The Palatine Huts are the bottoms of three huts from the 8th century BC, dug into the tufa rock of the Palatine Hill in Rome and found in 1948 in the area facing the Temple of the Magna Mater. These are the best finds from the first settlements of Rome in the first and second Iron Age (from the 10th century BC to the mid-7th century BC), compared to other sites in the Foro Boario and on the slopes of Velia.
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The huts were built by regularizing the rocky soil, smoothing platforms in the tuff, which was made flat and surrounded by a channel for the elimination of rainwater.
The holes intended to house the wooden poles (usually six) that formed the structure of the house were then dug on the bottom: in fact, this is known from the contemporary cinerary urns that repeat the shape and are called, precisely "hut", typical of the Lazio civilization. The plan was oval, with one or two poles in the center to support the roof.
They were also equipped with hollows along the perimeter to let the water flow and, sometimes, a small portico in front of the entrance consisting of two poles and a sloping roof, as the holes for the poles in front of the door suggest.
This conformation, present in other sites of southern Etruria, is also confirmed by the findings, in other areas, of hut-shaped funerary urns (in Vulci, Tarquinia ...).
The walls must have been of mud, straw and reeds, with a roof framed on inclined beams supported by the central pole. At the center of the hut there was a hearth, as confirmed by the carbonaceous remains found, whose smoke flowed, according to the study of the cinerary urns, from a small window on the roof.
Other windows could be on the sides. The huts were used at least until the middle of the seventh century BC, however, until the second half of the sixth century BC, we do not have other finds of Roman dwellings.
Nearby, near the House of Livia, a tomb dated to the 10th century BC was found. and cisterns cut into the tuff and covered with a false dome, datable to the 6th century BC. Some scholars believe that these remains are connected to the village of which the found huts belonged, the "square Rome".
Palatine Huts
Address: Via di San Gregorio, 30, 00100
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Site:
http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/index.html#&panel1-1Location inserted by
Pierpaolo Dori