last modified:2009-02-17 21:20:08
Abstracts
List of Speakers / Participants
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Abstracts
HOUSEHOLDS THROUGH A DIGITAL LENS
Ruth Tringham
Professor Tringham of the University of California, Berkeley will be giving the conference keynote address on the evening of Thursday, February 19th from 5:00-6:00pm at the Caroline Tanner Irish Humanities Building.
STORING FOR KITH OR KIN? HOUSEHOLD STORAGE IN EARLY BRONZE AGE FORTIFIED SETTLEMENTS OF THE SOUTHERN LEVANT
Meredith S. Chesson
Folklorist Henry Glassie (1982, 2001, 2006) has demonstrated that one of the best ways to study and understand people is to ground ourselves in their everyday lives. He argues that if we want to investigate interactions between peoples, and how they craft individual and group identities, transmit goods and ideas, and reshape lifeways and landscapes in the face of new technologies, ideas, religious frameworks, and political and economic connections, we should focus on the locus of the vast majority of daily life: the household, one of the most intimate and common types of places that people build and inhabit. Houses are a type of material culture that people create for themselves that embody a series of decisions involving the nature of available construction and decorative materials, as well as a series of decisions with how, where, and what to use for furniture and daily utensils and tools that were (and continue to be) influenced in economic, political, religious and social networks and relations to local and non-local resources (Glassie 2001). Thus, houses offer the possibility for archaeologists to link the microscale of everyday life within the macroscale contexts of cultural regions, trade patterns, and political movements.
This paper looks specifically at one type of behavior associated with residential contexts in the earliest fortified settlements of the southern Leventine Early Bronze Age (EBA, c.3600 - 2350 bce): storage. I propose to use storage practices in EBA houses as a vehicle for exploring the social, economic, and political connections between life in residential contexts and daily activities in non-residential settings like ritual compounds, administrative compounds, streets, fortifications, and areas outside the town walls. In this way, residential storage can act as a tool to understand the relationships between civic governance structures managing these towns and the lives of people living within them. The paper will focus on the evidence for storage practices from the walled EBA town of Numeira, and compare these findings with those from other contemporary sites, including Bab edh-Dhra', Zeraqon, Yarmouth, and Beth Yerah. One of the primary goals here is to evaluate the actual workings of Philip's (2001 after D'Altroy and Earle 1985) proposed model of a staple finance economy in EBA communities. In particular, this paper will investigate the nature and scale of stored goods and their potential uses, the mechanics of the EBA local economy and (re)distribution practices, and wider implications for changing concepts and rules of ownership, property, and access to resources.
HOUSES, HOUSEHOLDS AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF DESTRUCTION AT IRON II TEL HALIF
Jimmy Hardin
While household archaeology became very prevalent in many geographic areas of the world during the 1970s and 80s, it historically was given very little consideration in the southern Levant. However that trend largely was reversed over the last decade as several excellent studies appeared making use of the wealth of available archaeological data from domestic contexts, especially as they are preserved in destruction strata from ancient cities and towns.
This study analyzes the remains of a four-room type house excavated at Tell Halif, a small fortified town in southern Israel, in order to understand the activities that took place therein and to provide information about the people who used the space. The house, typical of ancient Judah, was well-preserved in a destruction stratum dating to the end of the 8th century BCE and was fully excavated. Methodologically the house was approached in such a way as to preserve as much spatial data as possible. All artifacts and installations from the destruction debris and floors were mapped and collected on a fine grid (less than .25mm). Additionally, micro artifacts (3cm-.3mm) were collected from the build up on floors with the intention of providing a more diachronic view of the use of space than was provided by the larger artifacts preserved during the burning of the town.
Once efforts were made to account for patterns introduced by formation processes, activity areas were identified and attempts were made to associate the users of this space with a household. After consulting archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological, and historical sources, it is suggested that the house was occupied by a small, extended family involved in the processing of wine and possibly weaving.
HOUSEHOLD VARIABILITY AND CULTURAL AFFILIATION AT SIXTH MILLENNIUM TELL KURDU (TURKEY): A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH
Rana Ozbal
The concept of prescribed culture groups and phases continues to dominate Near Eastern archaeology. In an effort to depart from top-down cultural templates, this paper begins at the household level, recognizes variability within the community, and envisions culture as the consequence of local practices and social actions. Such an approach naturally requires a suitable dataset. Fortunately, excavations at Tell Kurdu, a sixth millennium settlement in southern Turkey, were able to uncover wide horizontal exposures that enable intra-settlement comparability. The data is enriched by multiple lines of contextually-informed analyses. The perspective used combines the household variability noted not only among traditional categories such as ceramics, faunal remains, lithic data, small finds, food preparation equipment and architectural elements but also the differentiation yielded by finer methods of spatial reconstruction including microarchaeological and soil chemical investigations. Overall, these data highlight the necessity for bottom-up perspectives focused on identifying daily practices and challenge traditional approaches used in conceptualizing cultural groups.
LINEAGES, HOUSEHOLDS AND THE EMERGENCE OF CENTRAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
Katherine (Karen) Wright
Households are generally seen as economic production-consumption units, defined in anthropological literature as specific to agricultural communities, specifically intensive agricultural systems, as described by Netting, Chayanov and others. From early written documents we know that ancient Near Eastern cultures had culturally specific concepts translated as households (Sumerian E, Akkdian bitum, West Semitic beit, bet). The ancient Near Eastern usages can be usefully compared and contrasted to the concept discussed in social anthropology This paper argues that tensions between concepts of lineage and household go back to the Neolithic in the Near East. These very ancient tensions evolved in certain ways and persisted into historical times. These tensions, and in particular concepts surrounding ‘household,’ were the underlying basis for the formation of central institutions and complex societies in the Near East. Examples from across the whole Near East are discussed.
HOUSES, FEASTS AND DISTRIBUTED PEOPLE: LIVING AND DEATH FOR THE SAUSA OF PERU
Christine Hastorf
Around AD 1100 the small communities scattered around the intermontane valleys in central Peru, aggregated into larger towns. This Late Intermediate Period was a time when the populace became more specialized in its local food production due to the broader political and demographic changes. The residents, while congested within walled towns, reached out into other production zones outside of the valley for diverse crops. Maize became the backbone of ritual with its use in chicha beer, in addition to other stimulants, as ceremonial commensality increasingly became part of social cohesion. Some foodstuffs were being transported into the upland sites from zones to the east. This included not just condiments like chile peppers, but also maize and coca. Those families with the power to augment their local food production could participate more fully in the social ceremonial cycles. Household social events occurred throughout the Sausa populace, expanding during the Inka times, as social food ceremonies became more common outside of the house as well as within.
MICRO-MATTERS: RESULTS FROM MICRO-ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT AN ASSYRIAN CITY
Lynn Rainville
In this paper I summarize results from seven years of micro-archaeological investigations at Ziyaret Tepe (an Iron Age city situated along the edge of the Tigris River). Micro-archaeology includes an analysis of micro-artifacts (objects under 1 cm), soil sediments (via chemical and micro-morphological analysis), phytoliths, and pollen. My research originated as a study of household archaeology. It soon became clear that the excavation techniques commonly employed at urban sites were not adequate for recovering the ephemeral evidence from daily activities. Instead, I integrated archaeological and geological techniques (more frequently used at prehistoric sites) and developed a method that I refer to here as "micro-debris analysis." I apply this technique to a study of space in an Anatolian city.
The first half of the paper describes the procedure for collecting and recording micro-debris samples. Micro-archaeology involves the collection and quantification of artifactual remains which are too small to be collected by standard dry sieving techniques. Instead, sediment samples are collected from surfaces and features and micro-artifacts (defined as under 1 square centimeter) are recovered in the residual heavy fractions after flotation. This technique provides information on in-situ artifacts and their distribution within houses. Several different approaches are applied to interpret this data, including ethno-archaeological research and an assessment of the impact of formation processes on the archaeological record of domestic structures.
The second half of the paper utilizes micro-debris analysis to study activity areas and socio-economic variability among households in an Assyrian city, ancient Tushhan, modern-day Ziyaret Tepe. The analysis of micro-artifacts significantly contributes to the identification of the nature and distribution of ancient activity areas. Archaeologists usually investigate activities by analyzing larger artifacts, features, and architecture. These analyses are limited by removal of artifacts upon site abandonment, poor preservation of features, and difficult-to-observe architectural modifications. Micro-artifacts, however, provide a unique window on activity areas because small items are more likely than larger ones to remain where they were dropped, lost, or produced. In this technique, micro-debris analysis, soil samples were collected from a range of structures and features to recover evidence of craft production and subsistence activities. These samples were floated and small artifactual remains were recovered from the heavy fractions. The distribution of these micro-artifacts is qualitatively and quantitatively interpreted using insights from ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology. The results from the micro-archaeological investigations are combined with traditional data to provide information about domestic technologies, craft specialization, and household activities. Together, these data allows us to create more accurate models to explain domestic economy and social organization in Upper Mesopotamian cities.
AFTERWORD
Roger Matthews
Professor Matthews has kindly agreed to attend and participate in the conference and will later write the "Afterword" chapter that will conclude the final publication.
CREATING COMMUNITY: FOOD PREPARATION AND COMMUNITY COHESION AT FISTIKLI HOYUK, A HALAF PERIOD SITE
Marie Hopwood
The Halaf period (roughly the 6th millennium BC) is an intriguing time in human prehistory, encompassing an era between the "firsts" of agricultural domestication and the origin of cities. Halaf communities are hypothesized by Bernbeck (2009) to be multi-sited, or to in effect exist as communities in which portions of the population move across the landscape throughout the course of a year. The entire community would therefore only live together enmass when congregating at a focal site. In this way, a dispersed group would occupy multiple sites, ranging in function from temporary encampments to focal sites. The Early Halaf site of Fistikli Höyük in southeastern Turkey encompassed such usage, having served as temporary encampment, focal site, and later as an abandoned site that was revisited from time to time. With the variation of settlement composition in a multi-sited community, a focal site's population would swell and dwindle over the course of the ye ar. During the resultant phases of settlement occupation, different social mechanisms for dealing with the changing size of the population and shared/public space would have been employed. One way that these methods of community cohesion can be traced archaeologically is through food preparation. Coarse ware vessels used for cooking, storage and food preparation, in concert with other tools and features, such as ground stone, ovens and storage units, were examined from Fistikli Höyük to interpret the actions of usage. The primary method of analysis utilized was ceramic use alteration, the combined analysis of evidence of cooking, traces of wear, and absorbed residue analysis in the coarse ware vessels. The resultant picture of how food preparation changed over time as the site's function changed from temporary encampment to focal site and eventual abandonment, lends insight into how a multi-sited community in the Halaf period created community at one site over the course of a generation.
SHIFTING HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS OF PLANT USE FROM THE EARLY TO LATE NATUFIAN PERIODS OF THE SOUTHERN LEVANT
Arlene Rosen
Researchers have used Household Archaeology to enhance our knowledge of social and kin structures, activity areas in domestic households, division of labor and space along lines of gender, and to increase our understanding of micro-economic activities within a wide range of archaeological contexts. In the Near East, this potent approach to social and economic archaeology is primarily applied to archaeological sites in village and town settings. However, Household Archaeology also has great potential for understanding the organization of family and economic life within ancient hunter-gatherer communities as well. A close examination of households among the Natufian foraging societies in the Southern Levantine Mediterranean Core area, can potentially contribute much to our understanding of micro-economic activities, division of labor, and the role of family units in plant and animal exploitation. It may also be possible to understand how these social factors changed through time from the Early Natufian (14500 - 13000 cal. BP) who existed during the warming and moist Bolling/Allerod climatic episode, through the Late Natufian (13000 - 11600 cal. BP) who were compelled to adapt their economies to the cooler drier climate of the Younger Dryas.
Here, I use phytolith analyses to reconstruct the patterns of plant use at the household and village level from the Early and Late Natufian strata at the archaeological site of Ein Mallaha in northern Israel. Changes in the distribution of plants associated with different households characterizes the way space was appropriated for food consumption, processing, and storage, as well as defining indoor and outdoor activities. The results of these analyses are compared with similar phytolith material from other Early and Late Natufian sites in the Southern Levant in the hope of understanding how the very significant environmental changes that occurred between these two Natufian periods might have impacted household economies, food sharing, and storage practices within these Natufian phases. The aim will be to shed light on social and economic shifts from the Early to Late Natufian Periods.
DOMESTIC ECONOMIES AND REGIONAL RELATIONS AT KENAN TEPE, TURKEY
Catherine P. Foster
In the Near East, the late 4th millennium BCE was a period of fundamental social change that witnessed the rise of more complex economic systems of trade and exchange on an interregional level as evidenced by the proliferation of similar architecture, ceramic styles, and accounting practices. In accessing the mechanisms behind this network of interaction, archaeologically the focus has remained upon centralized institutions such as temples, public buildings and storehouses that supposedly governed this overarching bureaucratic network. Notably, the domestic economy, defined as the daily production and consumption activities of households, has been overlooked in favor of “top-down” theoretical approaches that place control of resources and labor in the hands of small elite factions or specialized trading guilds that monitored the flow of goods. In this paper, I will address this issue by bringing to bear the household as a viable unit of investigation and demonstrate how the domestic economy can be a sensitive indicator of larger socio-political change. I will investigate the domestic mode of production and consumption for three 4th millennium households at Kenan Tepe in the upper Tigris through the analysis of domestic artifact trends and intensive microdebris techniques. The results will shed light on the shifts in domestic economies that either reflect internal household decision making or a restructuring of household labor and production to accommodate new economic demands instigated by emerging systems of exchange.
PRODUCTION, SUBSISTENCE AND CULTURAL REPRODUCTION IN AN UBAID HOUSEHOLD IN UPPER MESOPOTAMIA
Bradley J. Parker
It was harvest season. Much of the grain was already processed and had been loaded into one of the storerooms and several of the smaller storage chambers on the side of the house. Winnowing was underway in the backyard and a large pile of grain husks had accumulated against the back wall of the house. Several unfired clay basins and baskets of grain were spread out on the roof.
The fire started in one of the storerooms. It quickly spread igniting the wooden beams that supported the flat clay roof over the large central room of the house. The roof collapsed crushing the wooden shelves where tools, personal items and beautifully painted vessels were stored. No one knows how the fire started. No one tried to dig through the rubble. Only the storage cubicles in the lower yard that did not burn, probably because they had been sealed with reeds and mud, were emptied.
In the summer of 2007, some 6500 years later, members of the Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP) excavated this house at the site of Kenan Tepe in southeastern Anatolia. This paper examines numerous categories of artifacts and ecofacts discovered within this structure and in doing so attempts to reconstruct various aspects of the economy of this Ubaid household. This analysis leads to a number of hypotheses about the nature of domestic production, patterns of subsistence and modes of cultural reproduction during the Ubaid period in northern Mesopotamia.
PARTICLES FROM THE PAST: A DIACHRONIC STUDY OF THE SPATIAL PATTERNING OF MICROREFUSE FROM ROOM FLOORS AT LATE NEOLITHIC TABAQAT AL-BUMA, NORTHERN JORDAN
Isaac Ullah
The ability of archaeologists to determine how ancient peoples organized and used domestic space has been hampered by our inability to accurately filter depositional “noise” created by site formation processes from actual in situ archaeological remains. Microarchaeology, the study of very small sized artifacts, can be used to help mitigate these issues. In this paper, I utilize a set of sampling and computer-based methodologies developed explicitly to deal with the spatial analysis of microrefuse. These techniques allow the discovery of finer-grained patterns of intra-room activity than can be determined through traditional spatial analyses of larger artifact classes, and offer a formal method to account for, and filter out, pattern deformation caused by site formation processes.
I will analyze microrefuse samples from several living surfaces, ranging across several occupational phases at the small Late Neolithic farmstead of Tabaqat al-Bûma, northern Jordan. Because this site was excavated completely by the University of Toronto’s Wadi Ziqlab project, it provides an exceptional case-study for the comparison of use of domestic space both across the site, and through time. Additionally, there is a wealth of information already published about this site, which allows for interesting and fruitful comparison with the new results. Specifically, new patterns in the use of space discovered through microrefuse analysis will be compared with those patterns that have been determined through spatial analysis of larger sized artifacts. This will allow a better understanding of the utility of each type of data, and will help us to gain a better, more nuanced understanding of the way the people of the northern Jordanian Late Neolithic acted in and around their dwellings.
FOOD SHARING WITHIN AND BEYOND HOUSEHOLDS IN NEOLITHIC CHATALHOYUK
G. Arzu Demirergi, Mike Charles, Dragana Filipovic
Patterns of food sharing reflect the social and economic framework in a society. During the Neolithic, as households became increasingly important units, changes occurred in how members of a society distributed resources and how families, kin groups or segments of a society created and maintained autonomy and interdependence (e.g. Flannery 1972, 2002). In questioning the development and the significance of households in early farming villages, it is essential to explore food sharing patterns within and beyond the basal units. Food sharing practices reflect the composition of a society by showing the groupings and associations within it, and how these relate to economic benefits and social status. In this paper, we integrate plant and animal data in order to examine food sharing behaviour and its implications on households and household groupings in Neolithic Çatalhöyük. Issues of particular interest include differences between households regarding their involvement in feasts, sharing of different kinds of animals, and possible scales of food preparation, processing, and consumption.
HOUSEHOLDS AND NEIGHBORHOODS OF THE INDUS TRADITION: AN OVERVIEW
Mark Kenoyer
This presentation will present an overview of household and neighborhood organization of settlements of the Indus Tradition beginning with the earliest settlements (6500 BC) and continuing through the height of urbanism (2600-1900 BC). Using evidence from the most recent as well as earlier excavations in Pakistan and India, it is possible to see chronological and regional patterns of change in the nature of family and community organization. Inferences can be drawn from the study of settlement layout and architectural organization, as well as from the organization of craft technologies, figurines and narrative art, and burial traditions.
The earliest evidence comes from settled communities such as Mehrgarh, Baluchistan (6500-5500 BC). Significant changes are seen in nature of family and community organization between the early pre-ceramic period and the later Chalcolithic and Bronze Age occupations at Mehrgarh and the nearby site of Nausharo (5500-2800 BC). Sites such as Harappa, provide evidence for changes over a long period of occupation from around 3500-1700 BC, including the height of Indus urbanism during the Harappan period (2600-1900 BC). Evidence for regional patterns of household and neighborhood organization come from excavations at sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira, as well as smaller rural sites throughout the greater Indus valley region.
Current evidence suggests that there was significant regional variation and some major changes, but also some deeply held cultural patterns. In fact, some aspects of household organization have persisted over thousands of years and are still present in many households and neighborhoods of modern northern South Asia.
HOUSEHOLD CONTINUITY AND TRANSFORMATION IN A PREHISTORIC CYPRIOT VILLAGE
Jennifer Webb & David Frankel
At Marki Alonia in central Cyprus excavations between 1990 and 2000 uncovered an extensive area of domestic architecture dating from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (c. 2400 BCE) to the middle years of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1850 BCE). Five hundred years of continuous occupation at this agro-pastoral village can be divided into nine stratigraphic phases, each of which conflates two or three generations of activity. In all, thirty-three house units or compounds were identified. They generally, but not universally, include both interior space and open, walled courtyards. Facilities include hearths, ovens, benches, bins and pot emplacements.
Good preservation and tight stratigraphic control allow a fine-scale understanding of the changing composition and size of the households at Marki as house compounds were enlarged, contracted, modified or abandoned in successive phases, and access to common and private space was negotiated and managed. This involved a periodic reorganisation and refurbishment of house compounds and the introduction of lanes and passageways, which provide a basis for thinking about the ways in which rights and ownership might have been assessed and negotiated within this community. Over the longer term, it is possible to see the physical structure of the excavated part of the village change from freestanding household compounds or sets of compounds surrounded by open space to a densely built-up area with little associated open space and limited access to individual compounds. In the latest phases there was a marked regression in inhabited space as older compounds fell out of use and those whic h continued to be inhabited were divided from one another by standing ruins as well as by open spaces.
Although the scale of observation—at intervals of two to three generations—makes it difficult to see the evolution of domestic cycles at an individual or anthropological timescale, some trends can be identified. Several compounds show remarkable longevity of use, maintaining their physical boundaries for three or four centuries while other compounds went in and out of use. This suggests that these house compounds remained in the hands of well-established families able to resist subdivision and contraction. These families are likely to have exercised some social dominance. In other cases developmental cycles can be traced in the outgrowth and subsequent separation of offshoot from parent households.
This paper will use this intimate history of a prehistoric village to trace the way in which developments in social interaction within a small community impact on the nature and structure of households. In particular it will explore the way in which the increasing enclosure and privatisation of physical and social households at Marki is related to natural demographic growth and enhanced economic security at the village level and examine these changes within the context of a broader, island-wide trajectory from a horizontally integrated settlement system in the early years of the Early Bronze Age to regionally-based vertical relationships of alliance and obligation.
UBAID HOUSEHOLDS AND ARCHAEOBOTANY FROM KENAN TEPE
Philip Graham
This paper focuses on the Ubaid period archaeobotanical remains collected from the site of Kenan Tepe in Southeastern Turkey. The samples are from multiple contexts in and around household structures. Because of the excellent preservation of the remains and comprehensive sampling strategy, the botanical remains from Kenan Tepe form an ideal data set for studying household economy and agricultural systems. Of special interest are the well-preserved remains from a burnt Ubaid period house, which highlight individual food preparation and storage. The agricultural and subsistence practices during the Ubaid are still poorly understood; the botanical remains from Kenan Tepe help fill this gap by providing information on household economy and agricultural production.
HOUSE SOCIETIES AND CORRIDOR HOUSES: A VIEW FROM EARLY BRONZE AGE GREECE
Nicholas Wolff
The Early Bronze Age on mainland Greece (Early Helladic I-III, ca. 3000-2000 BC) is widely recognized as a period of significant social transformation. One of the preeminent characteristics of settlements occupied during this time are the so-called "corridor houses," the best known example of which is the House of Tiles at Lerna. These structures show unprecedented architectural elaboration of the basic residential model and are remarkable for their size, decoration, and contents. The importance and precise function of these buildings has been much discussed, but conclusions remain vague and debated. In this paper, I will begin by examining the applicability of Levi-Strauss's (1982, and subsequent refinements) model of sociétés à maison to Early Helladic society. Among the attributes that lend support to this idea are the ongoing transition towards greater social hierarchy; the development of a distinct class of ornate, large-scale architecture (i.e., corridor houses); evidence for prestige goods and their controlled consumption within these buildings; and the possibility that associated sealings may represent iconographic expressions of individual corporate "houses." Despite this support, some problems remain. There is little understanding of the relationship between households and putative "houses" at sites where central corridor houses are present, or the role that corridor houses may have played within the larger community. Furthermore, there are significant formal differences between this example and others that have been described as prehistoric house societies.
The second part of the paper employs the problematic particulars of the foregoing discussion as a springboard from which to examine the "house society" concept more generally and assess the ways in which archaeologists have applied it. Central here is whether a rigorous or flexible interpretation of Levi-Strauss's original concept should be put into practice: does the "house society" pertain only to one distinct societal type (possibly in a rough evolutionary scheme)? Or is it more successfully construed as an adaptable theoretical lens through which we can investigate modes of social organization other than kinship, and at varying levels of hierarchy? This issue in turn relates to the degree of allowable variability between "house societies" and the ways in which they may be constituted at the household level.
DAILY FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE PRE-POTTERY NEOLITHIC AT HEMMEH, JORDAN
Chantel White
Although the beginning of agricultural production is often cited as one of the most significant factors contributing to the development of large villages and increasing social complexity during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period in the Southern Levant, little is known about how farming practices were organized and carried out, or how subsistence activities were integrated into the daily lives of prehistoric people. This study utilizes the concept of household archaeology as a means to contextualize botanical remains and identify domestic activities involving food production. As a case study, the multi-period site of Hemmeh is explored here - occupied during both the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) (c. 9,700 to 8,500 cal BC) and the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (LPPNB) (c. 7,250 to 6,400 cal BC) - providing unique insight into daily activities at the very beginning and very end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period.
Archaeobotanical remains are an invaluable tool for identifying routine household tasks and for reconstructing daily activities associated with plant processing, preparation, consumption, and disposal. Carbonized botanical remains recovered during four years of excavation at Hemmeh indicate a clear shift in food production: wild barley in the PPNA gives way to large-grained, cultivated varieties in the Late PPNB, at which time domesticated emmer wheat, lentils, and vetch also become visible. The domestication of locally available plants, as well as the incorporation of new crops into the human diet, reflects substantive changes in agricultural production at Hemmeh. Such a dietary shift suggests that the human activities required to harvest, store, process, and consume plant foods also changed significantly. This research builds upon work by Wright (2000) and Atalay and Hastorf (2006) to identify food preparation (e.g. sieving, roasting, grinding) and cooking methods during the PPNA and LPPNB as evidence of structured social routines.
Additionally, I address here the location of plant processing activities at Hemmeh as evidence of social organization at the household and community levels during these periods. Wright (2000) argues that boundaries between household and communal spaces were more fluid in the PPNA and that many food-related domestic activities occurred outdoors in highly visible communal areas. By the LPPNB, however, many household tasks took place in small, private rooms accessed only from living floors above. Changes in the location of domestic activities have been related to stresses caused by social crowding within settlements during this period (Kuijt 2000), the result of intensified agricultural production and an increasing focus on personal and household ownership. This paper considers the sequence of activities necessary for agricultural production at Hemmeh and the ways in which labor organization of agricultural activities may have impacted the relationships between households and communities on Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites.
CHANGING HOUSEHOLDS AT THE RISE OF URBANISM: THE EBI-II TRANSITION AT TEL BET YERAH
Sarit Paz
Various studies address the important role of built environment in structuring interactions at various scales of social life. Chesson (2003) considered houses as both physical and social institutions, and claimed the physical aspects of houses reflect the changing nature of social relations through time.
A new analysis of architectural sequences at Tel Bet Yerah in northern Israel reveals significant changes in the plan and character of houses and site layout, in the transition from EB I to EB II. These changes are related to the beginning of urbanization and attest the processes shaping this urban walled community, which involved negotiation between people regarding ways of life, ideas, and their application.
Pre-urban Bet Yerah was a large unfortified settlement, increasingly inhabited by different people who arrived at the site bringing their own habits and building traditions. The houses present a clear heterogeneity of building traditions (house shapes and construction techniques) and the spatial organization accompanying them. But, they were all organized as compounds, and produced a rather homogeneous material culture.
At the beginning of EB II, major changes occurred at Bet Yerah, which gradually became a well-planned walled city. The houses of this period show some degree of uniformity, a great sense of continuity in domestic architecture through time.
This paper explores the implications of urbanization at Bet Yerah on the microscale of everyday life in the context of households within the wider context of the site. It focuses on identifying patterns and habits through spatial analysis of houses and artifacts, and examines them against the background of the demographic, economic and social changes involved in the process of urbanization.
DELILAH'S KITCHEN--THE TELL ES-SAFI/GATH EXCAVATIONS AS A CASE STUDY IN HOUSEHOLD ARCHAEOLOGY FROM IRON AGE PHILISTIA
Jeffrey R. Chadwick and Aren M. Maeir
Principles and methods which fall within the description of household archaeology have been employed by the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project in Israel since excavations began at the site in 1997. A survey of selected finds demonstrates the variety of information about Iron Age Philistine households and society that can be discerned. Food preparation areas in courtyard kitchens feature cooking and baking facilities, such as basalt grinding installations, ovens (tabuns), and hearths of both local and Aegean styles, where both cooking and baking took place. Food production areas have yielded remains of foodstuffs -- grains, grape pips, olive pits, and seeds of fruits and vegetables -- recovered through flotation and microsifting techniques. Bird and animal bones, such as chicken, dove, cattle, sheep, goat, pig, and dog bones, suggest patterns in both diet and animal husbandry. (Significant information on the prominent use of pig in the Philistine diet -- an anomoly in the otherwise Canaanite and Judean region -- has become available. at Tell es-Safi.) Ceramic typology allows accurate dating of domestic pottery dishes in terms of production and use periods, as well as their local, distant, or foreign origin. Provenience studies (Thin Section Petrography, Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, ICP) of domestic pottery assists in identifying the origin of clays, which in turn reveals more about whether vessels were locally made (i.e. at or near the site) or made at another location (a more distant town in Philistia or Judah, or even a foreign location such as Cyprus or Syria). These factors indicate trade and purchase patterns which affected the local household, and may preserve indications of migration patterns and cultural identity, such as the arrival of the Aegean "sea peoples" in Canaan at the onset of the Iron Age.
Various ceramic types indicate household cooking and eating activity. These include cooking pots, cooking jugs (as differentiated from cooking pots, and apparently based on Aegean styles), strainer jugs, decanters for wine and oil, storage jars used for a variety of commodities such as oil, wine, grain, and dried fruits, "dipper" juglets, decorated kraters (large serving bowls) with and without handles, large mixing bowls, and smaller serving and drinking bowls (for individual use). Household industries are often discerned in kitchen courtyard areas. Fabric production is represented by the frequent finding of loom weights, charred remains of looms, and other weaving implements. A bone tool workshop has been identified in a domestic court, and slag finds indicate small scale metal production in household settings. Deity figurines and household "cultic corners" have been discovered, attesting the presence of religion and supernatural belief in the household. (Examples of all these indicators will be presented in this case study at the 2009 conference).
A TALE OF TWO HOUSEHOLDS: SUBSISTENCE AND THE PRODUCTION OF DOMESTIC SPACE IN THE CAUCASUS DURING THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
Lauren Ristvet
The construct of "cultural horizons" such as the Kura-Araxes (ETC) tends to flatten even large variations that may exist among culturally unified groups. This is particularly true when it comes to practices on the level of individual households. Soundings at two Kura-Araxes sites in the Azerbaijani exclave of Naxçivan provided data from two domestic areas that allow us to compare subsistence strategies and the creation of domestic space at two very different settlements, as well as to explore diachronic changes in household production and consumption.
Kültepe 2 is a 10 ha mound, which was occupied throughout this 1000 year period; it was located near an important salt mine, and was probably the largest settlement in Naxcivan during this period-as well as one of the largest in the Southern Caucasus. In contrast, Maxta is a small, low .7 ha site, which was probably only occupied during the earlier part of the Kura-Araxes sequence. Preliminary archaeobotanical analysis suggests that despite the architectural and ceramic similarities of both sites, the inhabitants engaged in extraordinarily different subsistence strategies. High proportions of barley at Maxta probably indicate investment in animal production, perhaps suggesting pastoralism or animal foddering. At Kültepe 2, however, several samples from in and around fixed and portable hearths consisted of almost pure, cleaned bread wheat, indicating an emphasis on wheat cultivation. The comparison of these two domestic contexts is an opportunity to explore variation at a domestic level, and also in the development of complexity at the sites. Investigating subsistence strategies on a household level for Kura-Araxes settlements is necessary to understand the persistence of this phenomenon as well as the reason for its wide distribution-across the Caucasus, Anatolia, Northern Iran and into the Levant.