Building Materials. With the exception of southern Mediterranean Europe, where stone predominated as building material, most houses in northern Europe, either in a city or in the countryside, were made completely of wood, while central European houses generally used a combination of both materials. The forests that dominated Europe's landscape, and which encroached upon the towns and villages, provided ready resources for construction. Because of the great risk of fire, municipal governments and village communes eagerly enacted legislation or coercive policies to force the introduction of stone and tile, at least for roofs, but the great expense of these materials prevented the fulfillment of this goal in the early-modern period. Population increases in sixteenth-century Europe led to a general clearing of forest land and its conversion into arable, thereby making wood even scarcer and forcing peasants to repair homes with earth, clay, and straw...