Experiments show burning a Trypillia house required about 30 cubic meters of wood, roughly 9 times the 3.45 cubic meters needed for construction. Clay insulation made them naturally fireproof, so burning was deliberate. At Castel Scânteia, House 9 held 33 people's remains. Archaeologist Vasil Nikolov calls this ritual 'dithanasia'.
Experiments proved Trypillia house burnings needed 9x more wood than construction
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📍 Castel Scânteia🌍 Show on the globe
Key facts
- Experimental reproduction of a Trypillia house required 3.45 cubic meters of structural timber
- An additional 30 cubic meters of wood was needed to burn the structure down, roughly 9 times the construction timber
- Additional fuel equaled about 420 pieces of timber, each 4 m long and 15 cm thick
- Clay insulation made the houses naturally fireproof, requiring deliberate effort to burn
- House 9 at Castel Scânteia contained 111 human bones or teeth from 33 different people in a ritually burned context
- Balkan archaeologist Vasil Nikolov coined the term dithanasia for the ritual closing or death of the house
- Approximately two-thirds of houses at Nebresha were deliberately burned, while others were barely or never burned
- The burning ritual may relate to transforming structures for the afterlife
Sources
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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sfb1266.uni-kiel.de
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TRACES OF PREHISTORIC CIVILIZATION FOUND NEAR ...bnt.bg
They would bury parts of the house in small burial pits and then set the house on fire. Professor Vassil Nikolov says it can be assumed that ...
Life and death of a Neolithic housepublications.naim.bg
The Neolithic houses (Nikolov 1992; were built of wood and clay. house as an economic-social experiment, deliberately packed up with burnt house debris ( ...
in honorem professoris borisi borisovresearchgate.net
Vassil Nikolov. On pits, houses and graves in the ... Trypillia houses were one- or two-storey ... It is an extraordinary result of our house-burning experiment ...
Bulgarian professor claims to find Europe's 'oldest town'rutlandherald.com
Nikolov said the settlement near Provadia was home to some 350 people who likely produced salt from the nearby rock-salt deposits.
the experimental building, burning and excavation of a two- ...academia.edu
The experiment revealed that burning a two-storey Trypillia house produced vitrified daub, indicating temperatures over 1000°C.
Burned house horizonen.wikipedia.org
Although there is still debate about why the house burning was practiced, the evidence seems to indicate that it was highly unlikely to have been accidental.
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