We have found an interesting book called "Tents, Architecture of the nomads" dealing with nearly all nomadic peoples in the world, their tents and their way of living. From the book we have choosen just two examples - the Arabs with their black tent and the Sames/Lapps with their kata. These tent-constructions are very different - one is a tensile structure and the other is a free standing conical structure. As already mentioned the book is full of nomadic people from all over the world, with tents developed for different conditions of life - highly recommended to read! (Maybe you can find inspiration for the rebuilding of the train - the introworkshop for EASA 1997.)

If the tent-text makes you courious to know more about the Sames; read here:

TENTS
Architecture of the nomads by Torvald Faegre, 1979

The tents of the nomads provide a unique look into the origins of human shelter and its subsequent evolution. Since nomads occupy the marginal areas of the world, they have been less subject to change than many settled peoples; because of their ability to move they have remained a free people. When outside forces encroached, the nomads simply rolled up their tents and moved on. Thus did the Isralites, after years of slavery in Egypt, return to the freedom of the desert and by doing so retained their Hebrew heritage...

The Rwala Bedouins divide mankind into the settled (hazar) and the nomad (arab), and they leave no doubts as to which way of life is superior. Nomad life is a free life, settled life is slavery. The farmer who is "tied to the soil" is just that - tied. But the nomad's freedom is at a price: He is dependent on pasture for his animals, and this pasture cannot always be depended on. There have always been droughts when the pasture withers and dies and the nomad is left with nothing. The desert demands an austerity and toughness of its people...

The forms of nomadism differ widely the world over, but one condition is universally responsible for this way of life - the lack of water. Whether the land be arctic tundra, taiga forest, steppe, or desert the lands of the nomad are dry...The earliest nomadism began in the Middle East and Central Asia with the domestication of the sheep and the goat. But the early farmers who kept these flocks never took them very far from the settled areas. Without great mobility, they were confined to the fringe of the desert and the steppe. Many centuries later the domestication of pack animals wrought a profound change. It was the use of the donkey, the dromedary, the Bactrian camel, and the horse that made true nomadism possible. The herdsman could now move his flocks away from the settled regions and into the heart of the desert and the steppe...

In other areas of the world, nomadism developed from different animal complexes - the reindeer or caribou in the north, the yak in Tibet, and the bison and the horse on the American plains. These animals seem very different from one another, but they have one thing in common - they thrive in dry areas.

Although today we live in a world dominated by the settled, this was not always so. In the past there were periods when the nomads ruled their own lands as well as those of the settled. Settled wealth has always attracted nomad raiders. Their way of life made them good warriors, so periodically they swooped down and plundered these spots. The Great Wall of China was built to prevent these raids and the Pharaohs built a similar wall at Sinai.

But the settled cultures are now taking their revenge. Everywhere nomadism is on the wane. Borders are closing in on nomad migrations; nomad tribal power is being broken by central governments, and their pasture lands are being taken from them (just as was done to the American nomads of the Great Plains a hundred years ago). Nation states cannot tolerate a freely moving people who cross political borders at will, who evade taxation, and insist on their right to bear arms. Nomad life is very quickly being exterminated...

The tent and the nomad

The nomad lives not so much in his tent as in the desert, the steppe, or the tundra. The tent is important as shelter, but not in the same way as our homes and workplaces are important to us. The nomad spends a great deal of time living and working under the open sky, for herding is by nature an outside activity. Clothing is often more vital to survival than shelter...

The tent does not erect a clear boundary between inside and outside such as we are used to in our own housing. In bad weather the wind blows through the gaps of the tent cloth, rain leaks through the roof, or snow falls through the open smoke hole. But the nomad feels at home with these conditions and prefers this contact with the outdoors. Black-tent nomads are so accustomed to the feel of a flexible cloth roof over their heads that a solid roof constitutes a threat: There are many stories of how these nomads cannot at first sleep in a solid house for fear that the roof will fall and crush them. For the nomad, psychological protection - the feeling of security - is not tied to any absolute protection from the physical elements. The space within the ordinary nomad tent is not large and so must be carefully organized. This organization is always a reflection of social organization and determines where people are seated and where possessions are kept. There is always a division between the men's and women's sides of the tent. The line between the sides may be quite strict, as in Arab cultures where there is a dividing curtain and where no adult male but the husband ever enters the women's side, or the line may be loose and people of both sexes may move about freely as with the Inuit. This division of the tent also constitutes a separation of the type of work for which each sex is responsible, so the looms, churns, and utensils are kept and used on the women's side while the saddles, harnesses, and weapons are kept on the men's side. In many tribes the women have a larger space for their half since they do more work under the tent roof than the men do. One of the most important things the women do in the tent is to make more tents. It is important to remember that it is the women who are the architects in nomad societies. The men may make the wooden parts, but since wood figures so little in most tent designs, it is the women as weavers and as leather and bark workers who make and design the tent.

There is a definite order in the seating of residents and guests of the tent, always in accordance with a person's position in the social hierarchy. In tents that have a central hearth the place of honor is the warmest spot - between the fire and the back wall - while those of lesser prestige sit close to the drafty doorway. Among the Bedouin, the honored guest is seated close to the host. The dwelling places for the nomad's gods - the sacred areas - are always set in the warmest or most protected spot, close to the hearth or against the back wall.

The nomad's possessions are necessarily few since everything must be moved frequently, so each object has its exact place where it can be found the moment it is needed. Our own haphazard method of moving - with waylaid articles and mass confusion - would surely amuse the nomad. The nomad always knows where everything is, whether when on the move or when camped. All loose articles are stowed in boxes and bags. These containers are much like the tent itself - tough yet flexible. The woven bags or bent-wood boxes are as important as the tent itself: the tent shelters the nomad, the containers shelter his possessions...

Because the nomads must limit the quantity of possessions, each object is designed to fulfill as many functions as possible. This is especially true of the tent. The Netsilik lnuit turn their summer tent into a winter sled by rolling it up and pouring water on it which freezes solid. The Siberian Koryaks use their sleds to hold down the tent cover in the fierce winter winds. The Qashqai and the Plains Indians turn their tent poles into rafts to ferry themselves across the rivers they encounter on migration.

We have much to learn from the nomads about living. Our society is highly mobile, but we have adopted few of the tools that make nomadic life a pleasure. Even if we never live in a tent, there is much to be said for the nomad's way of life under the tent roof. What follows is an attempt to understand the tents of the nomad and the part it plays in their lives.

THE BLACK TENT

The black tent is the tent of the Bible, the Jews, and the Arabs, and a hundred other tribes scattered over Africa and Asia. Its mark upon these people cannot be reckoned. In the desert and the mountain, it had been their home, their temple, and sanctuary. Without this tent the people of the Middle East might never have ventured into the desert.

The birthplace of the black tent is probably somewhere near Mesopotamia. Its origin is tied to the domestication of goats and sheep, the animals that provided the material for the tent cloth and permitted the early nomads to begin their break from settled agriculture. These people were probably only seminomadic and tilled the soil part of the time. They moved their belongings on donkeys, and thus the distance they could travel was limited.

But with the domestication of the camel a final break was made. The nomad could roam the desert, find pasture for his flocks, and never again till the soil. The camel could carry greater loads than the donkey, so the tent increased in size. The black tent and the camel moved together into the new lands so that their respective territories roughly coincide today... The black tent moved out of its homeland until it had reached the Atlantic coast on one side and the eastern border of Tibet on the other. As it spread it was adapted to fit each particular environment it entered. In the mountains, where there was some rainfall the roof was steeply pitched to shed rain; in the desert it was flattened and lowered to shield its inhabitants from sun and sandstorms...

Spinning, weaving, sewing. Black-tent dwellers are weavers. They weave not only the roofs, walls, and floors of their homes, but many of the furnishings as well. The wall cloths, spindle bags, carpet bags, and the carpets are all woven in rich colors and intricate geometrical designs. The carpets alone have made the tribal names of Kurd, Bakhtiari, Baluchi, Qashqai, and many others famous the world over as the technique of knotting used on these carpets was invented by these nomads.

Yarn. The preferred fiber for almost all black tents is goat hair - only this fiber has the requisite strength and length. It is the particular tensile qualities of goat hair that gives the black tent its distinctive form. Many tents are made of pure goat hair, but often sheep or camel wool or a plant fiber are added. Pure sheep wool stretches too much under tension while camel hair is short and weak, thus a certain percentage of goat hair is always needed. The black tent obtains its "blackness" from the natural jet-black color of the goat's hair - however, many "black tents" are not black at all but are dyed other colors.

Tent cloth. The primary purposes of the black tent are: 1 ) to provide shade from the sun, 2 ) to protect from cold, wind, sand, and dust, and 3 ) to provide privacy for the occupants. The black color of the tent is functional: a black cover gives more shade. And while black absorbs more heat, the loose weave lets the heat disperse so that the interior may be twenty to thirty degrees cooler than the outside Travelers in desert country have found that their canvas tents were considerably hotter than the black tent.

The tent cloth is like a thick heavy blanket. Although the weave is loose enough to see daylight through the cloth, it is fair as rain protection. When wet, the yarn swells - closing the holes - and the natural oiliness of the hair sheds the rain for a while. The tent will leak in a prolonged rain, but in the dry areas where the tent is used this is not a serious problem. The biggest problem of a wet tent for the nomads is that the weight of the tent becomes so great that the pack animals can barely move it.

Since the tent material is wool and hair, it does insulate from the cold. The Tibetan black tent made of yak hair is used in extremely cold country. Although the Tibetans prefer this tent, they will readily admit that the yurt is a warmer dwelling. What is amazing is that a tent that originated in a hot desert country could penetrate into such a cold land.

Tent frame. The black tent uses very little wood in its frame: Only a few other tents in the world, such as the Inuit ridge tents, use less. The minimal use of wood is possible because the black tent is a tensile structure ("tent" and "tensile" derive from the Latin tendre, to stretch). In tensile structures, all of the tension of the cover is collected in a few compression members - the poles. In the black tent, the great weight of the tent cloth and the great tension created by stretching the cloth is concentrated in the few vertical poles. This also means that the cover and the frame are interdependent - neither can stand without the other - and this interdependence makes it possible to use only a few poles. This system is in marked contrast to tents such as the yurt or tipi that have free-standing frames.

The Bedouin tent. The direction of the tent depends on the particular tribal practice and the vailing conditions at the time. In hot weather the tent is left completely open, the roof serving as a sunshade, but usually wall curtains (ruag) are pinned up for privacy and to keep out the wind and sand. These curtains can be moved to either side of the tent depending on wind direction and a variety of enclosures can be created by hanging them out on the ropes. The ruag, made of a looser weave than the roof cloth, are woven with red and black geometric designs. There is a piece of sack cloth at the bottom which can be buried in the sand or held down with rocks to seal out drafts. In Syria reed mats are often used for the outside walls. The dividing curtain (qata) separating the men's and women's sides, has the most elaborate designs woven into it - especially the end that extends out in front and is draped over the front ropes for all to see. In bad weather this end is brought across the front of the women's side, completely enclosing it.

A stranger should always approach the tent from the front. On approaching the tent one hears the pounding of the brass mortar and pestle as coffee beans are ground and mixed with cardamon. As the guests are seated in the men's side, the coffee is brewed in a small hearth set just outside the tent. Coffee making and drinking are conducted as a ritual of desert hospitality: to be polite, the guest must drink at least three cups. If a cup of coffee is refused, the host empties it on the ground, for pride demands that man cannot accept what another has rejected.

The floor of the men's side is covered with carpets and mattresses for the guests to sit on. The host's camel saddle, covered with a sheepskin, is set on the rear mattress. This is a key piece of furniture - the host and guest of honor sit on either side of it and talk across it; the other guests sit in a semicircle facing them.

THE LAPP TENT

The Lapps. West of Siberia is Lappland - home of the Lapps. These tough but sensitive people originally migrated from Siberia and have a culture very similar to that of northern Siberians such as the Nentsy and Nganasan. They were originally hunters and fishermen who domisticated reindeer only to move their camps, but influenced by cattle farmers to the south, they began to keep deer for meat and milk. As the last wild deer disappeared they turned to full-time nomadism.

Today only a minority of Lapps are nomadic... The number of true nomads is steadily declining; the snowmobile has changed the necessity for frequent changes so that few Lapps are tent dwellers anymore.

The Lapps "herd" reindeer in a very loose sense. The deer follow the same sequence of migration and routes as they would in the wild, and the Lapps can only follow them. But the Lapps benefit the herd in a number of ways. They keep predators - wolves, bears, and wolverines - at bay, especially important at calving time. In the winter the herdsman digs down with his snow shovel and finds moss for the deer and when the deer can't forage, he cuts down lichencovered spruce for food. In the summer he builds a smudge fire to keep the mosquitoes and flys away from the deer. The Kata. The curved-pole kata is a unique Lapp invention. No other conical tent uses such a foundation of curved rafters. This frame allows for a larger diameter conical tent to be made without using longer poles. Other conical tents have to increase pole length as the tent diameter increases - which means a heavier frame. (The Plains Indians could only increase the diameter of the tipi when they obtained the horse to carry the longer tent poles.) There is one disadvantage to the kata - the smoke hole is quite large, and in the winter snow sometimes fills the tent and must be shoveled out. But the Lapps say that the smoke hole has to be large because they build big fires, and the fire usually takes care of any rain or snow that comes in the tent.

The curved poles of the kata frame are made from two pairs of naturally bow-shaped pines or birches. The sides are squared off and holes are bored near the end and in the middle. Each pair of rafters is threaded onto the end of the "smoke pole" at the top and onto a cross piece in the middle. In addition, two doorposts, shaped like hockey sticks, are threaded onto the smoke pole in the front. A single pole in the rear completes the foundation. There are two holes in the top of each rafter and doorpost so that the tent can be made a little bit larger or smaller... Against this frame are laid twelve to eighteen slender poles from nine to fifteen feet long. A few of these are held by loops on the frame, and in rough weather, all the poles may be lashed down with rope.

The tent cover is made in two halves which are fastened together at the single back pole. The free ends of the cover are pulled around the tent and lashed to the door poles. In the past, the summer cover was birch bark sewn with sinew, while the winter cover was reindeer skins. Today canvas is used in the summer and a double layer of woolen blankets covers the winter tent. Sometimes a square of linen is placed on the back side of the tent to admit light...

The tents are pitched in sheltered places close to wood and water. The country is usually familiar and the Lapps favor old campsites that have the hearth stones and anchor stones of previous tents already in place.

The Interior. At the center of the tent is the hearth - a ring of flat stones. Over it a chain with a hook on the end dangles down from the smoke pole to suspend kettles and to smoke reindeer meat. The tent floor is divided into rooms. Two parallel logs run from the doorposts to the hearth and contain the uksa where firewood is stored. On the opposite side of the hearth two more parallel logs enclose the boasso, the kitchen area where food is prepared. This is also a sacred area where the shaman's drum is kept. The Lapps believe that when a person dies the body must be taken out the boasso side of the tent or another person will die in the tent. The hearth, the uksa, and the boasso divide the kata into two rooms. These are the living and sleeping space - the loaido. The floor of this space is covered with a thick layer of spruce boughs or birch twins and covered with reindeer skins. Rolled up coats placed against the walls make cushions. Sleeping bags are made of reindeer fur or sheepskin with a pocket at the end for the feet. Northern Lapps hang a mosquito net over each bed. Some Lapps use a linen sleeping tent suspended from the tent poles for warmth in the winter.

A fire is kept going in the hearth day and night. Smoke fills the interior to within a few feet of the floor. This keeps the mosquitoes out, but in bad weather the smoke may completely fill the tent blinding everyone. In extremely cold weather - forty below - a huge fire is kept going and the flames reach almost to the smoke pole. Much of the heat goes up with the flames, so as one is roasted in front, he freezes in back. Condensation from breath and cooking creates an ice fog which hangs in the tent so that the tent dwellers can barely see from one side to the other, but the Lapps are a hardy people and wouldn't have it any other way - the kata is their home.