Because archaeologists often dig up dwelling sites, many household archaeology studies have focused on the physical fabric and layout of a dwelling - the architecture. Archaeologically excavated dwellings usually consist of foundations alone, so that only a floor plan can be discerned. Thus, emphasis is often placed on the two-dimensional layout of these remains, at the expense of their three-dimensional proportions. Only at sites like the Pompeii can a better understanding of the three-dimensional space of a house (e. g., its windows, decoration, and proportions) be developed (Figure 1). Thus, at many archaeological sites it is the two-dimensional arrangement
Figure 1 Three-dimensional proportions of the House of the Cell in Pompeii. © 2008 Dr Penelope Allison. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Of domestic space that is used to explain domestic behavior. For example, ground plans of houses have been analyzed for their homogeneity or heterogeneity within a community, or across communities. The ways in which communities build their houses, and arrange the spaces within them, provide information on social and economic aspects of these communities, and the interrelationships of their member households. However, one can only extrapolate social behavior from household definitions and structural remains, often only a floor plan, if one makes assumptions that relationships between space and households are uniform across all societies. On the contrary, ethnographical analogy indicates that the use of specific space can be extremely variable. For example, more than one household can inhabit one structure and also a household group can inhabit more than one structure, as David showed for the inhabitants of the Fulani compound. Attitudes of privacy can also vary widely between different social groups.
Analyses of the structural remains of a house present a producer-oriented view, that of the builder, rather than a consumer-oriented view, that of the household. Charles Stanish stressed that the architectural plan of a house was one of the most distinctive features of household organization and of the ethnicity of a household unit. He rightly argued that the spatial organization oF rooms within a domestic structure documented its intended arrangement of internal activity areas. He identified two different architectural household types at a number of settlement sites in southern Peru, variously dated from c. CE 900 to 1500. These two types, called domestic terrace type and paired structures, showed different structural organization that did not necessarily relate to chronological differentiation. Stanish argued that these two different architectural types belonged to different ethnic groups. However, builders and users of dwellings are not always a homogeneous group. Some buildings are built by some of the subsequent occupants, but many people live in dwellings constructed by close relatives or associates during their lifetime and have little or no input into the decision-making or construction process. Many others live in houses built by unrelated individuals or distant ancestors. In many societies, households inhabit spaces designed by the builders of an earlier period or by other socially or culturally dominant groups who impose the structures on them (e. g., modern Aboriginal housing in Australia). Indeed, the vast majority of individuals will not build the house in which they will dwell. Even when members of the household have contributed to the building of their own dwelling, these members can often be more concerned to outwardly imitate other dominant groups in the construction of their dwelling than to conform to the expected lifestyle of the household members (e. g., Californian bungalows in Mexico or apartments in Kuala Lumpur). However, while such dwellings can serve to constrain those lifestyles they can never completely reformulate them. To view architecture as a prescriber and dictator of household behavior is to be biased toward the perspectives of the builder as the signifier of domestic behavior and to undermine the significance of the activities of all the household members, and of interethnic marriage, in formulating their dwelling as a social space.
A household is not essentially an architecturally dominated entity. In many cases in archaeology the structural remains of dwellings are either not extant in the archaeological record or they never existed. Thus, the identification of a household as a social entity is not limited to the identification of the structural remains of its ‘house’. If household archaeologists analyze only the patterning of structural remains it is difficult for them to understand the nature of the household that lived there.
World History
