I have been digging into historical construction techniques and I am unable to find a satisfactory, complete answer as to how people built foundations for their traditionally constructed homes before concrete was widely available. I am especially interested in American construction through the 1800s, but I would love to know about ANY foundation, including techniques for Cob houses, adobe, Scandinavian longhouses... If you have info, I'd love to hear it.
I am aware of the existence of padstones, timber sills, and post-in-ground construction, but information online is very sparse and there is virtually nothing on the maintenance of these foundations. It seems unlikely to me that people would work so incredibly hard to build these homes, but have no way to maintain the foundation by replacing sills/posts/etc. How were buildings lifted for repair work prior to hydraulic jacks? How far back have people manufactured screw-jacks?
Also, what methods did people have for dealing with infestations in their carpentry? Today we can remove carpenter bees/termites/etc with poison, but how would an ancient person have driven out those pests?
I realize I am requesting a LOT of info-- if anyone has book recommendations on construction techniques either pre-modern american or just construction in general going back to antiquity, I would be very grateful.
I can answer one part of this: infestations. Log cabins that were intended to be lived in for a while would be very often set on a stone foundation, if only something simple and dry-laid: perhaps only a couple of big rocks at the corners. After that, the first step was to pick the right tree for the logs. Chestnut and locust were rot resistant, poplar was not. Second, remove the bark. Bark has a lot of food value, compared to the cellulose of the wood. If you search under "bark beetle" you will find a myriad host of bugs that burrow under bark, and they have a myriad number of parasites and predators. Boring insects, like buprestid beetles, would also be drawn to felled trees but not so much to peeled logs. So, logs were generally peeled. Last defense against infestations was whitewash. Slaked lime ( often with a little milk for better adhesion) formed a tough alkaline barrier to most insects, and was relatively easy to acquire- it could be made by "burning" or heating limestone or oyster shells.
But there would be a fair number of log cabins that were simply built for short term use. They were built quickly, might have logs laid right on the ground, with only a rammed-earth floor- or a puncheon floor of boards laid on top of rammed earth. Rot would often not be so much a problem as simple exhaustion of the land and the cabin occupants, and if they succeeded they'd build something better. Here's a good account of the progression from "hovel to house"
For the history and construction of the log cabin, C. A. Weslager's The Log Cabin in America (1969) is still good.