ABSTRACT

The bulk of the population of any pre-modern, and even modern, society is an elusive target for historical research. We know they existed and provided most of the labor that maintained the societies we study, but we do not know how to reach them. In societies with low levels of literacy, they cannot speak to the historian sifting through written evidence, and therefore they are often neglected. Some histories of the Assyrians, for instance, could leave one with the impression that the empire was created and maintained by a single man. How can we look for his subjects? Where can we find traces of their existence and learn something about them? We could look here at archaeology, the science that is not bound by writing to the people it studies. Excavations could reveal equally well the hovel of a day laborer as the palace of a king and show us what living conditions were. But, sadly, virtually no houses have been excavated, and none allow us to reconstruct how many people shared the same roof, how many pots and pans, and tools they had, where they slept, what they ate, and so on.