ELP, PARISH OF WESTERBORK, THE NETHERLANDS
After Haarnagel's excavation at Jemgum (figs. 313-314), it
was generally believed that the aisled hall had been
traced back to the period of its earliest appearance (seventhfifth
centuries B.C.). However, a Bronze Age settlement in
Elp (parish of Westerbork, province Drenthe, Holland)
excavated in 1960-62 by H. T. Waterbolk[147]
disclosed that
the aisled long houses of the Ezinge-Feddersen-Wierde
type were in use as early as 1250 B.C. The excavation brought
to light the ground plan of some thirty houses of different
types belonging to a farmstead composed of a main building
and about four subsidiary buildings, all of which were rebuilt
on various occasions during a period of occupation
that lasted from roughly 1250 to roughly 850 B.C. The main
houses vary in length between 82 feet (25 m.) and 135 feet
(41 m.). They are internally divided into two equal parts.
In one half, which was used for living, the posts are
widely spaced. In the other half, which served as stables,
the interstices between the posts are smaller. Some of them
are not sunk into the ground as deeply as the principal
posts and therefore, probably, served as mainstays for stall
partitions. I show as a typical example the ground plan of
house 9 (fig. 323), which illustrates this point particularly.
A similar distinction of the post interstices between living
quarters and the stall sections of the house could be observed
in Feddersen-Wierde (figs. 315-316), in Hodorf
(fig. 307), in two Iron Age houses excavated in 1954 by
P. J. R. Modderman near Deventer (Oberijssel), Holland,[148]
and—although not quite as markedly—in Fochteloo (fig.
304). As in the later Iron Age houses, so in Elp, the narrow
ends of the house were rounded, which suggests that the
ends of the roof were hipped. The houses appear to have
been entered broadside through a passage way that separated
the living quarters from the section that was occupied
by animals—another feature that was to become a characteristic
trait of the later house tradition. Waterbolk had
reason to believe that the house type of Elp already existed
several centuries before the settlement of Elp was founded;
and before the manuscript of his preliminary report on Elp
was finished, he received the news that J. D. van der Waals
had come across a Bronze Age site with an aisled house
118 feet (36 m.) long at Angeloo (Emmen). It had many
features in common with the Elp houses, and, to judge from
its pottery, appeared to be older than the Elp settlement.[149]
The Elp settlement was occupied by an autochthonous
Bronze Age population of Holland,[150]
which may or may not
be proto-Germanic. The later Iron Age sites of northwest
Germany and Holland were in the territory of the Frisii,
the Chauci, and the Saxons.[151]
The homeland of the Saxons
was east of the river Elbe at the bottom of the Danish
peninsula. Their westward move into the territory of the
Frisians, around 300 A.D., seems to have led to the destruction
of the settlement of Ezinge. Toward the middle of the
fifth century, in several successive waves, they moved
across the channel into England.
