The tradition of lacustrine pile dwellings, which appeared in the second half of the 4^th millennium BC and existed throughout the 3^rd millennium BC in the Dnieper-Dvina basin, represents a unique cultural phenomenon for the territory of Eastern Europe. In the Dnieper-Dvina interfluve, the most fully investigated sites are Usvyaty IV and Serteya II, which allow reconstruction of the structure and features of pile buildings. In this paper, we attempt to give an overview of the gathered data and to determine the characteristics of the construction solutions for those buildings and the reasoning behind the choice of this new form of architecture at the Neolithic sites of the Dnieper-Dvina basin. Various reasons for the emergence of tradition of building pile settlements in the lake landscapes of the Dnieper-Dvina could involve protective function, the ease of building a house on piles in a soft shore layer, proximity to various natural resources, release of fertile soils, and, first and foremost, the cultural phenomenon which reflected human adaptation to changed climatic and ecological conditions of the Subboreal period. Surveys of the adjacent territories and the analysis of geological cores indicate a small area of pile settlements that existed here. The described scheme suggests the existence of a peculiar farmstead settlement system for the builders of pile settlements with two synchronous and/or sequentially erected buildings, rectangular in plan, with a set of specific architectural elements.

Keywords: pile settlements, Neolithic, architecture, ecology, peat bog sites, underwater archaeology.

 

Funding. The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No. 22-18-00086 “Between East and West: Hunter-gatherers of the lacustrine region in Western Russia in the VIIth-IIIrd millennia BC (economic strategies, cultural traditions, interregional interrelations and palaeoecological conditions)”.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Accepted: 15.11.2024

Article is published: 15.09.2025