ABSTRACT
In prehistoric contexts, structural remains often appear less ambiguous than the social relations that formed them. However, architectural forms are dictated by the social conventions and practical needs of their occupants and cannot be effectively treated as spatial, rather than social, relations. Many attempts to investigate household space have presented domestic behaviour in universal terms (e.g. Kent 1990b,c; Rappaport 1990). This approach is vulnerable to much of the critique that has been aimed at processual archaeology on the basis that generalization effectively denies cultural variability (e.g. Bawden 1990; Lawrence 1990). Certainly in contemporary and historical studies the household has been shown to be highly variable (e.g. Netting at al. 1984; Blanton 1993; see also Brück & Goodman, Chapter 1 and Price, Chapter 3, this volume). Tringham (1991) offers an alternative approach to the study of prehistoric households which allows for this variability to be considered. Her concern is that generalized approaches to households propagate genderless, faceless interpretations of prehistory. To address this she proposes that the social relations of households should be reflected in how houses were used because they form an important context where those relations were played out. In this way, houses can be seen to have a use-life related to the developmental cycle of the domestic group inhabiting it. This view of the households allows structural remains to be seen as participating in and reflecting the lives of prehistoric people.
