This article is focused on the deliberate orientation of longhouses observed within the wide area of the Linear Pottery culture (LBK) and succeeding cultures (post-LBK). Spatial analysis is based on the assemblage of 1546 buildings, whose purpose it was to attempt to cover the whole area of longhouse distribution. Despite variability, which considerably increased over time, the alignment of house entrances towards the south or south-east was observed. The widely accepted theory of house alignment towards the ‘ancestral homeland’ is therefore challenged by a new hypothesis, which sees orientation governed by the celestial path of the sun. Using 3D-modelling of light-and-shadow and solar impact, sun alignment is discussed as an integral element of the longhouse concept already present by the time of its genesis. The tendency of aligning longhouse entrances towards the east, which emerged during the LBK expansion westwards, is considered to be a regionally limited pattern, as no analogical shift was observed in the eastern areas of longhouse distribution.

The long houses of the Linear Pottery Culture and its immediate successors are usually interpreted in functional terms, but they have certain anomalous features. This paper considers the processes by which they were built, lengthened, abandoned and replaced and suggests that they may have charted the development of the households who lived inside them. The buildings in Linear Pottery settlements were generally orientated towards the areas of the origin of the communities who lived there.