Building an Anglo-Saxon Pit House with Hand Tools - Part I | Medieval Primitive Bushcraft Shelter

Anglo-Saxon settlers built Early Medieval pit houses with primitive tools, digging foundations, raising earth and wattle walls and thatched or shingle roofs. After gaining victory over the Britons at the Battle of Peonnum in 658 A.D. the Gewissæ pushed south west towards the River Parrett. While the tribal elites fought for power and territorial control Anglo-Saxon freemen settled unclaimed land amongst their Romano-British cousins. The first structures built were pit houses, used first as military outposts and dwellings and then as workshops and storehouses once settlements grew and timber longhouses were erected. Anglo-Saxon pit houses are often found with the remains of loom weights, pottery or metal-working crafts, and are therefore interpreted as craft-related buildings or store houses subsidiary to larger post-built dwellings. Pit houses or sunken featured buildings are the most common structures found in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval archaeological remains.