Household archaeology – People, Things, and their Relations 4001-ARCHDOM-OG

In this course, students will become familiar with household archaeology, a field through which archaeologists study the smallest socially identifiable units. The archaeological approach allows a focus on the material dimension of households, consisting of people—the residents of houses, objects—such as the houses themselves and household utensils, as well as non-human residents and the relationships among them. This distinctive perspective differentiates the archaeological view of the household from the approaches of other disciplines, such as history or sociology, which also study past and contemporary households.
Furthermore, the course will discuss the significance of household archaeology in studying phenomena such as cultural changes, the emergence of social inequalities, revolutions, religious conversions, and urbanization. These processes, often interpreted from the perspective of power, gain new meaning when viewed from the ground up—from the perspective of the household. Archaeological domestic microhistories allow for a nuanced understanding of these phenomena, revealing their complex and disordered nature.
Topics covered in the course:
• The diversity of households and difficulties in defining them.
• The materiality of houses: construction, the care dwellers take of their houses, the durability and variability of materials, and the differing temporalities of objects and people.
• Extensive household space: relationships between people and domestic spaces.
• Intensive household space: its plasticity and variability, and the ways in which human activities, including domestic labor, create it.
• The transmission of knowledge: within household work groups.
• The identities of household residents: the shaping of gender, the formation of family, the emergence of inequalities, and the expression of group identity.
• Household production and “human economies” of household residents.
• Autoarchaeology: and the impact of contemporary households on ourselves.

Type of course

general courses

Mode

Classroom

Course coordinators

Maciej Wyżgoł

Learning outcomes

Upon completing the course student:

Knows and understands:
• Basic concepts used in household archaeology.
• Key research methods applied in household archaeology.
• Various forms of household organization.

Is able to:
• Select appropriate methods for solving research problems related to household archaeology.
• Recognize and interpret the relationships between material culture and the organization of domestic communities.
• Interpret traces of human activity in an archaeological context and construct narratives about the lives of past communities.

Attitudes. Student:
• Demonstrates an understanding of the diverse forms of households around the world.
• Critically evaluates the interpretations of archaeological sources presented in the literature.

Assessment criteria

- continuous evaluation (current preparation for classes and activity) – 50%
- final presentation – 50%

Bibliography

• Bourdieu, P. (1970). The Berber house or the world reversed. Social Science Information 9(2), 151-170.
• Fogle, K.R., Nyman, J.A. and Beaudry, M.C. eds. (2015). Beyond the Walls: New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Historical Households. Gainesville: The University Press of Florida
• Hodder, I. (2012). Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Jervis, B. (2019). Assemblage thought and archaeology. Routledge.
• Jervis, B. (2022). Examining temporality and difference: An intensive approach to understanding medieval rural settlement. Journal of Archaeological Method Theory, 29
• Kent, S. ed., (1990). Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space. An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study, Cambridge
• Müller, M. ed., (2013), Household Studies in Complex Societies. (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
• Wilk, R.R and Rathje, W.L. (1982). Household archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist 25: 617–639.
• Wyżgoł, M., and Deptuła, A. (2023). Assembling a household in the Middle Nile Valley (Old Dongola, Sudan) in the 16th–17th centuries. Journal of Social Archaeology 23: 149–172.

Additional information

Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 4001-ARCHDOM-OG in USOSweb