This contribution addresses the problem of defining dwellings on hunters' settlements, e.g. settlements with light surface structures.

Ethnoarchaeology has recently assembled number of analogies including complete plans of recent hunters' settlements. As the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic Steppe has no direct analogy the authors chose two cases which seem to be from both climatic and social contexts as close as possible: Studies of Inuits from the Canadian Arctic and Yamana Indians from the Tierra del Fuego Island.

In South Moravia four types of Upper Palaeolithic settlements were defined: a shallowly sunken zone with stone alignment, a surface one with mammoth-bone alignment, a shallowly sunken one without an alignment and a surface hearth also without an alignment. The analogies are circular features of comparable dimensions but their origins are different. In the first case, the circle was made of stone blocks as a stabilising part of the construction. The second circle consisted of shells and other refuse. This was the result of a long term accumulation on the periphery of the hearth. At the South Moravian sites both of these models should be considered, and separately for each archaeological situation.

The project was one of the activities of the children's group Mamuti. They chose an ideal reconstruction based on North European material, mostly grave finds. The clothing consisted of a tunic, skirt, decorative pinafore, belt, pouch, bonnet and footcloths. The project intended not to attempt to make a replica of a concrete dress but to test and use number of textile technologies which would allow the making of fully functional clothes. The execution was restricted by the environment of a children's group and so some of the bigger pieces of linen and woollen cloth had to be bought. During the project, members of the group tried weaving on a vertical loom, belt weaving, net making, dying with plant dyes and sewing.

The finished costume is on display at the Museum of Prague as a part of the "Prague in Prehistory and Early Middle Ages" exhibition.

The authors tested conditions for winter living in a reconstruction of an Iron Age Grubenhaus modelled on a find from Tuněchody near Chrudim. The model house was of a subrectangular plan, oriented East - West. It was 3.6m long and 2.7m wide. They placed the entrance into the west wall. The wattle-and-daub walls were, in correspondence with the archaeological find, 10cm thick.

The first part of the experiment took place in February 2000. The outside temperatures varied from -5°C during night up to 9°C during one of the days. On the first day there was strong west wind of 20 m/s. The temperatures were measured at hourly intervals with one thermometer measuring the outside temperature, three measuring the inside temperature at the walls and the last one measuring temperatures in the middle of the room. Over the four days when the experiment took place the experimenter used less than 1m3 of wood but it is possible to presume that in an everyday regime the fuel consumption could be lower.

This contribution describes an experiment focusing on the time demands of cloth making with special attention to spinning and weaving. Most of the time the experimenters spent on this project was devoted to mastering the technology. According to their results one person would need 50 hours to make 1m2 of cloth: 28 hours of spinning, 14 hours of thread twisting, 3 hours for preparation of warp and 5 hours weaving on a vertical loom. It is necessary to stress that although an experienced medieval weaver would easily outdo the inexperienced experimenters the cloth making was very much a time demanding activity.

Within archaeological material there are finds of remains of planks and split logs, most often in the form of their imprints. During the building of a reconstruction of a Grubenhaus from the 13 century which was found with three walls lined with planks, the experimenters in Villa Nova tested log splitting and plank making.

The technology used was based on an illumination from the 12 century. It was carried out with wooden wedges, a mallet and an axe with an arched edge. The arched edge proved to be practical as it allowed removing the axe from a groove for wedges without use of any other tools.

The log splitting with wooden wedges is, according to the experimenters' opinion, a very effective method.