Post in ground

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An earthfast shelter. The posts are buried in the ground so no bracing is necessary.
Some researchers consider sills placed on the ground, rather than on a foundation, to fall under the type earthfast construction. Fishing house without a chimney, circa 1750. Latvian Ethnographic Open Air Museum

Post in ground (Also called Poteau en terre, post in ground construction, earthfast,[1] hole-set posts), is a type of construction in which vertical, roof-bearing timbers, called posts, are placed into excavated post holes.[2] Earthfast construction is common from the Neolithic period to the present and is used world-wide. Post-in-the-ground construction is sometimes called an "impermanent" form such as for houses which are expected to last a decade or two before a better quality structure can be built.[3]

Post in ground construction can also include sill on grade, wood-lined cellars, and pit houses. Most pre-historic and medieval wooden dwellings were built post in ground worldwide.

History

This type of construction is often believed to be an intermediate form between a palisade construction and a stave construction. Because the holes for the posts are easily detected in archaeological surveys they can be differentiated from the other two.

It was one of the timber construction methods used for French colonial structures in New France.

The Japanese also used earthfast construction they call Hottate-bashira (literally "embedded pillars")[4] until the eighteenth century.

Gallery

  • A model of the Maison Bolduc, an example of poteaux-sur-solle and poteaux-en-terre construction.

  • A cross section of a poteaux-en-terre house.

  • A model of the Beauvais-Amoureux House, showing poteaux-en-terre construction.

  • Poteaux-en-Terre-Cellar of the Maison Beauvais-Amoureux.

  • Beauvais-Amoureux House in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.

  • A cutaway drawing of the Vital St. Gemme Beauvais House construction.

  • First Courthouse, St. Louis, MO; from a c. 1815 postcard.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Post in ground construction.

References

  1. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0). Oxford University Press, 2009
  2. ↑ http://www.stavkirke.org
  3. ↑ Carson, Cary, Norman F. Barka, William M. Kelso, Garry Wheller Stone, and Dell Upton. “Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies.” Material Life in America, 1600-1860, edited by Robert Blair St. George, 113-158. Boston: Northern University Press, 1988.
  4. ↑ Gina Lee Barnes. Yamato: archaeology of the first Japanese state. googlebooks?id=S-sDAQAAIAAJ

External links

Hut dwelling designs and semi-permanent human shelters
Traditional immobile
Traditional mobile
Open-air
Modern
Named huts (List)
Related articles


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