Theme:
1. The Material Record: Current Trends and Future Directions
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Exploring everyday domestic life: from the Neolithic to the early modern period
Content:
While the need for shelter could be said to be universal, most aspects of dwelling are not. How people live their lives in and around their dwellings is highly variable and is strongly connected to social practices and interactions. It is by asking the “small questions” of daily life, the simple and mundane, that we can start to address the extent and meaning of this variability and obtain a deeper understanding of the social aspects of dwelling.
Research into the domestic life of past peoples has recently been reinvigorated by the application of new methods of scientific analysis that shed light on craft activities, culinary practices, mobility patterns and social networks. Such detailed information obtained from seemingly mundane objects found at settlements are starting to paint an evocative picture of daily life in the past. Experimental archaeology can further highlight everyday tasks in the context of their environmental and social settings. With the ever-increasing trend to create 'big' datasets, there is a danger that these smaller-scale insights and the stories they reveal are overlooked. It is however, exactly in “Small things forgotten” (sensu James Deetz 1977) that we can start to obtain meaningful insights into how people lived in and around their houses. In trying to understand domestic buildings, we may ask questions about how houses and rooms were used and perceived, about spatial organization and the relation between the physical structures and their inhabitants.
In this session, we welcome contributions from a broad perspective - geographically and chronologically – on the themes of social practices of building (and rebuilding), living and dwelling. We are interested in papers dealing with house biographies and microhistory, households and habitation. Especially welcome are papers which address these issues from innovative methodological and theoretical perspectives that would elucidate the “small questions” of daily life.
Keywords:
domestic life, biographies, archaeological science, craft activities, culinary practices, social space
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Annelou van Gijn (Netherlands) 1
Co-organisers:
Göran Tagesson (Sweden) 2
Oliver Craig (United Kingdom) 3
Federica Di Biase (Germany) 4
Affiliations:
1. Leiden University
2. University of Uppsala
3. York University
4. University of Heidelberg
THIS SESSION CAN NOT BE SELECTED AT THIS MOMENT