Session: #660

Content:

The identification and analysis of occupation surfaces in excavated buildings play a crucial role in the reconstruction and interpretation of social spaces of past societies, including living conditions, daily activities, and human-animal relations. The design, use, and choice of flooring materials and maintenance practices affect how a room is perceived, moved through, and experienced, not only visually, but also through touch, smell, and sound. From a wider perspective, the composition of occupation surfaces embeds critical information about past economic and social activities and the socially constructed concepts of ‘dirty’, ‘clean’, ‘pure’, and ‘comfortable’ – concepts that influence what is left behind on occupation surfaces and bias archaeological interpretations of activity areas. In recent years several advances have been made in scientific and theoretical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of archaeological floors and occupation surfaces, but more work needs to be done to integrate the method and the theory. The aim of this session is to build on recent developments, and to encourage dialogue and debate among archaeologists who analyze and interpret floors and occupation surfaces. We especially invite contributions on:
•Scientific methods applied to the identification and spatial analysis of different flooring materials, human and animal activity areas, and/or maintenance practices;
•How ethnoarchaeological, ethnohistoric, and/or experimental research can improve our understanding of how occupation surfaces can be analyzed and interpreted;
•How cultural and individual choices influence the use of flooring materials and maintenance practices;
•How different flooring materials and accumulations influence the perception of, movement through, and/or sensory experience of a room or area;
•The economic, social, and/or religious aspects of resourcing, preparing, applying, and maintaining flooring materials;
•The relationship(s) between flooring materials, maintenance practices, post-depositional processes, and artefact/ecofacts distributions on floors and occupation surfaces;
•The integration of interdisciplinary research on occupation surfaces and site activity areas.

Session: #660

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