Ancient Greek Housing

The next Aristeia terrain project shall be a small number of houses. I'm planning for about three buildings of slightly different but relatively similar designs and sizes. From my readings Ancient Greek houses were based around a courtyard or central area. This may be colonnaded or not. In Athens houses seemed to vary somewhat in size and style. This is in contrast to Orynthos where far more regular.

I am, however, envisaging a more rural settlement as opposed to a polis like structure. However such houses still seem to follow the same basic designs as those of their urban counterparts. For this the excavated buildings excavated at Dema and Vari will serve as the inspiration. The image below shows the colonnaded courtyard style prevalent through much of Ancient Greece.

Plans of the Dema (top) and Vari (bottom) houses.(Pettegrew, 2001; 193)

 Other types did exist in addition to this peristyle type, such as the prostas, pastas and herdraum (see below for reconstructed plans of these types). However I feel the larger colonnaded areas, while harder to create, give a greater classical or ancient feel to the buildings. If the porch areas in the courtyards proves too difficult to create satisfactorily then it can be easily left off without losing too much in terms of authenticity. 

                 A prostas house (Nevett, 1999: 23)

Stairwells seem to have been on a minority of Ancient Greek houses so one can assume that second stories too would have been rather limited (there are houses without stairs that have second stories, notably some neolithic sites in turkey but I do not think that is at all useful for the Greek world). To this end there shall only be one of the three buildings with a limited second storey i.e. it shall not cover all the roofed areas, merely a portion of it. 

A pastas house. (Nevett, 1999; 24)

This brings up the rather interesting way in making all three of the buildings unique. One, as previously stated, shall have a second storey. The simplest way to differentiate the other two would be by size; to have one smaller than the other. This also allows for the buildings to be suited to different size tables. As seen from the diagrams the buildings are relatively large. Having all three on a normal 3'x3'/4'x4' board would be far too much. The houses all being different sizes allows for a 'mix and match' aspect better suited to creating varying wargames tables depending on what other terrain is available or being used.

A herdraum house (Nevett, 1999; 25)

While discussing the size of the houses it is doubtful that I shall design to scale with their ancient counterparts. This would be because they would be rather awkward to store three buildings with bases in the region of 1' square (especially with all the hills and rocks, as well as the temple).

Hopefully in the next few days I can create some plans for my proposed creations as well ideas for other terrain pieces and some more mythological figure, notably centaurs and satyrs.




Bibliography

Nevett, L, 1999; House and Society in the Ancient Greek World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Pettegrew, D K, 2001; Chasing the  Classical Farmstead: Assessing the Formation and Signature of Rural Settlement in Greek Landscape Archaeology, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, Volume 14, Issue 2, 189-209