From Households to Communities: Bridging Scales in Search of Conflict, Coalescence, and Communitas

Archaeological examinations of households and communities have increased dramatically over the past two decades. Many of these studies examine the ways in which people define themselves while simultaneously shaping the social relationships, physical spaces, and material objects that comprise their world. Despite the considerable insights such studies have generated, it is often difficult to bridge the scalar and theoretical differences between individual case studies focused at either household or community level. Contributions to this session seek to bridge these distinct scales of investigation through the examination of specific archaeological case studies that explicitly recognize that communities are not simply the byproducts of households pursuing their own autonomous strategies nor are households merely passive reflections of social, political, and economic relationships within the communities of which they are a part.