LAKE DWELLINGS. The name applied to human habitations built usually on founda tions of piles or posts, but also constructed of trunks of trees, brush, earth or stone. and erected on the shallow borders of lakes, rivers, and other inland waters. In Switzerland they are tech nically called palafittes, in Italy terramare, in Ireland and Scotland erannoges, and the German term is Pfahlbauten, or pile-struetUres. These structures abounded in Switzerland and adjacent parts of Germany, France, and Italy; hut ac counts and remains of such edifices occur else where in both hemispheres, among all types of mankind, in modern as well as in ancient times, and in et ery grade of culture.
Celtic peoples lived on erannoges, both in Ire land and Southwestern Scotland, during the wars that followed the Roman Conquest. Herodotus describes the lake dwellings erected by the Pteo nians over the waters of Lake Prasias in Thrace; Hippocrates mentions them on the shores of the river 'Masts, in Colehis, east of the Black Sea; in Sindh, Northwestern India, the habitations of pastoral tribes are elevated on piles to avoid dampness and insects; they are found in the lakes of Central Africa, throughout the Malay Archipelago and the Philippine Islands, and even in the Melanesian groups; they were con structed on the Amazon, and in Guiana; and on Lake Maracaibo they were so abundant that the first discoverers named the country Venezuela, or 'Little Venice.' The account of the discovery of the lake dwell ings forms one of the most interesting chapters in the history of archteology. Fishermen on the Swiss lakes had long complained that their nets became entangled in obstructions on the bot tom. Then came the exceptionally dry and cold winter of 1853-54, when the lakes, not receiving their usual supply of water, sank a foot lower than was ever known before, leaving broad strands and islands along the margins. In a small bay. on Lake Zurich, between Ober Meilen and Dollikon, the inhabitants, in order to en large the size of their gardens, built a wall down to the water-line, and filled the depression by dredging mud from the lake. Not only stumps
of ancient piles, but hundreds of implements of handicraft made from stone, bone, and espe cially of came up in the dredge. No metal objects were found, only the relics of a very rude and primitive race.
Most of the greater lakes, including Bienne, Constance, Geneva, Morat, Neuchatel, and Sem pach. disclosed not one. but many settlements, Neuchatel as many as fifty, while many smaller lakes yielded valuable arehteologieal material.
Troyon attempted to reconstruct from data thus obtained the settlement of Morges, one of the largest on Lake Geneva, which was 1200 feet long by 150 broad, covering 180,000 square feet, and estimated its population at more than 1200; while the villages on Lake Neuchatel seem to have had about 5000 inhabitants, the entire Stone Age in Switzerland numbered about 31,S75 living in this form of habitation, and the lironze Age 42,500. From the station of \Vangen on Lake Constance 4450 stone axes and other relics were recovered; from Moosseedorf. near Bern, 2702, covering a great variety of Stone Age im plements; and from Nidau, on Lake Bienne, over 2000 artifacts in bronze of great beauty mixed with Neolithic implements. The palafittes dis covered and repotted are only a handful as com pared with those that actually existed, and in some of those mentioned as a single station there were twenty or more separate structures. Rot ting of piles, conflagrations, war, and natural catastrophes were among the causes necessitating rebuilding. That many strnetnres were de stroyed aril rebuilt on their own dAris is evi denced by the existence of three or more super imposed layers in the lake's bottom. Rohm bausen shows three layers of piles. 100.000 in all, and at \Torges, on Lake Geneva, three con tiguous stations cover Swiss ancient history, one of them containing only stone, a second stone and bronze, and the third bronze alone.