Abandoned but not forgotten: Gerritsen on the domestic lifecycle

Abstract

The subject of Gerritsen's paper and the way in which it is presented invite comment on three main aspects: firstly, his theoretical stance, secondly the methodology he uses and thirdly, his conclusions regarding the farmsteads which he seeks to understand. Since my own specialism lies well outside the area and period with which his paper deals, I shall focus my discussion on the first two aspects.

Bananas: Origins and Development

“…Dynamism: Such high-resolution sequences facilitate the identification of dynamic processes happening around a building (Vellinga 1999;Nevett 1999), which reflects complex realities observed in modern societies (Horne 1994;Carsten & Hugh-Jones 1995) better than the traditional archaeological thinking of seeing architecture as static (Tringham 1995: 65;Vellinga 1999: 98). The term "biography," as drawing comparisons with human life histories, points out the unplanned nature of life ways that resulted in biographies which could not have been foreseen when the life started.…”