or flattened. Some
of the rubble, however, remained protruding from the
ground and would have been visible to later inhabitants,
both immediate descendants and people from more distant
times (Tringham 2000). This rubble can never be entirely
destroyed or hidden, and its presence is still visible today
in thinner vegetation, spindly crops, broken ploughs, and
poppies.
Ash and other by-products (charcoal; carbonized,
scorched and burned artifacts) created a permanent
reminder on the surface (or just below it) of the buildings
and people whose cumulative biographies fill a place
with memories. Rubble from burned houses was deposited
in pits as the uppermost layer, often long after it had lain
on the surface and had weathered, perhaps even re-used
in pits that were several ‘houses’ later than the original
fire. But in some cases, as in the well found next to House
4 at Opovo, rubble was used immediately after the burning
event to fill a two-metre hole (Tringham 1994). Building
clay that had been transformed by fire did more than
provide a good material with which to make a solid
closure of a garbage pit. I imagine that its transformation
in the fire would have given it greater symbolic sig-
nificance for closure and cleansing of a different kind.
So what is it that creates the material of continuity?
The artifacts inside the house? The building clay? The
wood? The memory of the fire event? All of these? I
introduce the concepts of domicide and domithanasia,
not to suggest that the burned houses of Neolithic south-
east Europe are the result of domicide (unless we favour
the motive of aggression), but because many of the
emotions that accompany the killing of a house by
bulldozer or by fire may have been present at the dramatic
event of burning a house in which one has dwelled. People
who lose their houses to accidental house fires frequently
require counselling and therapy afterwards. I am trying
to build a picture in which the burning of a house was not
only dramatic and sensual because of the fire element,
but was also traumatic. If the purpose of the conflagration
was to ensure a continuous place (as I would argue), to
create social memory, to strengthen identity of
community, and incorporate social reproduction, then –
in lieu of counselling – I suggest that the performances
that we see evidence of before, during, and after the fire
were to make sure that this happened.
Notes
1 Bachelard provides this example from Australia of how
fire is stolen, controlled and given birth to by women:
‘…the men had no fire and did not know how to make it,
but the women did. While the men were away hunting in
the bush, the women cooked their food and ate it by
themselves. Just as they were finishing their meal, they
saw the men returning away in the distance. As they did
not wish the men to know about the fire, they hastily
gathered up the ashes, which were still alight, and thrust
them up their vulvas, so that the men should not see them.
Weaving house life and death into places 109
When the men came close up, they said ‘where is the fire’
but the women replied ‘there is no fire’ (Bachelard 1964,
36 quoting Frazer 1911, 24)
2 That said, there is also good reason to suspect that the
Great Fire may not have been accidental at all.
3 An early example of domicide is Nero’s ordering of the
destruction of Rome in AD 64. I suspect that the Great Fire
of London in 1666 was an act of domicide on a grand scale,
with the aim of re-modelling London
4 ‘In May of 1998 we decided instead of a major remodeling
of our old house that it would be better to do a complete
rebuild. Instead of having the bulldozers out to do a
demolishment of the old structure and paying $10,000 it
would be better to donate the old house to the Seattle Fire
Dept for their training exercise and be able to take the tax
deduction instead’. Before it was actually burned down by
vandalism (domicide) in 1894, Daniel Burnham actually
contemplated burning down The Chicago World’s Fair as
a fitting end to its life, rather than letting it decay
(domithanasia) (Larson 2004, 328).
Figures
Page 98. © Ruth Tringham
Page 99, top left. The birth of fire.
Page 99, top right. Reconstruction of a bread-making oven by
Dr Leendert van der Plas. Opovo Archaeological Project
1985. © Ruth Tringham
Page 99, middle right. Oven remains at Opovo, 1985 (feature
13) with floor renewals. © Ruth Tringham
Page 100, top left. Reconstruction of ‘inner room’ in Neolithic
house at Divostin. © Catherine Chang
Page 100, bottom left. Copper artefacts produced using smelting
and casting technology from Grave 4 in the late Eneolithic
cemetery of Varna, Bulgaria (after Fol and Lichardus 1988).
Page 100, top right. Black burnished ceramic vessel from Grave
4 in the late Eneolithic cemetery of Varna, Bulgaria. The
vessel is painted with gold before firing. This technology
involves reaching at least 1100ºC temperature.
Page 101, top left. Profile through House 4 at Opovo, Serbia,
showing two floors and building daub from the walls that
was vitrified during the house fire. © Ruth Tringham
Page 101, middle left. Profile through a ‘garbage’ pit (feature
52) at the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia. Lenses of
ash can clearly be seen as white. © Ruth Tringham
Page 101, top right. Fragment of burned wall daub from House
2 at the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia, showing the
impressions of horizontal wattling and a vertical timber.
© Ruth Tringham
Page 101, middle right. Mirjana Stevanović next to the burned
remains of House 4 at the Vinča culture site of Opovo,
Serbia, during excavation 1987. © Ruth Tringham
Page 101, bottom right. The black shading shows the area
covered by the burned house horizon. © Ruth Tringham
Page 102, top left. The dark shading shows the chronological
limits of the burned house horizon in south-east Europe.
© Ruth Tringham
Page 102, bottom left. Mirjana Stevanović mapping and
recording details of burned rubble in House 4 at the Vinča
culture site of Opovo, Serbia, during excavation 1987
© Ruth Tringham
Page 102, top right. A fragment of vitrified textile (linen)
fortuitously preserved in the rubble between two floors in
House 4 at the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia and
excavated in 1987. © Ruth Tringham
Page 102, bottom right. (After Raczky et al. 1987).
Page 103, left. Painting of the Great Fire of London 1666.
Page 103, middle right. Envisioning the accidental burning of
a Neolithic house (after Leonard 1973).
Page 103, bottom right. Reconstruction of the densely packed
houses at the Gumelniţa culture settlement of Polyanitsa,
Bulgaria (after Todorova 1976).
Page 104. House burning during William the Conqueror’s rise
to power depicted in the Bayeux tapestry 1064–1066
(LeFranc 1980).
Page 105, top left. Reconstruction of a Tripolye wattle-and-
daub house at Kolomiischina, Dnester river, Ukraine,
showing the thick layers of daub on the floor (after Passek
1949).
Page 105, middle left. Daub found in the top layers of a pit at
the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia. © Ruth Tringham
Page 105, bottom left. Fractal smoke – for inspiration.
Page 105, right. Mirjana Stevanović and Ruth Tringham
planning the excavation of the rubble debris of Houses 1
and 2 at the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia, during
excavation in 1984. © Ruth Tringham
Page 106, left. Fragments of ceramics, clay balls, animal bones
and other artefacts at floor level in the rubble of House 2
at the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia, during
excavation 1984. © Ruth Tringham
Page 106, right. The ‘mess’ near 20–30cm below the surface
caused by the burned rubble of Houses 1 and 2 at the Vinča
culture site of Opovo, Serbia. © Ruth Tringham
Page 107, middle left. A city in Cappadocia, central Turkey,
showing houses in many different stages of their life-
histories. © Michael Ashley
Page 107, bottom left. Collage of fire colours, largely unin-
spirational in black and white. © Ruth Tringham
Page 107, right. Envisioning the fire of Rome in 64 AD.
Page 108, top left. Envisioning the burning of house 1 and its
pits at the Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia. Used in the
production of the hypermedia webs: Chimera Project and
the Chimera Web. © Julian Liao and Michael Ashley
Page 108, bottom left. Profile through tell site of Vinča, Serbia,
showing the thick layers of burned daub. © Ruth Tringham
Page 108 top right. The circular pit interpreted as a well
(feature 30) filled with freshly burned daub at the Vinča
culture site of Opovo, Serbia during excavation in 1988.
© Ruth Tringham
Page 108, bottom right. Profile of the ‘garbage’ pit (feature 31)
that is topped with a thick layer of burned daub at the
Vinča culture site of Opovo, Serbia, during excavation in
1989. © Ruth Tringham
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