Earthhouse, a name given to peculiar underground dwellings found in northern Scotland and in Ireland. They are thought to have been the dwellings of the Picts. They are constructed, usually, of loose stone walls built upward and brought together until the top could be covered with large slabs. They were then covered with mounds of earth. As many as forty or fifty of these strange dwellings are found in a single group or village. The simplest dwellings, from four to ten feet in width, perhaps sixty feet in length, and deep enough to permit standing upright, have but one room; others, more pretentious, have a number of chambers. Naturally enough, they were constructed in dry ground. They were entered by a small hole in the top. Stone handmills, ashes, bones, deer's horns, round plates of stone and slate, earthenware cups, bronze swords, and gold rings have been found in these underground houses. It is thought that they may have served rather as places of concealment in time of danger than as regular dwellings. In some cases these underground villages are found beneath tilled land, where the plow has been passing above them for centuries.