Not many prehistoric houses survive above their foundations. The three dimensions of the buildings are collapsed (sometimes literally) into the two dimensions of the site plan. That may be all that can be discovered by archaeology, and yet the missing component could have been all-important. The change of perspective is revealing, for the treatment of the walls and roof may be just as significant as the layout of the floor. Few excavated houses are as well preserved as those in the Near East, and there are many parts of Europe in which the question cannot be investigated directly. Here, the existence of ceramic models suggests an alternative approach. During 2010, two exhibitions featuring the arts of the first farmers took place in Britain. They ran simultaneously, one in Oxford and the other in Norwich. They also complemented one another geographically and thematically. The Lost World of Old Europe was organized by The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University (Anthony 2010), and Unearthed by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts of the University of East Anglia (Bailey et al 2010). The display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford featured artefacts from Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria, whilst that in Norwich was restricted to finds of figurines from Romania, Albania, and Macedonia, although they were compared with others from the Jomon Culture of Japan. Not surprisingly, the Neolithic and Chalcolithic objects spanned a long period of time and were associated with several regional groups. Some were elaborately decorated, while others were entirely plain. The artefacts shown in Norwich were all depictions of the human form, but those in Oxford also included pottery vessels, stone artefacts, and early metalwork. One small group of objects was especially striking, for it consisted of ceramic models of domestic buildings. In one case, from the Cucuteni Culture of Romania, a group of figurines had been discovered inside a miniature house of this kind. The evidence of such models is revealing. There were examples in which the outer wall was highlighted by angular designs, as if to emphasize the rectilinear outline of the building, but there was also a model in the Oxford exhibition which showed a structure with a similar ground plan whose exterior was covered by curvilinear motifs.
610 PB 258 EVALUATION OF NEW APPLE CULTIVARS
