g. for preparing skins. Their uncombed hair was held by
thistlethorns, animal spines, or straight bone hair pins. They
wore conical hats of bound rush and lived in rush shelters.
Early clans, headed by kings, 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.
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