Household Archaeology in the Southeastern United States: History, Trends, and Challenges

Abstract

This review highlights archaeological investigations of prehistoric and historic households in southeastern North America. There are a number of inherent challenges to the archaeology of households in the region, including generally poor preservation and a long history of relatively insubstantial domestic architecture. An appraisal of the historical development of household archaeology developed slowly in the Southeast, largely in reaction to trends in other areas of the world. Over the last decade, however, southeastern archaeologists have been at the vanguard of the application of new approaches to households. From an early focus on generalizable patterns of domestic activities and behavior, researchers increasingly view households as historical constructs situated within larger landscapes. Prominent areas of concern include enduring issues such as status variation, production, and consumption but also newer themes such as gender, identity and ethnicity, agency and power, and ritual and symbolism. Some of the most innovative studies explore the intersections of these topics. Conceptual and methodological challenges remain, but the household endures as a practical and productive focus of analysis and interpretation for southeastern archaeologists more than 30 years after household research in the area began.

Life among the tides : recent archaeology on the Georgia Bight : proceedings of the Sixth Caldwell Conference, St. Catherines Island, Georgia, May 20-22, 2011.

“…The question then is: how can the social entanglements that must be correlates of mission aggregation be explored archaeologically? The answer, in my opinion, as expressed earlier, is certainly a practice-based approach to colonialism, which, if taken seriously, necessitates a greater emphasis on household archaeology (e.g., Wilk and Rathje, 1982;Hirth, 1993;Tringham, 1995;Allison, 1999;Tringham, 2001;Wesson, 2008;Pluckhahn, 2010) specifically paying attention to intrasite diversity (e.g., Thomas, 1993b: 25;Reitz et al, 2010) and how households interact across the neighborhood and community scales.…”

6 Gated Communities, Neighborhoods, and Modular Living at the Early Horizon Urban Center of Caylán, Peru

“…The concept of neighborhood has been defined in various ways, from geographic emphases on physical boundaries and shared residency (Chaskin ), to more socially meaningful definitions highlighting group identity and economic interactions (Keller , 125; M. E. Smith , 137). In a similar manner to the history of thoughts on “households” (Carballo ; Nash ; Pluckhahn ), anthropologists and archaeologists alike have recognized that “neighborhood space” and “neighborhood social identity” do not necessarily align. For instance, neighborhood identities might transcend urban contexts, and extend to rural hinterlands.…”

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

“…Early 20th century expectations that agricultural village communities were responsible for Hopewell earthworks have proven insupportable on the basis of archaeological evidence. Rather, Hopewell forager-farmers appear to have lived in small homesteads, in groups of one to a few households (sensu Ashmore and Wilk 1988;Blanton 1994;Pluckhahn 2010c). As an aside, Dancey and Pacheco (1997a, p. 12) prefer the term ''hamlet'' to describe these fundamental residential units, arguing that it encompasses not only single component/single household sites, but also sites with a sequence of multiple households.…”