The Utilitarian-Household Enlargements of the Nobiliary Residences from the Romanian Countries (14th-16th centuries)

Abstract

The paper tries to reconstruct, from a functional and constructive point of view, the structure of the utilitarian–household enlargements found in the ensemble of the Romanian nobiliary residences. Studied from an analytic perspective, this type of constructions proved to be very diverse from a functional point of view. It contains kitchens, stables, storage places, houses for the personnel and different industrial installations. In the majority of cases, the information on these enlargements comes from written sources, which very rarely insist on the constructive details. The archaeological researches can provide us with much more information, but the number of sites which offered significant data in this sense is yet rather limited. Nevertheless, the few cases investigated so far have allowed the author to outline a few constructive features for each of the utilitarian-household enlargements.