Only ten of the hundreds of settlement sites that have been excavated in England from this period have revealed masonry domestic structures and confined to a few specific contexts. Timber was the natural building medium of the age: the Anglo-Saxon word for "building" is "timbe". Unlike in the Carolingian world, late Anglo-Saxon royal halls continued to be of timber in the manner of Yeavering centuries before, even though the king could clearly have mustered the resources to build in stone. Their preference must have been a conscious choice, perhaps an expression of deeply–embedded Germanic identity on the part of the Anglo-Saxon royalty.