ABSTRACT
Within the walls and under the sheltering roof of Middle Age houses, people slept, worked, prepared and ate food, gathered for social occasions and extended hospitality to others. The house could potentially be seen then as the main venue for the performance of personal and collective social identities. Indeed, archaeologists often see the house not merely as a backdrop for human action, but as a space through which social identities of social rank, gender, and kinship are ordered, produced, and reproduced over time, with doors, hearths, walls, and beds all constraining and enabling movement and daily practice.
