Revealing the house – Elements of the ‘architectural manual’ behind the houses on the Százhalombatta-Földvár Bronze Age tell

Abstract A house provides shelter but at the same time it is also an important social instrument. Several aspects of cultural tradition and behaviour can affect the construction of a house. In this paper we aim to explore house construction at the Százhalombatta-Földvár tell as constituted by a range of explicit and distinct decisions. To do this we use the biography of the housebuilding as our analytical framework. We aim to investigate the building in itself as a specific stage , seeing it as a distinct compilation of decisions and material interactions. Rather than investigating a particular house, we will sift through data from different houses from Phase II of the tell to investigate how particular steps in the construction process were conducted during this time. We also explore how the archaeological soil-micromorphological analyses provide detailed insight into material choices and thus can be used to augment the archaeological interpretations. We aim to factually establish how the houses were built and to identify the data that can help illuminate this aspect of settlement life.