Using the Material and Written Sources: Turn of the Millennium Approaches to Roman Domestic Space

Abstract

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Identifying residences of ritual practitioners in the archaeological record as a proxy for social complexity

“…For the Society Island examples, cultural deposits within temple enclosures were remarkably ''clean'', lacking high frequencies of charcoal or other debris, while the interiors and exteriors of priest houses typically had moderate to high charcoal frequencies, either from small hearths used to warm or light the house interior or cooking and ritually burning activities in the house exterior. This divergence is likely due to a common failing of ethnohistoric and historic accounts world-wide, notably a lack of detail concerning what happened in and around ancient house sites and a lack of attention to daily life or variation in social status, gender, or occupational specialization at the local level (Allison, 2001(Allison, , 2006Carballo, 2011;Kirch and Kahn, 2007;Nash, 2009;Taomia, 2000;among others). In East Polynesia, European explorers most often recorded aspects of priests' activities and use of material culture at large communal ceremonies.…”

“…With the advent of micro-scale household archaeology, greater variability in ancient house sites has been detected than expected from the ethnographic and ethnohistoric record and archaeological models (Allison, 2001;Carballo, 2011;Carpenter et al, 2012;De Lucia and Overholtzer, 2014;Guengerich, 2014;Kahn, 2005;Levine, 2011;Nash, 2009;Pluckhahn, 2010;Robin, 2003). This is, in part, linked to social variability, such as gradations in status and rank, including lesser ranked chiefs or lineages, gender, or occupational specialization, that is not noted in historic accounts and ethnographies.…”

Next stop: Gender. Women at Roman military forts in Germany

“…The agenda for many of these archaeologies was set centuries ago, with archaeology initially considered the 'handmaiden' of history (Finley 1985, 7, 18-26). We must first unpack the biases and misinterpretations of relationships between textual and material-cultural remains (which have been woven into extant interpretations of material-cultural remains) and critically assess how and in what contexts remains of different types are useful for comprehending meaning in other remains (Allison 2001;Foxhall 2004;Hoffmann 2004). We must first unpack the biases and misinterpretations of relationships between textual and material-cultural remains (which have been woven into extant interpretations of material-cultural remains) and critically assess how and in what contexts remains of different types are useful for comprehending meaning in other remains (Allison 2001;Foxhall 2004;Hoffmann 2004).…”

A Critical Review Of The Roman Atrium House: Reading The Material Evidence On “Atrium”

“…Contemporary developments in architectural historiography and archaeology, however, indicate that domestic architecture of the ancients was guided by environmental parameters and practical requirements rather than textual prescriptions (Jansen, 1991;Allison, 2001). Since the last decades of the 20th century, spatial information has gradually been more valuable for understanding the determinants of spatial configuration (3).…”

“…Since the last decades of the 20th century, spatial information has gradually been more valuable for understanding the determinants of spatial configuration (3). Many scholars working on the Roman domestic space have begun to give more reference to spatial analysis (Allison, 2001;Wallace-Hadrill, 1997). The incorporation of new material evidence through more careful archaeological analysis has challenged the conventional framework.…”