Talk:Longhouse

American-centricity

I believe this artical iz too focused around an American audience. ROWians (Rest-of-the-World-ians) think Vikings when they think of longhouses. I don't think your average (or even above average) ROWian would even be aware that American indians or Borneoeians (WTF?:P) lived in longhouses, but more huts and tents. Perhaps someone could go through and fix up the POV angle here to universalise it? 211.30.80.121 05:59, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

The picture is of a plank house, not a long house.

D Living in Alaska and having studied the art of the Northwest (as in northwest coast of North America) Coast Native People, I can say without question, that the picture is of a traditional longhouse. Perhaps it is called a "plank house" in otherparts of the world. To say that "ROWians .....think Vikings when they think of longhouses", might be a bit presumptuous. I know people along the northwest coast of North America think first of the longhouses of the indigenous people of this area. Since I live in "little Norway" of Alaska and this town was founded by Norwegians, I will ask some of the elders from Norway to tell me of the longhouses of Vikings. Thanks for opening my eyes to another similarity between Vikings and native people of Alaska.66.223.181.96 14:48, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Longhouse describes the layout or plan of the building, not what material it is build of. Plankhouse describes the material the walls are made of and gives a clue to how the walls are constructed. Likewise a log house could be of saddlebag, garrison-house or any modern design. Both, longhouse and plankhouse, can be considered correct as both describe different aspects of the house. As far as I know both are used to describe some of the traditional houses of the northwest coast of Amerika. I don't know wether there are boat houses or houses for other uses in the building traditions of these regions but I can imagine there exist other house types build with the plankhouse method but that do not share the longhouse layout - these could thus be called plankhouses but not longhouses. Building the walls out of vertikal pieces of wood has indeed a long tradition in central and northern Europe. Some of the last still existing examples of this building technic are the stave churches of Norway. --T.woelk 18:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Uhhh... ROWians of French origins think longères when speaking of longhouses. What's the point of this article anyway? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.85.173.114 (talk) 02:54, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Classification in the "WikiProject Indonesia" while the article covers all kinds of long houses around the world??? Ethnocentricity anybody?

photo?

What is the photo of the wooden house and figure of naked humans? How is this photo relevant to longhouses?Mumun 20:10, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Long house and Big house

I'm working on articles related to Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and reading a lot about the bighouses/longhouses of Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish cultures. Would there be any major opposition to Long house (Pacific Northwest) being created for a more detail article of those longhouses. With regards to northern coastal people, the English colloquial term used is big house, so I'm not exactly sure still. Maybe Longhouse (Coast Salish), and Big house (Pacific Northwest Coast). Thoughts? OldManRivers (talk) 06:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I've been working for some time now on the articles and related articles that cover the architectural structures called in many languages "long"+"house". Once this descriptive name was established it has been applied to many types of buildings in many different cultures. As shown on the long house page most of these are not related to another. I even assume that some of these names have been "invented" without the knowledge that others have come up with the same name for something hardly comparable. An Iban native to the island of Borneo may be quite surprised when wanting to look up his traditionall form of living, namely a longhouse (the native term rumah panjai translates to the same), to see that there are also longhouses in europe (aka langhus, longere, Langhaus and more) or in the Americas. With the plural Americas I mean the whole continent of North America including the countries of Canada, the USA, Mexico and who ever else feels to be a sovereign nation of his own, and the continent of South America. Being interested in architecture and the history of building I would rather keep the single "long house" article that describes and compares all the long houses that occur all over the world. If somebody volunteers to write an article about a specific house type I would absolutely be thrilled as I personally think there still is a lot to be done. Yet I would very much like to keep the central "long house" article with a brief description of each type and some words on the differences and with links to individual articles. If there is not enough content though I would rather suggest one article for the Americas including the Northwest the Northeast and the Tucano people. Of course If there is more content the subject may be broken down to more articles. The trouble though is the more articles there are the more redundant information we get and the unfamiliar reader may loose the big picture. I can imagine that each cultural entity of the northwest pacific coast of North America has its very own form of house with its own name but I think it would be best to use as generic terms as possible that are widely known in the english language - simply because this is an english language encyclopedia written also for the casual reader and not only for experts to the subject. I myself have heard the name "long house" used to describe buildings on the northwest coast of north america quite often and in contrast to that have heard the term "big house" here for the first time. If I would search for information I would have used the term "long house" and that is an important thing when creating articles as surely you want your subject to be found. Especially by those wanting to educate themselves on a subject they lack knowledge of. So when creating a new article please think also of people not exactly familiar with the subject and overly correct terms (of course there are always the possabilites of links and redirects). When describing the specific characteristics of things, comparing them to other things usually is an easy way to point out the charactaristics unique to them. That is one of the reasons I think an article called Long house (Pacific Northwest) suits the subject best. That is until someone asks "northwest of what in the Pacific?" Are there longhouses on the northwest islands of Hawaii? Hmm, what are the Houses of the Maoris in New Zealand called? Oh well good luck for your search of a good name ;-) --T.woelk (talk) 14:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

aaliyah vcalise wright iz adorable and cute thanx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.6.222.89 (talk) 02:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Why was it common in the tropics? What's the point of longhouse?

can somebody explain? I understand that in the temperate zone (e.g. for Vikings) this may help conserve heating fuel in winter. But what's the point of building this sort of big structure in Taiwan or Indonesia? 24.60.26.233 (talk) 21:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Except the shared feature of being long... what is there in common between these various houses? Is the concept of 'long house' meaningfull anyway? (should we start a page about red painted houses, one about two story houses and one about wood and stone houses ???) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.85.173.114 (talk) 02:52, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Longhouses

Longhouses were built from the early 1600's to the early 1800's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.49.29 (talk) 00:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't the primary title be "Longhouse"??

The two-word form looks stilted to me; unnatural. In all incarantions of this I know if, the one-word form seems most common, whether we're talking New Guinea, Nova Scotia, or the Pacific Northwest....Skookum1 (talk) 04:36, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, and since there haven't been any objections, I will move it. Owen (talk) 17:29, 19 May 2011 (UTC)