ngs, lived in huts on top of hills or
other high places and fortified by circular or contour earth
ditches and banks behind which they could gather for protection.
They were probably dug with antler picks and wood spades. The
people lived in rectangular huts with four wood posts supporting a
roof. The walls were made of saplings, and a mixture of mud and
straw. Cooking was in a clay oven inside or over an open fire on
the outside. Water was carried in animal skins or leather pouches
from springs lower on the hill up to the settlement. Forests
abounded with wolves, bears, deer, wild boars, and wild cattle.
They could more easily be seen from the hill tops. Pathways
extended through this camp of huts and for many miles beyond.

For wives, men married women of their clan or bought or captured
other women, perhaps with the help of a best man. They carried
their unwilling wives over the thresholds of their huts, which
were sometimes in places kept secret from her family. The first
month of marriage was called the honeymoon because the couple was
given mead, a drink with fermented honey and herbs, for the first
month of their marriage. A wife wore a gold wedding band on the
ring finger of her left hand to show that she was married.

Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing meals,
and making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and wove
wool into a coarse cloth. Flax was grown and woven into a coarse
linen cloth. Spinning the strands into one continuous thread was
done on a stick, which the woman could carry about and spin at
anytime when her hands were free. The weaving was done on an
upright or warp-weighted loom. People of means draped the cloth
around their bodies and fastened it with a metal brooch inlayed
with gold, gems, and shell, which were glued on with glue that was
obtained from melting animal hooves. People drank from hollowed-
out animal horns, which they could carry from belts. They could
tie things with rawhide strips or rope braids they made. Kings
drank from animal horns decorated with gold or from cups of amber,
shale, or pure gold. Men and women wore pendants and necklaces of
colorful stones, shells, amber beads, bones, and deer teeth. They
skinned and cut animals with hand-axes and knives made of flint
dug up from pits and formed by hitting flakes off. The speared
fish with barbed bone prongs or wrapped bait around a flint, bone,
or shell fish hook. On the coast, they made bone