In which village are there round houses

An archaeological reconstruction. Round sun with rays over the roof of the house about the orange sky. Black silhouettes with tree and house branches Landscape sunset in the village. Hiking in the Drakensberg mountains of Lesotho with a small traditional village in the valley. A four round kiln oast house in the East Kent village of Ickham. Sun with rays over the house roof in dark orange sky. Black silhouettes tree branches and rural home.

Sunset landscape in the village. National Historic Landmark. Rate this book. A story of life in an isolated Cameroonian village. Picture Books Africa Childrens Cultural More Details. Ann Grifalconi 14 books 22 followers. September 22, — February 19, was an American author and illustrator of children's books. Born in New York, she studied art at the Cooper Union School of Art, where she received a certificate in advertising art in Search review text.

Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews. I loved this great tale. It is set among the Cameroon people and I had a cousin who did a peace corps assignment in the country of Cameroon.

I feel like I have some stories to go with the country. I got to see pictures of her village, but I did not notice or remember that her village had round and square houses, so this could just be this village in particular and not the one she stayed in.

In this village the woman and children live in the round houses and the men live in the square houses. The men come and visit in the round house.

Each enjoy the company they keep and they are happy with this arrangement. We later find out that this was done after the volcano went off one night long ago. Only two houses were left standing - a round and a square. So everything started from there and the village grew. I thought this was a fabulous book. I enjoyed it. The artwork is fantastic and the story was engaging. This is a little gem. I told them that would be a whole different mentality of living. They thought it was weird.

Still, they thought it was a good story too. They both gave this 3 stars. I didn't feel drawn into the story or captivated by Grifalconi's drawings, although they are capable. The story comes from what Grifalconi heard during a visit in Cameroon, but I'm not sure what a child will take away from the story or what idea a teacher or older reader would want them to take away from it: Appreciating another culture? Honoring African tribal life and culture? Understanding the place of mythology in culture?

The world works better if men and women have their space from one another? All these require more adult sensitivities, and in the end what is pictured is the self-contained nature of culture that reinforces itself slavery worked this way for quite a while , rather than value of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a culture. If anyone had ever actually read this book, it would have set us all back about years.

Luckily no one but me has, so we're safe. This children's book is about an African village in which the women live on one side in round houses and the men live on the other side in square houses. They've been living like that for generations since the gods destroyed the village and ordered men to one side and women to the other, and they've been living happily ever after since then. It's a Caldecott Honor book, so either the awards committee thought it looked pretty and didn't actually open it, or somehow they or I have seriously misinterpreted the message in this book.

Let's glorify "separate but equal", shall we? I mean clearly it has worked out so well in the past. Now let's all go back to our square and round shaped caves and grunt at one another. A very interesting story and I have no reason to believe that Ms Grifalconi made it up. On the back inside flap of the jacket in the edition I read, there is a photo of Ms Grifalconi in front of a square house and a round house, and she is surrounded by the village children.

There is also an adult standing next to her, who might be the person who told her the story. The story is interesting, although the reader is not told why the chief wanted to separate the men and women.

I really liked the colorful illustrations. Her use of color in the different scenes to depict the contrast between the disaster and the pre-and post-disaster times was brilliant. She has a talent for drawing expressive faces. I thought this was fascinating. In this remote village in Cameroon called Tos, the women live in round houses and the men live in square houses. A young girl explains that this came about when a nearby volcano erupted.

Most of the village was destroyed One was round and one was square. The village chief ordered the tall gray things the men covered in ash to go live in the square house and the round gray things the women to live in the round houses. And so it remains to this day. There is a brief author's note at the beginning stating that this is true and the author has traveled to this remote village.

But the text left me with many questions and the author's note did little to satisfy my curiosity. I wish there were a more detailed author's note. Is the village still there today? This was written in Has it remained mostly untouched by outside influence's.

I want to know more about their culture: their foods and language, their celebrations, their beliefs. I wonder at what age the boys move from the round house with their mothers and the other children to the square house with their fathers? Fascinating book Why do women and men live in different houses?

Caldecott honor. She goes about her daily routine at first, but then her grandmother tells her the story. The volcano in the town erupted one day, and left only a square and round house left. The leader at the time simply threw the men into the square one, and the women into the round one, and that has how it has been ever since then. This story, from the Cameroons, is to be welcomed as another successful addition to the list.

The village in which the story is set really exists and its legend, which explains the unusual living arrangements of the villagers, is told by a young girl who lived there. Illustrated in soft, smudgy pastel with great dignity and beauty, the legend fascinated my seven-year-olds.

The dough would have then been baked in a simple clay-domed oven, of which evidence has been found in Iron Age houses. The barley and rye could also have been made into a kind of porridge, evidence for which has been found in the stomach contents in preserved Iron Age bodies that have been deposited in peat bogs in northern Europe. In addition to this, the Roman writer Pliny explains that grain was also fermented to make beer, and the surface foam that formed was scraped off and used in the bread-making process.

Other than cereal grains, few plant materials survived. However we can assume that Iron Age people supplemented their diet with edible berries, leaves, flowers, nuts and roots. The animals reared as livestock, pigs, cattle and sheep, would have been eaten as there is evidence of butchery on the bones. Milk and dairy products would have been available in addition to fish, birds, and the occasional wild animal.

The evidence of beeswax in the bronze-casting techniques shows that honey would also have been available as a sweetener. The interior of the house was an ideal place for the drying and preservation of food. Smoke and heat from the constant fire would have smoked meat and fish, and would have dried herbs and other plants perfectly.

Salt was another means of preserving meat for the cold winter months, but this was a commodity that could not be made at a typical settlement and was therefore traded. In another part of the house would have been an upright weaving loom. The wool from the sheep was spun and woven to make clothes.

At the end of the day, having tended to the livestock, there would presumably - hopefully - have been time to rest. This may have been a matter of sitting by the fire on logs, drinking freshly brewed beer from a drinking horn made of antler and talking to the other members of the house. As for leisure activities for both the young and old, glass gaming pieces have been found in some of the later Iron Age burials, showing that forms of board games may have been available.

Children, who during the day would have helped in the house, or tended livestock, may have occupied their free time by practising their skill at the slingshot - a common and accessible weapon of the Iron Age. On one side of the roundhouse's interior, and based on internal post-holes, would have been the sleeping quarters. These bed areas may have been raised from the ground on a wooden base; with hay or feather mattresses, strewn with animal skins and wool blankets.

The thick thatch of the roof and the constant heat from the fire would have made the interior of the roundhouse quite a snug and comfortable place to live in. Our understanding of how people dressed and cared for their appearance has come partly from the archaeological evidence, but mainly from what classical writers such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus wrote, amazed at the difference from the plain coloured togas that they were used to.

One of the main differences was that Britain's Iron Age people are said to have worn a form of close-fitting trousers braccae , with a long tunic of either linen or wool, held at the waist with a belt. Over this would have been a cloak that was fastened at the shoulder with a brooch. The textiles were dyed bright colours and were woven with striped or checked patterns. The clay for our houses was procured from Pembrokeshire whereas that used at Bryn Eryr could easily have been provided from the immediate environs of the site.

Sufficient could have been obtained from the excavation of the enclosure ditch which surrounded the original site, with the quarry pits set within the interior of the enclosure potentially supplying patching material for ongoing maintenance See Figure 8. The method by which two prehistoric houses could be built abutting one another, as was the case at Bryn Eryr, was particularly vexing, although it is known from other sites such as Tre'r Ceiri, a hillfort in Gwynedd, north Wales and Chysauster in Cornwall.

Such a design would lead to water run-off from the roofs meeting at the join between the two buildings, leading to water penetration into the walls, and subsequent erosion. To reduce the risk of this occurring at our houses, we decided to join our two roundhouse roof cones using a linking ridge, thereby pushing the water away from the tops of the walls. One consequence of this design is that a disproportionate amount of water would be funnelled from the roofs to the ground where the two houses join—potentially creating a waterlogged patch of ground.

Referring back to the archaeological evidence from Bryn Eryr, a large drainage gully had been dug behind the buildings, from the point where their walls joined, thereby channelling water away. No such drainage ditch existed at the front of the buildings, but one possible solution to the problem of excess water flow is to place a water barrel below the eaves, thereby obviating a drainage problem and providing a ready supply of water for the inhabitants of the houses.

The solution we have chosen for the problem of how to combine two roundhouse roofs means that our structures will inevitably look different from single-roofed roundhouses of the types explored by Peter Reynolds and we hope that this will generate debate. Pragmatically however, the inclusion of a linking ridge between the two houses provides us with the solution to another issue faced in the old Celtic Village—namely accessibility.

Fire safety makes it necessary to include more than one exit from large buildings, regardless of their presence in the original structure. In the case of our new roundhouses, it was decided not to alter the external appearance of the houses, but to include a doorway linking the two buildings which would run beneath the joining roof ridge, thereby making it possible for visitors to enter via one house, pass into the second house, and leave from the second doorway.

This will reduce congestion at each doorway, improve visitor flow through the houses, and make it easier for staff to supervise both structures. In quieter periods, the linking doorway will be concealed behind period-appropriate fabric drapes. The issue of disabled access into the roundhouses is also helped by the evidence from the original site of Bryn Eryr. The doorways of the original houses were already wide enough for wheelchairs and there is no evidence for sill beams, meaning that the buildings are, by their nature, easier to enter than were Moel y Gerddi and Moel y Gaer in the old Celtic Village.

Lighting has been a particular concern in the building of the new Iron Age farmstead since the thick clay walls at Bryn Eryr will reduce the spread of light entering through the doorways. Since the reconstruction is still only partly complete, it is not certain how problematic this will be, but it is an area that has been explored with the support of the Cardiff School of Architecture.

In a scale model of the Iron Age farmstead was produced and tested within the Cardiff School's Artificial Sky Facility to gain a sense of how much light would enter the interior, and whether any minor alterations could be made to the design to improve light levels inside.

The conclusion of this leads us to believe that the light levels inside the houses will indeed be very low See Figure 9. Many options were considered for increasing the light level into the houses, from dormer windows in the thatch to windows in the wall and several of these were tested in the model. All were felt to be too intrusive and—while they did not exactly contradict the limited evidence base—they suggested more than the evidence from other sites could support. For this reason, it was decided to focus attention on the naturally available sources of light: the doorways, the gaps under the eaves, and the fires within the buildings.

These will be the main sources of light available to visitor once inside the roundhouses, however, they will not provide adequate light to all parts of the houses, and will be insufficient for visitors with sight impairments. Therefore, the houses will also be equipped with concealed electric lighting behind the wall plate, thereby enhancing the light levels provided by the gaps in the eaves while preventing visitors from seeing the light source.

The facilitator will therefore have the option to raise or lower the light levels in the houses according to the needs of visitors. So far, this article has focused on the practical issues affecting the development of the Iron Age farmstead, not least because this is an area that is little explored in most articles which deal with roundhouse reconstructions.

Indeed, the practicalities involved in catering for visitors are sometimes presented as a negative, leading as they do to deviation from an archaeological ideal Harding I hope therefore that the discussion above has helped to illustrate why such compromises are made, particularly at venues which receive a high volume of visitors.

A roundhouse which can't be opened for reasons of fire safety, can't be entered because of poor access routes, and can't be seen because the interior is too dark will not teach many visitors about the Iron Age; whereas the compromises we have made are all ones which can be explained to the public while they are sat enjoying the ambience inside the houses. This raises the question of what we are reconstructing at St Fagans. Is it Bryn Eryr itself? Clearly not, given the compromises noted above, and the availability of other solutions to the design problems posed by the archaeological evidence.

In an ideal world we would therefore present our roundhouses to the public as an "Iron Age farmstead, based on Bryn Eryr, Anglesey" rather than simply "Bryn Eryr". However the name of the structures proved to be a very contentious point among staff at St Fagans.

Almost all of the buildings in the museum are known by a site name, for example "Nantwallter cottage", "Llainfadyn cottage", "Cilewent farmhouse", and it was felt that to deviate from this pattern would be to devalue the work of the many who were involved in the building work — their hands had been engaged in the building of a specific space, not a theoretical construct. A further question exists as to how much these structures can be regarded as experimental. From the outset, Peter Reynolds distinguished the educational structures that made up the old Celtic Village from the experimental structures which he maintained at Butser, observing the impossibility of running one structure for both ends.

The new Iron Age farmstead is also decisively an educational resource. The roundhouses explore themes not previously addressed on a large scale—such as clay-walled building—but they have not been designed explicitly as an experiment in a strictly scientific sense.

Instead, we hope that they will become a venue and a backdrop for experiments, thereby helping the public to understand how archaeological knowledge is obtained, while also encouraging the skills with which visitors can critique the reconstructed buildings themselves.

The success of the Iron Age farmstead as a teaching resource, both for schools and the general public, will depend to a great extent on the richness of the narrative that is generated around each aspect of the site. The grounding of the site in the archaeology of Bryn Eryr provides one example of this, allowing staff to introduce a specific Iron Age site and explain how it has influenced our design.

The story of the clay walls is another example, introducing visitors to a building technique which is now unfamiliar but was once widespread. Even light levels and water flow will be the subject of discussion with visitors, encouraging conversations which will, no doubt, range across modern issues of sustainability and accessibility as often as they do through life in the Iron Age past.

Two additional areas in which we have invested considerable efforts to deepen the narrative of the site are; the thatching of the roofs and the fit-out of the interior both ongoing at the time of writing.

The materials and methods used to thatch roundhouses in the Iron Age is a subject which has not received a great deal of attention when compared to the literature available on the nature of walls and roof timbers. This is perhaps not surprising given that, in many cases, the form of roundhouse walls can be extrapolated from archaeological evidence, and roof structures can be approximated using engineering principles, whereas these two sources of information rarely offer guidance as to the choice of roof covering.

As a result several roundhouses—including examples in the old Celtic Village—have been roofed with triticale which is a 19th-century hybrid of wheat and rye and was not available in the Iron Age. In building the new Iron Age farmstead, we wanted the thatching material and method to be a key part of the interpretation. Looking back at the original evidence from Bryn Eryr it is clear that the owners of the original site grew, or had access to, spelt, as grain was found during wet sieving of archaeobotanical samples.

Working with the advice and support of John Letts, an expert in historic thatch, it was determined that spelt grew tall enough to have been used as a thatching material unlike many modern varieties of wheat which have short stems that reduce the chance of them being damaged by high winds and poor weather. An estimate was made of the surface area of the roofs in the Iron Age farmstead and this was converted into a volume of crop and the area needed to grow that crop: 3.

St Fagans is fortunate in having access to extensive farmland around the perimeter of the museum, so it was decided to plant enough spelt to thatch the houses. This project involved many uncertainties. Would spelt seed grow well in the soils at St Fagans? Would the crop survive the predation of rabbits, storm damage, weed infestation and disease?

Would the museum have the technical know-how to grow a crop of sufficient quality for thatching? Would the museum have the resources to harvest such a large volume of material?