DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0030
INTRODUCTION xxix
roof on the ordinary dwelling-house. Nor can I agree with
Tsountas in assuming a gable roof for the building with
the columns—possibly a temple—in the Sixth City on His-
sarlik. For it is a technical error to hold that a central
row of supports is more necessary for a gable than for a
flat roof. Exactly the opposite is true. A clay roof, to be
water-tight, must be made much heavier than a thatched
or shingled gable roof. Besides, with the gable the an-
cients always employed horizontal cross-beams which in dif-
ferent ways, familiar to every architect, served to bear the
weight of the roof. It is not impossible indeed that all the
buildings of the old Acropolis at Troy had steep pitched
roofs, but it is far more probable that the flat clay roof
covered every one of them. In the Greek town of Ilion
down to Hellenistic times roof-tiles were not common j and
to this day the villages in the Troad retain the old flat roof
of beaten earth.
5. Of still another architectonic problem, Tsountas' solu-
tion appears to me not altogether correct. Among the
houses excavated by him he maintains that there are upper-
story dwellings with wooden floors and basements above
ground but unoccupied. This kind of house would corre-
spond with the primitive pile-hut; and so, from the litter
found in the basements, it is inferred that the people shared
the untidy habits of the lake-dwellers in disposing of the
refuse of the table and other rubbish (p. 68). But the
ruins of the houses in question do not warrant this theory.
Two kinds of house are clearly to be distinguished.
First, we find such as were provided with cellars and thus,
of course, had wooden floors; in these the cellars were
accessible by stone or wooden stairways and served for
storing provisions and other goods. Secondly, there were
houses without cellars, and these had floors of beaten
roof on the ordinary dwelling-house. Nor can I agree with
Tsountas in assuming a gable roof for the building with
the columns—possibly a temple—in the Sixth City on His-
sarlik. For it is a technical error to hold that a central
row of supports is more necessary for a gable than for a
flat roof. Exactly the opposite is true. A clay roof, to be
water-tight, must be made much heavier than a thatched
or shingled gable roof. Besides, with the gable the an-
cients always employed horizontal cross-beams which in dif-
ferent ways, familiar to every architect, served to bear the
weight of the roof. It is not impossible indeed that all the
buildings of the old Acropolis at Troy had steep pitched
roofs, but it is far more probable that the flat clay roof
covered every one of them. In the Greek town of Ilion
down to Hellenistic times roof-tiles were not common j and
to this day the villages in the Troad retain the old flat roof
of beaten earth.
5. Of still another architectonic problem, Tsountas' solu-
tion appears to me not altogether correct. Among the
houses excavated by him he maintains that there are upper-
story dwellings with wooden floors and basements above
ground but unoccupied. This kind of house would corre-
spond with the primitive pile-hut; and so, from the litter
found in the basements, it is inferred that the people shared
the untidy habits of the lake-dwellers in disposing of the
refuse of the table and other rubbish (p. 68). But the
ruins of the houses in question do not warrant this theory.
Two kinds of house are clearly to be distinguished.
First, we find such as were provided with cellars and thus,
of course, had wooden floors; in these the cellars were
accessible by stone or wooden stairways and served for
storing provisions and other goods. Secondly, there were
houses without cellars, and these had floors of beaten