Helladic

The earliest extant domestic architecture in Greece is the Neolithic A (seventh-millennium b. c.e.) village at Sesklo in Thessaly. The village contained about twenty closely grouped but independent houses (i. e., no row homes), each consisting of up to three roughly square or oblong rooms set together with irregular wall lines. These rooms could range from little more than 1 square meter to up to 8 square meters. The foundations were of smallish stones, and the walls were either of wattle-and-daub construction (reeds and mud) or possibly mud brick. The roofs were composed of reeds over a clay base. The only discernible household facilities were fixed hearths, located either in the center of a room or by the wall (which does not sound like a brilliant idea if the walls were wattle and daub). These hearths were probably for heating the house and for warming food. Outside the house structures were larger ovens, no doubt used for bread baking and possibly pottery firing (Vermeule 1972, 11).

In the Neolithic B period, a new culture emerged in Greece, best represented at Dimini, also in Thessaly (see Image 9.3). Unlike Sesklo, Dimini was a fenced settlement, surrounded by originally three, then five, low walls, arranged in concentric rings, encircling the crown of a hill measuring about 15 meters long. Within the walls was one primary domestic unit, which contained a squarish house, animal sheds, and storage facilities (Vermeule 1972, 16). Additional houses were located outside the encircling walls, suggesting either that the society had become hierarchical by this point, with a "royal family" inhabiting the main house, or that the entire structure was some manner of communal storage facility.

With the rise of the Bronze Age, a new domestic architectural style appeared in Greece—the corridor house, best represented by the House of the Tiles in Lerna, which dates to the Early Helladic II period and measures some 25 x 12 square meters (see Image 9.4). These houses, ranging from Boiotia in the north to Aigina in the east to Messenia in the southwest, are all essentially rectilinear in plan, meaning that a series of square or rectangular rooms are laid out one after the other in a row, with the row itself flanked by hallways or corridors. Some of these buildings, as at Lerna, had stairs leading to a second story. As was typical for Greek buildings henceforth, the entire house was set upon a stone socle, or base, to protect the walls from water damage. The walls were of mud brick, and the roofs consisted of timber beams covered with fired clay tiles that overhung the walls, once again providing protection from rain (Dickinson 1994, 144-145).

By the Mycenaean period, the style of Greek house that was to remain common in the Iron Age began to appear. This consisted of a group of square or rectangular rooms arranged around a central courtyard, which provided light and air to all the rooms of the house. A secondary house style, also with later appearances in Greek architecture, was a structure similar in many respects to the corridor houses of the Early Bronze Age. In this type, a series of square rooms was arranged along a corridor. The rooms had access by means of a staircase to a larger, megaron-like room (see below), possibly serving as some manner of reception hall. Around the living quarters were facilities for storage

9.3 Plan of Dimini (Courtesy of Stephanie Budin)

And production, indicating a heavy economic component for these apparently upper-class houses (Kilian 1988, 32). Examples of such houses appear at Mycenae, where four residential and production-oriented homes were located just outside the city walls. These were the West House, the House of the Oil Merchant, the House of the Sphinxes, and the House of the Shields. Although generally only the basements of these structures are preserved, they show a linear arrangement for both the basement storage rooms and, based on what fell from above, the upper stories. Upper levels probably had balconies overlooking terraces, which, once again, provided light and air.

For a picture of true upper-class life, of course, one must turn to the Mycenaean palaces, which began to appear in the Late Helladic IIIA period with Mansions I and II at the Menelaion in Sparta; Nichoria Building IV-4, at Tiryns; and the "Mega-ron" on the island of Phylakopi (Dickinson 1994, 153). The most prestigious monumental architecture in Mycenaean Greece, though, was at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos (see Image 9.5). The central component of the Mycenaean palace was the megaron (hall): a square room, approached through a porch and vestibule, with a hearth in the center surrounded by four pillars. Instead of an upper story, there was a gallery around the upper edge of the megaron, allowing people to look down onto the events below and also allowing smoke from the hearth to escape through an opening in the ceiling. At Pylos and Mycenae, a throne base was located in the center of the wall that stood at a right angle from the door. One approached the mega-ron through a long corridor of porches and anterooms, each with a full complement of smaller rooms to either side. These rooms served a variety of functions, ranging from simple offices to archives to lavatories to what may have functioned as (temporary) bedrooms. Behind the megaron were rooms for storage. Beyond the megaron-based palace proper at Pylos was a series of outer buildings, such as a wine magazine and several workshops. Altogether, the Mycenaean palaces served as royal residences and centers of redistribution and production.

9.4 Plan of the House of the Tiles, Lerna (Courtesy of Stephanie Budin)

It was not until the later years of the Bronze Age that the palaces, especially those at Mycenae and Tiryns, also came to function as fortresses. In the fourteenth century b. c.e., both palaces surrounded themselves with large walls, called Cyclopean, as the later Greeks believed that only the mythical giants could have moved such large stones. These walls could rise up to 13 meters high and be as thick as 8 meters (Kilian 1988, 31). They were clearly designed with defense, and specifically siege defense, in mind. The walls at Tiryns extended away from the palace proper to enclose an area probably intended to hold the general population during periods of warfare (see Image 4.3). The defensive structures at Mycenae were enlarged in the thirteenth century to enclose a spring accessible by staircase. Ultimately, such provisions did not save the Mycenaeans from the upheavals at the end of the Bronze Age, when all the palaces were burned to the ground.

Monumental architecture ceased to exist in the Dark Age, and houses built

9.5 Plan of Megaron at Pylos (Courtesy of Stephanie Budin)

During that period were generally made of materials that left few remains in the archaeological record. The one major exception is the Heroon of Lefkandi (see chapter 4), which gives evidence for both domestic and funerary architecture. Otherwise, the next major phase of Greek architecture begins around 800 b. c.e. with the growth of the sanctuaries.