Stilt House

In the Neolithic and Bronze Age, stilt-houses settlements were common in the Alpine and Pianura Padana (Terramare) region. Remains have been found at the Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia and at the Mondsee and Attersee lakes in Upper Austria, for example. Early archaeologists like Ferdinand Keller thought they formed artificial islands, much like the Scottish Crannogs, but today it is clear that the majority of settlements were located on the shores of lakes and were only inundated later on. Reconstructed stilt houses are shown in open air museums in Unteruhldingen and Zürich (Pfahlbauland). In June 2011, the prehistoric pile dwellings in six Alpine states were designated as the UNESCO World Heritage Site. A single Scandinavian pile dwelling, the Alvastra stilt houses, has been excavated in Sweden.[citation needed]
According to archeological evidences stilt-houses settlements were an architectural norm in the Caroline Islands and Micronesia and are still present in Oceania today. Today, stilt houses are still common in parts of the Mosquito Coast in northeastern Nicaragua, northern Brazil, South East Asia, Papua New Guinea and West Africa. In the Alps, similar buildings, known as raccards, are still in use as granaries. In England, granaries are placed on staddlestones, similar to stilts, to prevent mice and rats getting to the grain. Stilted graneries are also a common feature in West Africa, e.g., in the Malinke language regions of Mali and Guinea.



SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org