Description
Book SynopsisHouseholds in Context shifts the focus from monumental temples, tombs, and elite material and visual culture to households and domestic life to provide a crucial new perspective on everyday dwelling practices and the interactions of families and individuals with larger social and cultural structures. A focus on households reveals the power of the everyday: the critical role of quotidian experiences, objects, and images in creating the worlds of the people who live with them.
The contributors to this book share contemporary research on houses and households in both Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to reshape the ways we think about ancient people''s lived experiences of family, community, and society. Households in Context places the archaeology and history of Greco-Roman Egypt in dialogue with research on dwelling, daily practice, and materiality to reveal how ancient households functioned as laboratories for social, political, economic, and religious cha
Table of Contents
Introduction: Houses, Households, and Homes: Toward an Archaeology ofDwelling
Households in Spatial Context: Settlements, Neighborhoods, and Urbanism
1. Egyptian Houses in Their Urban and Environmental Contexts: Some Case Studies of the Roman and Late Roman Periods
2. Neighborhood Networks: The Civic and Social Organization of Accessways in Ancient Karanis
3. The Tower Houses of the Hellenistic Period: A Solution to the Urban Pressure within Egyptian Towns and Villages
Households in Social Context: Families, Individuals, and Communities
4. The Papyrus Trail: Houses and Households in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
5. Habitatio: Transfer of Houses and Rights of Residence in Roman Egypt
6. Unsafe Houses in Greco-Roman Egypt: Forms and Locations of Violence
Households in Practice: Production, Consumption, and Discard
7. Modes of Production and Reproduction in Roman-Era Egyptian Villages
8. Domestic Discard: The Making and Unmaking of Romano-Egyptian Houses
Households in Cosmic Context: Religion and Ritual
9. Figurines and the Material Culture of Domestic Religion
10. The Supernatural Vulnerabilities of Domestic Space in Late Antique Egypt: Perspectives from the "Magical" Corpus
Expanding the Household: Dwelling Practices in Monastic and Military Contexts
11. Three Monks and a House: The Archaeology of Monastic Houses in Byzantine Egypt
Domestic Activities in Alternative Settings: The Ptolemaic Fort at Bi'r Samut, Egypt
Afterwords: Perspectives from Pharaonic Egypt and the Classical World
1. Greco-Roman Households in Pharaonic Perspective
2. Contextualizing Houses, Households, and Homes in the Classical World and Beyond
