Archaeologists from the US, the UK, and Australia examine households and household activity using a variety of theoretical and methodological frameworks in differing temporal and spatial archaeological contexts. Case studies are drawn from the Mediterranean region, Britain, the US, Central America, and Australia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This pioneering collection engages with recent research in different areas of the archaeological discipline to bring together case-studies of the household material culture from later prehistoric and classical periods. The book provides a comprehensive and accessible study for students into the material records of past households, aiding wider understanding of our own domestic development.

Archaeology of Households, Kinship, and Social Change offers new perspectives on the processes of social change from the standpoint of household archaeology. This volume develops new theoretical and methodological approaches to the archaeology of households pursuing three critical themes: household diversity in human residential communities with and without archaeologically identifiable houses, interactions within and between households that explicitly considers impacts of kin and non-kin relationships, and lastly change as a process that involves the choices made by members of households in the context of larger societal constraints. Encompassing these themes, authors explore the role of social ties and their material manifestations (within the house, dwelling, or other constructed space), how the household relates to other social units, how households consolidate power and control over resources, and how these changes manifest at multiple scales. The case studies presented in this volume have broader implications for understanding the drivers of change, the ways households create the contexts for change, and how households serve as spaces for invention, reaction, and/or resistance. Understanding the nature of relationships within households is necessary for a more complete understanding of communities and regions as these ties are vital to explaining how and why societies change. Taking a comparative outlook, with case studies from around the world, this volume will inform students and professionals researching household archaeology and be of interest to other disciplines concerned with the relationship between social networks and societal change.

“Thought-provoking and engaging, Beyond the Walls provides new and relevant theoretical perspectives and specific case studies for archaeologists conducting research related to household archaeology. Essential for both students and professionals.”—Mark D. Groover, author of The Archaeology of North American Farmsteads “From ranching stations in Hawai’i to slave quarters in South Carolina, the essays in Beyond the Walls crosscut time and space to consider the interrelationships between households and the wider regional and global networks in which their residents were enmeshed, presenting new insights relating to identity, consumerism, and modernity.”—Barbara J. Heath, coeditor of Jefferson’s Poplar Forest: Unearthing a Virginia Plantation While household archaeologists view the home as a social unit, few move their investigations “beyond the walls” when contextualizing a household in its community. Even exterior aspects of a dwelling—its plant life, yard spaces, and trash heaps—uncover issues of domination and resistance, gender relations, and the effects of colonialism. This innovative volume examines historical homes and their wider landscapes to more fully address social issues of the past. The contributors, leading archaeologists using various interpretive frameworks, analyze households across time periods and diverse cultures in North America. Including case studies of James Madison’s Montpelier, George Washington’s Ferry Farm, Chinese immigrants in a Nevada mining town and Southern plantations, Beyond the Walls offers a new avenue for archaeological study of domestic sites.

Despite the fact that the human life of the past cannot be understood without taking into account its ecological relationships, environmental studies are often marginalized in archaeology. This is the first book that, by discussing the meaning and purpose we give to the expression `environmental archaeology', investigates the reasons for such a problem. The book is written in an accessible manner and is of interest to all students who want to understand the essence of archaeology beyond the boundary of the individual subdisciplines.

Household archaeology, together with community and regional settlement information, forms the basis for a unique local perspective of Andean prehistory in this study of the evolution of the site of Lukurmata, a pre-Columbian community in highland Bolivia. First established nearly two thousand years ago, Lukurmata grew to be a major ceremonial center in the Tiwanaku state, a polity that dominated the south-central Andes from a.d. 400 to 1200. After the Tiwanaku state collapsed, Lukurmata rapidly declined, becoming once again a small village. In his analysis of a 1300-year-long sequence of house remains at Lukurmata, Marc Bermann traces patterns and changes in the organization of domestic life, household ritual, ties to other communities, and mortuary activities, as well as household adaptations to overarching political and economic trends. Prehistorians have long studied the processes of Andean state formation, expansion, and decline at the regional level, notes Bermann. But only now are we beginning to understand how these changes affected the lives of the residents at individual settlements. Presenting a "view from below" of Andean prehistory based on a remarkably extensive data set, Lukurmata is a rare case study of how prehispanic polities can be understood in new ways if prehistorians integrate the different lines of evidence available to them. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Lynn Rainville's revised thesis uses micro-debris analyis' to investigate aspects of domestic life in three Early Bronze Age sites, two urban and one rural, in southeastern Turkey.

Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica presents different analytical approaches for interpreting household composition and cultural site formation processes in prehispanic western Mesoamerica. Archaelogical data collected using both stratigraphic and reconnaisance methods are combined with and interpreted using a combination of ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and ethnoarchaeological information. The result is a richer and more complete picture of prehispanic household structure than any single analytic approach could produce on its own. The book is organized into several sections based on common theme and geographic area. The first three chapters provide a broad discussion of conceptual and methodological difficulties that archaeologists must resolve in the study of prehispanic households. Subsequent chapters present case studies which examine households from two areas of western Mesoamerica: the Central Mexican highlands and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Eight case studies from the Central Mexican highlands provide a longitudinal perspective on changing household composition. Four of these examine households during the late Formative, Classic, Epiclassic, and Early Postclassic periods (650 B.C.-A.D. 1200), while four others focus specifically on household structure during the century immediately preceding the Spanish Conquest. Two additional case studies provide comparative information on household organization in the South Gulf Coast region during the Classic period. Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica: Studies of the Household, Compound, and Residence will be an excellent reference for all anthropologists and archaeologists interested in prehispanic western Mesoamerica.

Attempts to define behavioral archaeology more comprehensively than is common in order to illustrate its role in the theoretical landscape of contemporary archaeology. To flesh out points of agreement or dissent, the perspectives of the chapters range from those of behavioral archaeology, old and new, to those of historical, selectionist, and postprocessual archaeology. Many of the 15 papers were first presented at a symposium titled "From Airline Trash to Potsherds," held at the 56th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in 1992.