The BBC today ran an interview with an exterminator in Devon about the
termites who recently have invaded the south of Britain. This underlines
the fact that British settlers in the seventeenth-century Tidewater were
not aware of the most imminent hazard to their earthfast houses.
 
May I suggest that ignorance of termites may have been a significant factor
in the selection of this building method? Similar earthfast structures were
common in the English tradition, and there was no reason for the settlers
to believe that they couldn't keep doing as they had before.
 
Farther to the north in Europe, traditional structures were frequently
covered with turf, which would have spelled "lunch" for termites in the
Chesapeake latitudes. Was the turf house also transferred? Is there
archaeological evidence?
 
We see references to "caves,"  probably turf houses, that were dug by early
settlers for their first winter's housing. Were these "caves" another
transplanted European housing type (turf houses) that would have been well
known to the Swedes and Finns who first settled the hinterland along the
Delaware?
 
 
    _____
___(_____)                 Change-ringing is to music as
|Baby the\                 Ted Kocszynski is to terrorism
|1969 Land\_===__
|  ___Rover   ___|o        (You have 18 years to figure that out.)
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Ned Heite Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html