The shape of roofing at hunters’ huts on Spitsbergen

Materials on the huts on Spitsbergen collected during the excavations helped recreate a life-sized model of a Pomor house in the village of Barentsburg. However, poor preservation conditions of the upper parts of the houses at Pomor temporary dwelling places as well as written evidence and drawings made by researchers in the 18th-19th centuries do not allow us to consider this reconstruction reliable. On the contrary, a set of sources (written, archaeological, and graphical) demonstrates that the roofs of the hunters’ houses on the archipelago were flat or slightly inclined while the model of the house with a gable roof in Barentsburg is a copy of mainland houses in Pomorye.