Material Geographies of Multi-Family Neolithic Households

Summary

This paper explores how people within Neolithic villages were potentially connected to co-resident multi-family households, and considers the potential material footprint of multi-family households within Neolithic villages. As seen from ethnographic cases, in some cases residential buildings of House Societies had a range of functions including as dwelling locations, origin-places, council houses, or meeting-houses. Echoing other research this paper decouples the social unit of the House from a single residence, and explores the case study of Çatalhöyük, in which the House can be modeled as linking multiple residential building. This paper provides insight into how members of Neolithic house societies appear to have used different building, rooms and / or spaces, in different ways. I argue that among house societies where people resided in a complex of buildings, select houses were invested with greater symbolism, were actively maintained as a means of perpetuating the House. Study of Çatalhöyük burial practices demonstrate that the living physically moved deceased household members from specific buildings / rooms where they slept, worked, and eat food, to pre-identified rooms at death.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21511