2. Today
• What is ‘domestic’ archaeology?
• What can it tell us about social history?
• Social revolutions and personal adaptations
3. The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
Ce-cil F. Al-ex-an-der, Hymns for Lit-tle Child-ren, 1848
Our domestic arrangements reveal a lot
about the society in which we live.
4. Domestic Spaces
Of or belonging to the home, house, or
household; pertaining to one's place of
residence or family affairs; household, home,
‘family’ Oxford English Dictionary
How have our domestic habits changed?
What can be considered domestic?
Can we see the signs of this changing world?
7. Social Changes and Personal
Responses
• Actually though changes in the ways that people live
can be enormous.
• Changes in society which we have already looked at
caused changes in lifestyle and housing
• But peoples houses were (and are!) also adapted and
modified to suit their needs and aspirations.
Houses are the manifestation of the
personal, family and social relationships
which make up domestic life.
8. Public and Private Spaces
We have come to associate the
domestic with the private this is a
very recent innovation in thinking
which even today doesn’t make
much sense.
11. Large Scale Changes
We can see these large scale changes in the
urban landscape.
A little bit of detective work can give us clues to:
• Why an area looks as it does
• When an area was developed
• Who an area was built for
13. Adaptation
Changes are still taking place, things which today seem
like they might be small additions (conservatories)
minor changes (knocking through into the dining room)
or adaptations which are now taken for granted
(conversion of houses to flats) may be seen as
‘watershed’ moments in the development of housing.
14. Conclusion
Domestic archaeology is the archaeology of
changing public and private space.
Changes happen quickly and can be seen in the
houses we live in (we are often responsible!)
15. During Coffee…
Changes in domestic life happen very quickly
How many cupboards do you remember in your parents or
grandparents houses when you were a child?
Who remembers seeing an outdoor toilet?
16. Optional Further Reading
Domestic Interiors
Downey, Georgina
Oxford, Berg 2013
English houses 1300-1800: vernacular architecture, social life
Johnson, Matthew
London, Longman, 240pp. 2010
Stuff
Miller, Daniel
Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010
Space, Property, and Propriety in Urban England
Harding, Vanessa.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Volume 32, Number 4, Spring 2002,
pp. 549-569 (Article)
Published by The MIT Press
Domestic Space: reading the nineteenth-century interior
Bryden, Inga and Floyd, Janet
Manchester and New York; Manchester University Press, 1999
Domestic Interiors Project Bibliography: http://csdi.rca.ac.uk/didb/biblio.php