architecture: Europe beyond the walls so that dripping water or falling snow would not damage the walls A roundhouse’s pitched roof was cone-shaped, rising to a peak On rectangular structures one side of the roof might have been raised higher than the other, or the roof might have been double-pitched, that is, having two halves, each of which angled down from a central beam running the length of the house At either end of the house, the two roof halves and the top of the end walls formed a triangle This triangle might have been covered by further roofing or fi lled in with gables, triangular pieces of wood or wattle that rose from the tops of the end walls Houses in parts of southern Europe, where conditions were drier and warmer, often had flat roofs, since water and snow accumulation was not a serious problem Many of these roofs had an outer covering of dirt that often supported a rooftop garden For thousands of years most houses lacked windows and had only one doorway After 800 b.c.e., however, houses with several entrances appeared In Britain, for example, roundhouses of the last centuries b.c.e and the first century c.e had a main door that was flanked by two smaller entryways Halfway around the circle was another large entrance The main entrances, perhaps for religious reasons, faced east and west The entryway might or might not have had some sort of covering In some ancient European homes entryways were left open or with a hide curtain In Bulgaria in the sixth millennium b.c.e a screen just inside the door provided privacy by blocking the view of anyone looking in from the outside Many later houses, however, had wooden or wattle doors that pivoted on stone pins The large entryways of British roundhouses in the ninth century b.c.e had double doors Some entryways were sheltered from rain and snow by a porch, a rectangular wooden frame with wattle walls and a flat or pitched roof The porch was used at times to house animals such as pigs Occasionally, to keep heavy rain, melting snow, or other groundwater from running into the house’s interior, the bottom of the door did not reach the ground, and a step was provided to make entry easier If the floor was dug below ground level, steps inside led down HOUSE INTERIORS Inside ancient European houses the roof poles and rafters were left visible Floors were often dug down a foot or more They were made of beaten earth or were covered with animal skins, clay, paving stones, or wooden planks Sunk into the floors of some buildings were clay- or stone-lined pits for storage A rare house even had a shallow basement with a clay coating or stone lining The interior walls were occasionally painted, as in German houses of the fourth millennium b.c.e., in which red and white zigzags streaked across a yellow background If the walls were thick enough, as they were in some houses in Britain and Scotland, cupboards, shelves, and benches were cut into them Many houses, particularly in the early agricultural period, had a single room In small rectangular buildings and in 71 most roundhouses, the room space was empty However, many rectangular structures had several roof-supporting posts— sometimes in rows, sometimes staggered—breaking up the floor area Buildings that lacked these posts had roofs that were fully supported by their frames, which in turn were supported by the walls Among roundhouses, only the largest had roofs heavy enough to require support posts, and even they had a large, central, unbroken space because the posts, numbering 12 or more, were placed around the border of the room a few feet from the inner wall Some roundhouses did have a central post that rose up to the roof and to which roof poles connected, but most of the floor area still remained free Commonly, in larger rectangular and circular houses partitions of wattle stretched between the support posts to divide the interior into two or more rooms In a two-room house one room was used for cooking and activities such as weaving and tool making and repair, while the other was for sleeping In buildings with many rooms the front chamber was a combined reception area and workroom, while other chambers served as a kitchen–dining room and one or more bedrooms In northern Scotland a special class of stone roundhouses, known as wheelhouses, had rooms formed by piers, stone supports that projected from the wall and ran from floor to roof to give the latter support The piers also formed the walls of the rooms, each of which faced an open central space These houses also had a stone hallway leading from the entryway into the house’s center The house’s name comes from the wheel-like appearance of its interior: The house wall was the wheel rim, the piers were the spokes, and the central room was the hub Many homes housed more than just people In regions with hard winters one room would contain stalls, mainly for cattle In Scotland in the last centuries b.c.e the space along the walls of roundhouses was sunken and paved with stone, probably as a pen for animals Frequently one or more rooms had a loft, a partial second floor that was reached by ladder from the ground floor Lofts had plank floors covered with wattle and made excellent places to keep food away from both domestic and wild animals A few houses even had a complete second story The same houses in Scotland that had paved sunken areas had a second floor supported by posts that served as the building’s living quarters Without windows and often with only a single entryway to let in sunlight during the day, house interiors were quite dim, particularly in rooms partitioned off from the door In a longhouse, for instance, which had its door at one end of the building, much of the interior was dark The end farthest from the door was thus used for food storage and for housing livestock, the middle section for eating and sleeping, and the door’s end for all activities requiring light Since chimneys did not exist in ancient European houses, the home’s entryway allowed smoke from fires for cooking and heating to escape Smoke also escaped through the roof Much of the roofing material, such as thatch or turf, was porous enough to allow smoke to seep out However, it was not