"Pile Dwelling Fever"

As children, most of us dream of finding treasure in our attics, or in our back yard. At least, I know I did. Television programs like Antique's Roadshow feed the horror vacui we suffer from in our lives with stories of junk turned to treasure over the course of a couple of minutes. News stories about some farmer, elsewhere, or, more tantalizing, right up the road, finding a hugely important horde of gold coins or the like fuels a culture of finder's keeper's.

Beyond hoarding, there is a social status that comes with collecting. Especially when it comes to artifacts. They symbolize more than an appreciation for a time in history. Artifacts in the private collection become stories of adventure, exemplary of wealth, and hopefully, the beginning of a legacy within an institution. But what happens once your artifacts get to wherever their going?

The Swiss Lake Dwellings

In the winter of 1853 and 1854, water levels in Switzerland dropped. This revealed prehistoric artifacts and "pile dwellings" that were known to have been built their between 3,000 and 6,400 years ago. The houses are called Pfaulbau in German.

The people that lived there so many millenia ago had an extremely varied diet. They hunted and gathered, as one would expect of such an old European settlement, but also fished in the lakes they built their homes on, practiced agriculture, and herded animals. Some of the most exciting finds are the preserved types of domesticated plants and obviously prepared foodstuffs (such as charred apples). On top of good eats, the bog-like conditions of the lake bed preserved organic material of incredible complexity, such as wood and even textiles.

The appearance of valuable cultural artifacts brought out archaeologists and treasure hunters alike. Granted, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between these two groups of people. The sudden fad by locals of collecting artifacts from the unsubmerging sites was named "Pfahlbaufieber" in German (pile dwelling fever). The artifact fishermen themselves were called "Pfahlbaufischer."

Portrait of Jakob Messikomer, 1902
via Wikimedia Commons

The Pfahlbaufischer were paid good money for their finds. Amateur archaeologists like Jakob Messikommer ensured that finds treasure seekers might pass up, such as the remains of food and other organic material, were collected and preserved. In the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s, there were several collectors that donated their collections to museums for further research and to be shared with the public, who were just wild about the Swiss lake dwellers.

The Pfahlbauten were extremely exciting because they suddenly presented a picture of life where death had previously held all the answers. Before this, the archaeological record on prehistoric Europe had been filled in by grave and military sites. On top of this, most research covered times after Roman occupation. The Pfahlbau gave Europe an independent historical identity. As Armando Mombelli of swissinfo so eloquently put it, "history no longer began with the Romans."

History in the Basement

However, at the turn of the century, Pfahlbaufieber waned. Information on the lake dwellers was relegated to that unobtainable world of academia. Museums in the United States had been the recipients of several collections, but after the beginning of World War I, all research stopped. With public interest at nil, acquisitions of European material from prehistory stopped also.

Unfortunately, it seems the wars of the 20th century created a bias against German-speaking parts of Europe; even those regions that held keys to the ancestry of the continent. Today, institutions like the Milwaukee Public Museum and the University of Glasgow are leading the way by offering information on their collections from the Robenhausen village online, but it took a century to get back in the public eye.

J. Messikomer & team digging at Robenhausen
via Wikimedia Commons

Sources (not linked above)

Arnold, Bettina. "The Lake-Dwelling Diaspora: Museums, Private Collectors, and the Evolution of Ethics in Archaeology." In The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology, edited by Francesco Menotti and Aidan O'Sullivan, 875-886. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Free Book of the Week:

There are a ton of amazing free books online! Old and otherwise. Every Friday, I plan to post some weekend reading.

This week we have a particularly delectable morsel of archaic medical documentation. I made the dubious decision to research the exact method of use of a pair of bone forceps found in a surgeon's house at Pompeii. This led me to the digital exhibition of surgical instruments from ancient Rome put up by the University of Viriginia. (Available here: http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/romansurgical/) While it has beautiful images of the objects, and good information in the minimal text, it is ultimately too easy to be lost in the horror of it all. Naturally, after retching at the collection of Vaginal Specula, I could hardly scroll past the Rectal Speculum and Bone Levers. Nor could I ignore the overall fearsome shape of the Male Catheter, which I learned elsewhere is probably made from copper of bronze. Silver examples have also been described; as well as attempts using reed and quills (which would have had a more difficult time surviving over long periods, archaeologically.)

Roman medical tools. Try to guess what they were for!
(Image in the Public Domain)

On to the free reading! My investigations brought me to the 1816 publication A Dictionary of Practical Surgery: comprehending all the most interesting improvements from the earliest times down to the present period: an account of the instruments and remedies employed in surgery: the etymology and signification of the principal terms: and, numerous references to ancient and modern works forming a catalogue of surgical literature arranged according to subject. The text is certainly comprehensive, and extremely useful in destroying word count when referenced in a research paper.

If you are the type of sick individual that relishes disgusting detail, horrifying history, or are simply looking to improve your Georgian era medical vocabulary, it can be viewed and even downloaded from the Internet Archive (where I think it is easier to read), or Google books (where it is easier to search for topics like "necrosis" or "uvula amputation" ( location on the "VAG" page).

A second text this week is the more pithy title Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. Historically, our understanding of mental disorders and faculties has led to inhumane treatments and madly misplaced assumptions. This misunderstanding extends into the modern age. However, this particular book was interesting to me because of its use of "noble savage" tropes in identifying the causes of derangement. Specifically, on page 65, Rush (the author) says,

Certain states of society, and certain opinions, pursuits, amusements, and forms of government have a considerable influence in predisposing to derangement. It is a rare disease among savages. ... Infidelity and atheism are frequent causes of it in christian countries."

I hope these entertain!