Celtic Buildings

I've been working on a set of Celtic building symbols so thought I'd post the first few here to see what anyone thought. These are mostly pretty basic ones. The intent is also to do partially-built buildings, burned out buildings/ruins, circular stone building foundations, as well as supporting Celtic symbols such as cairns, barrows, henges, Celtic idols, and a few fills to go along with it such as moors, heather fields, emerald green grass, etc.

So before I go any further I want to test the waters to gauge the interest.
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Comments

  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    Looks Good!! Only addition I would do it to add chimney holes so that the smoke from the fires below to escape up thru the roof. And perhaps on the large circular structure on the lower right, make the wooden columns a smidge bigger so they are more apparent.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Brilliant idea, Scott - and well drawn :)

    I think if these are ancient Celts then there would be a simple hole in the roof at the centre where the poles that form the structure meet. Variations on this theme include a fractionally raised 'cap', where the smoke escapes from a circular vent around a very small top section of the circular tip of the roof.
  • These would be quite useful for a game I'm running right now. (And Looypsue's right on the "chimney," it'd normally just be a hole in the roof at the highest point.)
  • Reconstructive archaeology strongly suggests Celtic roundhouses would NOT have had smokeholes or chimneys in their roofs, because this encourages cold air to flow in from the outside, meaning the fire fails to heat the interior properly. The smoke will make its way out through the thatch without affecting the interior much (the centre of the roof is remarkably high compared with modern building ceilings, for instance). Plus it could have allowed the smoking - so preservation - of meats by hanging them from the higher rafters indoors.

    A couple of fairly straightforward websites with handy images of modern reconstructed roundhouses, more or less randomly plucked from the top of a quick search online are here and here.

    Looking good though Scott, if maybe a bit too neat and uniform. Will you be adding the characteristic drainage gully, also known as a drip-trench, for the ground surface around the roof edges?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    No wonder they had such very short lives...
  • Wonder if they got respiratory diseases (though the carcinogens would have been MUCH lower than tobacco products). And the reconstructions I went to in Ireland last year had no smoke hole, for the very reasons Wyvern mentioned.
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    Thanks, Wyvern. That's pretty much what I found out in my research, too -- no chimneys or smoke holes. The smoke just seeped through the top of the thatch.
  • pvernonpvernon Betatester 🖼️ 34 images Traveler
    Nob question, would that cause a discoloration in the top thatch over time? By the way these are wonderful you should continue the project!
  • Posted By: pvernonBy the way these are wonderful you should continue the project!
    I'd love to see a new map style in an annual.
  • An Iron Age annual. These buildings are just great, Scott.
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    Thanks, everyone. If there's interest I will continue. An Iron Age annual might be interesting, but that's up to the PF folks. I hope at some point to do a medieval village (blacksmith, mill, carriage house, potter, guard posts, etc.), too, as well as a few "other" style structures (yurts, teepees... etc.).
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    There's a detailed section in the Tome explaining how to set them up with _MAP files and all the frills ;)

    I have an Excel file with every angle noted down with its equivalent red and blue quantities if you want me to email it to you?
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    Sure, Sue, that would be great. Building the templates and figuring each angle for the fill and then each angle for shadowing (directional and height) took a bit of work. Although now I have that and can use it in other circular buildings!

    I do think I am going to go and rework some of these and "rough them up" a bit. They look too perfect. Also trying to figure out a better way to do the large round building with the deck so that it is more apparent that that is a raised deck around it. I'm thinking of saving them as two separate symbols so they would produce two separate shadows. That would help.

    Was going to add smoke to some of the buildings, but again, I think I'll save that as separate symbols so smoke can be added as needed, and in the direction wanted instead of being a part of the building symbol and stuck going in one direction...
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    I'll send you the file ;)

    You could add clumps of moss or threadbare sections to the roofs? People can add things like doves from the CSUAC collection.

    Roof repair sections? Newer cleaner looking 'patches' of thatch to paste on the rooftops?

    You could split that building, or you could do it the way the CD3 Bitmap A thatch buildings are done, and add a dark glow like a vague shadow effect, and let the human eye-brain interpretation do the rest of the hard work. Combining shadows on separate sheets never really works either. Where they overlap they go twice as dark as they should be.

    I think there are already smoke symbols around. I've seen smoke symbols in one of ahawk's maps just recently, so they do exist. There's nothing stopping you making your own, though. In fact - the more variety the better ;)
  • Loopysue commented:No wonder they had such very short lives...
    And Quenten followed-up with:Wonder if they got respiratory diseases (though the carcinogens would have been MUCH lower than tobacco products).
    Yeah; not sure the minor amount of smoke in a house would really constitute much of a problem, compared to, y'know, warfare, disease, famine, accidents, etc., all so popular in the European Iron Age ;)

    Back closer to topic. Thatch discoloration would be possible, especially on poorly-maintained structures, due to things like moss, lichen and algae (though the smoke would discourage things like this, and destructive activity by insects and birds, so the top might be relatively "cleaner" than other parts of the roof). Repairs, while possible, would likely be only to minor areas, because the nature of thatched roofs tends to mean it's better to replace the whole thing in one go than try to keep patching it up.

    It would certainly be good to have more options for buildings other than medieval tiled forms; next up some Anglo-Saxon-style great halls, perhaps? :D
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    Posted By: WyvernIt would certainly be good to have more options for buildings other than medieval tiled forms; next up some Anglo-Saxon-style great halls, perhaps? :D
    Well, I suppose they are the next logical progression from Celtic thatch roundhouses...
  • When I was doing research on this subject, I saw a lot of buildings with sod on the roofs. Has anyone else seen this?
  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    In the American midwest on the plains, during the 19th century, when there was limited construction materials, quite a few sod houses were built. Not just the roof, but the walls were made from the thick prairie grass sod, which was very effective as an insulating material which was quite necessary on the cold wind-swept plains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_house
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    The Iron age went on for a fair amount of time - several centuries, and started and ended at different times on different continents. It lasted right up to the Roman invasion in the UK, but I think it might have ended before that in Europe. During that time there were as many developmental advances as we've seen in more recent times - pottery, weapons, farming implements - all kinds of social evolutions and new religions. Building styles also evolved - long houses, and more complicated structures appeared.

    Building materials seem to have depended largely on what was available in the local area, and yes, I've seen images of roundhouses built entirely of sods - walls as well.

    One website I visited claimed that a roundhouse was only ever intended to last for 30-40 years and then demolished. For some reason thatched roofing was usually burnt at this point, and the land ploughed back to farmland instead of being built on again. Maybe that had something to do with the average lifespan (35-40 years) and some superstition about spirits? Who knows. Any reusable poles and wooden supports were recycled into new buildings though, so they were at least partially practical about the whole thing ;)

    I think the sod roundhouses I saw in passing were usually built in places like the Russian Steppe (the Ukraine) where there simply wasn't enough of anything else to build lots of small settlements.

    Fire was a very common end to a roundhouse (er... no surprise there with cinders floating up into the thatch I'd say!), and its from these burnt down roundhouses that most of the archaeological evidence has been gleaned. Maybe roofing with sods was just safer?

    Sods are used as roofing even today in the far northern islands of Scotland, where people sometimes choose to follow the ancient (virtually stone age) practice of 'crofting'. Its a sort of self sufficiency farming system.
  • Sorry, I've been away again... my laptop got fried and I had to replace it... just got a new one yesterday.

    Scott, these look great so far! And I love the idea of another set of building designs!

    A couple of small things stand out for me - and these are only suggestions, so you can take them or leave them.

    The thatched roofs...they look a little too uniform... maybe add another color variation/striation to them? and not so neat around the edges?

    Also, if you are using these for cc3+, remove the shadows so that people can use the global shadow direction more effectively. Also...maybe make a 'snow covered' option for the roofs? It gets cold up there! lol

    just my 2 cents worth.
  • Some houses, like Viking Long hOuses and others, roofs resembled the bottom of a boat. Like the boat had been turned upside down and the people lived under it.

    Hide and wood long houses in the US were used by Native Americans in the eastern woodlands, particularly the north east. Lower latitudes, the long houses had sides that could be rolled up to provide air flow.

    Not sure how to represent some of that in an overhead view.
  • JimP mentioned that:Some houses, like Viking Long hOuses and others, roofs resembled the bottom of a boat. Like the boat had been turned upside down and the people lived under it.
    Not just Vikings, Jim, although the practice may have derived from them, or merely from practical necessity (lack of other materials), as I well recall the upturned boats reused as sheds from visits to Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast in NE England back to when I was still very young. Not quite houses, but they are still there - though until checking now, I'd never really thought of them as being quite so interesting or unique in Britain as some online commentators have suggested!

    This page has a few photos and some description, for instance, though this one has rather more, and better photos, but also a lot of irritating adverts.

    A Google Maps check for "Lindisfarne" will provide you with an overhead view of the boat sheds. Zoom-in on the south side of the main square mass of the island, looking for the harbour bay, midway between the labels for "Lindisfarne Priory" and "Lindisfarne Castle". You'll find the sheds along the the grassy strip just inland from the shore on the east-facing western side of the harbour bay. Can't miss 'em; they're the things that look like half an upturned boat - because that's what they are!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    @Storm - I think the shading is down to the fact that Scott has already created map files for his buildings ;)
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    Posted By: LadieStormSorry, I've been away again... my laptop got fried and I had to replace it... just got a new one yesterday.

    Scott, these look great so far! And I love the idea of another set of building designs!

    A couple of small things stand out for me - and these are only suggestions, so you can take them or leave them.

    The thatched roofs...they look a little too uniform... maybe add another color variation/striation to them? and not so neat around the edges?

    Also, if you are using these for cc3+, remove the shadows so that people can use the global shadow direction more effectively. Also...maybe make a 'snow covered' option for the roofs? It gets cold up there! lol

    just my 2 cents worth.
    Thanks! The shadow isn't actually on the symbols -- I took a screen cap of them in CC3+ and forgot to turn the shadow effect off first. These are just prototypes, anyway. I've since started re-drawing everything. I'm using a different thatch and am making the buildings a little more primitive, less smooth and perfect-shaped. There have been some great suggestions here and I have found a few more details in my own research. I just wanted to see if there was enough interest in this for me to actually take on the project.

    And welcome back, BTW. Sorry to hear about your computer mishap. I still work off my desktop, so I'm safe from such disasters... I have two cats of my own, so I know how they can inadvertently cause havoc! The one used to like to sleep on top of my computer tower and the other likes to stand on my desk in right front of my monitor... Sigh... But I love them, my little muses!
  • Posted By: Wyvern
    JimP mentioned that:Some houses, like Viking Long hOuses and others, roofs resembled the bottom of a boat. Like the boat had been turned upside down and the people lived under it.
    Not just Vikings, Jim, although the practice may have derived from them, or merely from practical necessity (lack of other materials), as I well recall the upturned boats reused as sheds from visits to Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast in NE England back to when I was still very young. Not quite houses, but they are still there - though until checking now, I'd never really thought of them as being quite so interesting or unique in Britain as some online commentators have suggested!
    Understood. My amateur history info is more 20th century and part of the Roman Empire. Most of my other history books are about informaiton scattered across the millenia. Now, if I could just win the lotto, got to buy a ticket first, I could build up a reference library of history books.
  • 1 month later
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    Okay, I know its been a long while, but back to this one...

    I'm putting the finishing touches on about a dozen Celtic thatch buildings, hand-drawn so they aren't so perfectly round. Next step is the color coding for shading, which is no big deal (just rather tedious on a round shape!). My issue right now is scale. I know there's been a lot of talk recently about scale, and I looked through older threads and read the Tome and I didn't find the answer to my question. And that is, what size and how do I scale the buildings? I'm using GIMP to edit them. My first attempt at scale produced teeny tiny nearly invisible symbols, as compared to houses from another CD3 catalog. I had to increase their size by about 10x to equal that of a CD3 house symbol at normal scale (1) on the map.

    So what size and what input (pxs, etc) do I use in proper scaling so they are equivalent to existing CC3+ buildings?

    As always, thanks so much...
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    edited May 2018
    CD3 symbols are 40pixels/foot, so for example, a 10' by 10' cottage should be 400 by 400 pixels.

    You can use a different value though, just make sure to tell CC3+ this when you import the png's (the 'Highest resolution' value)
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