Iroquoian Longhouses and Sociotechnical Assemblages

Summary

A better understanding of the role of domestic dwellings in shaping past social relations is needed. In this paper, Northern Iroquoian longhouses are studied as sociotechnical systems. This approach allows us to appreciate how social relations were generated and contested in the very activities of building and living in houses. I examine a sample of pre-Columbian longhouses from southern Ontario, Canada. Variation in aspects of house construction, spatial layout, and ritual indicates that sociotechnical networks associated with different houses were variable in scale, durability, and organization. What emerges is the sense that a dynamic, driving tension between forces of collectivization and atomization, inclusion and exclusion, lay at the heart of longhouse life.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21300