ABSTRACT
How should we study houses? I have argued that purely typological or economic approaches are inadequate in dealing with the interpretation of traditional architecture. Further, I have stressed that it is necessary, therefore, to look at what buildings meant, how they may have expressed or related to cultural values, in order to understand them fully. Having examined the specific context to be explored, this chapter will sketch out the theoretical issues in more depth. It will look in detail at the question of exactly how buildings may be expected to carry social meaning, and how this meaning may vary between region, time and social group. The literature on the general question of the meanings of architecture is vast, since this subject has already been tackled with some sophistication by the different fields of architectural theory, archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, symbolic anthropology and structural and semiotic theory. However, none of these fields has had to deal directly with the problems raised here of combining both diachronic and synchronic analysis, in other words of both change through time and of a particular point in time. Some discussion of the various perspectives available is therefore necessary, although this must involve covering some difficult theoretical ground.
