Figure - available from: Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
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The location of Hangleton in south-east England, plan showing the relationship between excavated buildings and the church of St Helen and plan of excavated and earthwork features at Hangleton (redrawn by Gethyn Long and Kirsty Harding after Holden, 1963)
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A new theoretical approach to medieval rural settlement, built on the concept of intensity, is proposed. It is argued that analysing settlements as intensive spaces creates new opportunities to explore the emergence of difference in medieval lived experience. The approach is intended to overcome the challenges posed by approaches to medieval archit...
Citations
... Understanding the organisation of a house space and the domestic activities conducted there is crucial for reconstructing the daily lives of household members, e.g. where and how they interacted and consequently negotiated their identities and status (Wilk and Rathje, 1982;Middleton and Price, 1996;Hutson, 2010;Milek and Roberts, 2013;Dalton, 2021;Jervis, 2022). In general, identification of activity areas tends to be challenging due to the unpredictable nature of site formation and post-depositional processes, as well as variation in patterns related to cleaning and deposition of waste in different spaces (Wilk and Schiffer, 1979;Stevenson, 1982;Tani, 1995;Milek and Roberts, 2013). ...
Understanding the organisation of domestic space and activity areas is crucial for reconstructing the daily lives of household members. The identification of activity areas tends to be challenging due to the unpredictable nature of site formation processes, as well as the variation in patterns related to cleaning and deposition of waste. Although the arid climate of the Nile Valley favours the preservation of organic material, cleaning of domestic spaces often leaves them without macro-remains of human activities. This paper presents the results of chemical analysis of floors from the excavation of a sun-dried brick house compound in the 17th century Old Dongola (Sudan). High-resolution sampling for elemental analysis provided a map of chemical enrichments indicative of anthropogenic input on surfaces cleared of macro-remains of human activities. The analysis of ethno-archaeological samples from the vicinity of the archaeological site and the calculation of the Chemical Index of Alteration helped to distinguish enrichments related to human activities as well as those related to various building materials of floors. As a result, the presented analysis allowed the identification of previously unrec-ognised activity areas, as well as the determination of some function of rooms within the house compound.
... A household is commonly identified as a social unit defined by the activities and behavior of co-resident groups extending beyond the space of the house (Beaudry, 2015;Bolender & Johnson, 2018: 66), often entangled with other social groups from outside the house, e.g., in the forms of agrarian or craft production (see Jervis, 2022). The houses, as well as people inhabiting them and all the objects and relations holding them together, make up heterogeneous assemblages (DeLanda, 2016: 20) that mutually constitute one another (Hutson, 2010: 112). ...
The period between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries in Old Dongola, Sudan, marks a significant political and religious transition. The Makurian kingdom collapsed, and in the sixteenth century, the city became subordinate to the Funj Sultanate. Simultaneously, domestic architecture exhibited a high level of uniformity, with urban space dominated by two-room houses clustered in compounds with a shared courtyard. In these transformative conditions, the seeming persistence of household requires explanation. This paper examines residues of human actions, applying a multielemental analysis of domestic floors of four house compounds dated from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It allowed us to understand domestic space in intensive terms, as created by everyday domestic activities. The analysis of macro- and micro-residues resulted in the identification of various ways particular households engaged with domestic space. In this study, the role of heterogeneous domestic space played in the persistence and changeability of households was discussed, particularly how the striated residential units coded relations of dwellers, while the smooth open spaces had creative potential. Lastly, it is proposed that the temporality of households did not align with the temporality of the political changes in the city.
... A posthuman approach allows our understanding of the historical importance of the household to further develop, by understanding them as more than groupings defined by human co-residence, instead being situated concentrations of relations between human and non-human participants (including the house, objects, animals, and plants), which is both coherent and drawn beyond itself into a wider constellation of relations (e.g. Bolender & Johnson, 2018;Harris, 2014;Jervis, 2022a). Such a perspective remains true to the original concept of household archaeology, in that it can be understood as a response to a problem of scale. ...
... In other words, universality of history and experience is the product of what they term the "coding" of relations (the ways in which the potential of relations to form or cause affect are constrained), a process which is contingent upon an ongoing process of production (Jervis, 2019, p. 38). This relational thinking has also begun to inform approaches to the archaeology of the household, seeing it not as a stable social unit but as a dynamic more-than-human relational composition, which is, itself, entangled in productive relations across scales (Bolender & Johnson, 2018;Jervis, 2022a). ...
It is proposed that combining a microhistorical approach with the frameworks offered by household archaeology and posthumanism provides a way of rethinking what urbanity means in archaeological (specifically later medieval) contexts. This approach is deployed to challenge generalising approaches which obscure the complexity, vibrancy, and generative capacity of past urbanities. Focussing on the question of the fortunes of later medieval small towns in England, a posthuman household microhistory of two households in the town of Steyning (southern England) is presented. This demonstrates how a focus on the practices undertaken by, and relational constitution of, households can reveal difference and open new avenues for understanding past urbanity.
... Presently, a household is commonly identified as a social unit defined by the activities and behaviour of co-resident groups extending beyond the space of the house (Beaudry, 2015;Bolender and Johnson, 2016: 66). Thus, households may comprise collectives entangled with other social groups from outside the house, e.g., in the forms of agrarian or craft production, rather than units defined by co-residence (see Jervis, 2022). This paper draws on the notion that houses, as well as people inhabiting them and all the objects and relations holding them together, make up heterogenous assemblages (DeLanda, 2016: 20) that mutually constitute one another (Hutson, 2010: 112). ...
Old Dongola, with a history reaching back to the 5th century AD, was originally the capital of Makuria, one of the three medieval Nubian kingdoms. After the collapse of Makuria, its capital city saw migratory movements and political changes that resulted in the emergence of new power relations. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the city was the seat of a local ruler subordinate to the Funj Sultanate. New communities that emerged in this setting inhabited the city until the colonial era. This paper examines the ways in which Funj-period households, as fundamental social units in Old Dongola, were mutually constitutive with houses, engaging with their spatiality and materiality through social practices. The authors investigate domestic labour, which was an essential factor in the negotiation of social differences and identities within the household. Differences in building techniques are analysed to compare various ways in which dwellers engaged with houses and to assess their implications for social differentiation within the city.
