Books about dark age buildings?

[beefcake]

I'm after some books about construction/buildings in the dark ages. I'm looking for one with lots of pictures of what they were like. Any suggestions?

[bluewillow]

The time team books are good, alternate is to watch the shows then screenshot, lots of archeological books too, plus museum books.

Cheers
Matt

[Christian]

A couple of questions: what kind of buildings? And which part of the world are you going to play in?

I’ve got a number of resources I’d be happy to share, and love doing some detective work to find out more... but “Dark Ages” isn’t very specific

[beefcake]

Lol, you're completely correct, not specific at all I'm not overly picky to be honest I just like designing based off source material for my 3d printing business and dark ages struck an interest, If I were to narrow it down I'd be after dark age england or Germanic.

[beefcake]

The time team books are good, alternate is to watch the shows then screenshot, lots of archeological books too, plus museum books.

Cheers
Matt

Thanks Matt, I'll check those out. Nit a fan of screenshotting, I like to have a physical book that I can annotate, add markers to etc.

[Christian]

If I were to narrow it down I'd be after dark age england or Germanic.

Well, fortunately there's lots of information on the Late Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods in England. I imagine you'll want photos and illustrations, so here's a few off the top of my head.

If you want to go that early, H.H. Scullard's Roman Britain: Outpost of the Empire has some nice illustrations of Roman villas.

Another cheap book, but with a broad time frame, is Picturing the Past: Through the Eyes of Reconstruction Artists by Brian Davison. It has lots of good pictures.

Reconstructed archaeological sites are a good source, and you have a lot to choose from in England. After a quick search West Stow and Jarrow Hall seem to popular ones and have their own websites. There's even a 3D rendering of a West Stow house here: http://blogs.carleton.edu/anglo-saxon-material-culture/2016/03/10/anglo-saxon-grubenhaus-reconstruction/

These sites & museums typically put out publications.

What you're looking at generally is a use of timber which seems to have been characteristic of Anglos-Saxon buildings following the their advent in Britain. A type of building with a sunken floor, grubenhäuser, becomes characteristic. You see a lot of these in the stereotypical "dark age" offerings from different miniature companies. This design was introduced to Britain from the European continent, and there are also some interesting sites like the Hitzacker open-air museum in Germany: https://www.archaeo-zentrum.de/index-uk.html

But not every building across Western Europe after the 4-5thC looked like this. Some really interesting sites are the castros of north-west Spain/Portugal... like the Castro de Monte Mozinho. This was built around the first century B.C. and was inhabited sporadically until the Middle Ages.

If you're not overly picky this should give you an overall idea, there's a lot more detail one could go into if you really wanted to.

[bluewillow]

Our local museum has a few models and a book, particularly focused on our city in the 8th-9th century when our stone Carolingian fortress was built. I will get some better close up pics of the models when it re-opens in a couple of weeks.

Cheers
Matt

[beefcake]

Thanks 
Dont put yourself out though.