ABSTRACT
Houses are much more than physical structures. Houses are homes, places of work, rest and worship. Houses are intimately related to those who inhabit or work in them. Houses are buildings which are inhabited and used by many different types of individuals or groups such as households of kin-related people, or gods or spirits, or specific objects such as ritual paraphernalia, or specific social groups with a particular purpose and function such as monks and nuns, school children, sick people, bureaucrats and business people. As such, houses express symbolically, through architectural design, decoration and layout, their purpose and the pertinent characteristics of their inhabitants. Houses ‘speak’ to the members of a community about socio-economic categories and values held by the community at large and about more local ones relevant to the household itself. A house ‘speaks’ to outsiders about its purpose and the status of its inhabitants.
