Households and Social Evolution: Comprehensive Approaches to Social Transformation

Social evolutionary transformation involves and affects all levels of human society, including households. Household and social evolutionary archaeological approaches, however, are often considered to have different goals and perspectives. Social evolutionary studies use a long-term and comparative approach to study how fluctuations and changes (both abrupt and gradual) in social, political, economic, and ideological, systems can ultimately lead to the transformation and emergence of unprecedented socio-political organization. Household studies examine daily life as the locus of many important social, economic, political and ritual activities to understand some of the same systemic reorganizations and transformations.

This session explores the relationship between social evolution and household archaeology in a global context. Bringing these two bodies of theory together involves taking a comprehensive approach to the study of societies and their internal systems and processes. This includes challenging commonly drawn divisions between the macro and micro scale, public and domestic domains, and ceremonial and quotidian activities. A more inclusive approach to the study of sociopolitical change can facilitate the effective use of temporal and spatial comparisons to better understand local regional developments and the dynamics of social complexity.