The public tends to think of the archaeological method in terms of artifacts. Indiana Jones springs to mind for most people, recovering golden idols, the Arc of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and, if we must, crystal skulls. There is little thought given to the architectural and documentary information an archaeologist uses to determine relationships among people and specifically in the reconstruction of domestic activities and social relations within households. For essential research on domestic actions and social relations, archaeologists focus on households because they are “the fundamental social unit in many human communities (Allison 1999, p. 1; Ashmore and Wilk 1988, p. 1; Franklin 2004, p. xiii; Hirth 1993a, p. 21; Robin 2003, p. 308; Santley and Hirth 1993, p. 3 from Pluckhahn 2010, 332). There is also an immense amount of research value through a comparison of the micro-level household compared with the macro-level archaeology study of social and cultural change. The study of historic households delivers invaluable information about agency and power, gender, ritual and symbolism, and identity and ethnicity” (Pluckhahn 2010, 343). The archaeological study of households began focusing on economic and reproductive activities (cf.Hammel 1984; Netting 1993; Wilk and Rathje 1982 from King 2006, 297). The archaeological study of the historic household offers “a framework for comparative analyses through time and space” (Blanton 1994; Hirth 1993a, p. 21; Wilk and Netting 1984, p. 1 from Pluckhahn 2010, 332). More recently, a more comprehensive approach has developed, which considers household dynamics as “a more complex social practice” (King 2006, 297). This approach defines historic households as a process of evolving social life, rather than a static condition (King 2006, 297). King identifies several historic household interpretive methods that use theoretical frameworks “from those that abstract patterns from sets of site assemblages to more recent approaches emphasizing individual human agency and the contingencies of particular situations” (King 2006, 299).
Some archaeologists consider historical household dynamics in terms of conflict among the racial, class, gender, or ethnic lines, sometimes with a social Darwinian or evolutionary slant. Quite often, the economic and social-class status differentiation is the overarching goal (Pluckhahn 2010, 338). A functional or adaptive archaeological interpretation, a popular trend in the 70s and 80s, explains via patterning as a result of external pressures, social or environmental (King 2006, 299). This functional or adaptive approach received criticism for minimizing the conflicts in a competition for limited natural and social resources (King 2006, 300). It is easy to fall into the trap of considering all households the same, although there is justification for this method used as a comparison between large segments of society. Still, there is value in a carefully built framework for comparing differentiating groups, but it is essential to note the loss of individuality in this method. A modern archaeological approach understands historic households to be how “social and cultural relationships are produced and reproduced almost continuously” (King 2006, 299). This approach implies constant change through negotiation and the construction of meaning (King 2006, 299).
The archaeology of buildings reveals power structures, social status, religious practices, and even class conflict, among other factors, but it is especially powerful in combination with the interpretation of artifacts. The artifacts themselves can often suggest religious beliefs, ethnicities, nationalities, and the race of past generations. Variations in artifactual style, number, presence, or absence can indicate cultural changes and societal perspectives over varying lengths of time. Documentary evidence adds to the context of buildings and artifacts by filling in details impossible to discern otherwise, such as the number, age, occupation, sex, and marital status of former occupants. Documents also reveal the social dynamics of the larger society and how they relate to the household.
Put merely; documentary evidence can tell us about “life and developmental cycles not apparent through archaeology alone” (King 2006, 299). Documents are especially useful in determining social relations within a household by identifying age, gender, race, occupation, and education level. Additionally, documentary evidence often provides a direct or indirect account of changes within the household, such as births, deaths, and marital status changes. Combining building archaeology, excavated artifacts, and documentary evidence is the best-case scenario for archaeology, and honestly delivers more than the sum of the parts.
The excavation of buildings is nothing new in archaeology, although these endeavors were not always used to reconstruct historic households, but focused more on the palaces, citadels, and temples of the elite. Some of the earliest and most famous archaeological excavations that minimally included households are Heinrich Schliemann’s sites at Troy, Mycenae, and Tyrins, Arthur Evans’ Minoan sites on the island Crete, and Leonard Woolley’s excavation of Ur (Greene and Moore 2010, 36-48). In contrast, the excavation of Çatalhöyük, first excavated by James Mellaart in 1958, focuses almost exclusively on reconstructing historic households (Centre 2020). At Çatalhöyük and in general, the study of historic household structures helps to determine domestic functions and activities, the social class of the residents, the amount and nature of resource exploitation, which structures were communally or privately owned, supporting or refuting historical myth, and “compensating for omissions and ambiguities in historical sources” (Turlow 2009, 306). Aligning a structure, east-west or north-south, implies both a religious element and a sophisticated understanding of the physical world. Pluckhahn suggests that archaeologists have and should move from an “archaeology of households” to the archaeological reconstruction of “pasts with households” (Pluckhahn 2010, 341).
The spatial position of buildings often supplies information about social and household dynamics. Somewhat symmetrical patterns in house location can “represent the emergence of individual nuclear or extended families as the basic economic unit” (Pluckhahn 2010, 346). Most archaeologists agree that higher-status households are more significant than lower-status homes due to having more members, more control over resources, and the performance of more social functions (Pluckhahn 2020, 347-348). Detached kitchens in the 19th-century South “reinforced the subservience of slave women (and women’s work in general) through the habitus of daily life” (Pluckhahn 2010, 355).
King examines the layout of the Maryland colony led by founder and proprietor Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, in the late 1670s. King asserts that Calvert’s placement of the colony’s magazine on the public approach to his expansive brick home in Mattapany, Maryland demonstrates Calvert’s social and political power over the other colonists (King 2006, 293). Calvert subsequently built a log palisade around his property not only as protection against Native American attack but also as a social barrier between himself and fellow colonists (King 2006, 293). In comparison, King discusses a smaller plantation in the same area called Patuxent Point. Here, the settlers eschewed physical protections and social barriers, relying on the utilization of spiritual and supernatural methods. The colonists at Patruxent Point did not erect a palisade wall at all but instead dug a small pit directly outside their doorway and deposited “four broken inverted case bottles which had been placed in the ground intact, which, along with fragments of heavily rusted iron nails, suggest that these bottles were part of a ritual to defend against a witch’s spell (King 2006, 294). The similarity between the two sites is in the preoccupation with a need for protection (King 2006, 294). King concludes that these practices “illustrate both the meaning of structural remains, as well as the aggregate meaning of structural and artefactual remains” (King 2006, 294).
There is a wide array of archaeological artifacts typically found in the excavation of historic households, and these finds are the most common tool archaeologists use to interpret characteristics, social dynamics, individual roles, religious rituals, and domestic hierarchies in historic households. For example, Davidson’s study of households in Dallas, Texas found household ceramics, food refuse (e.g., animal bone, oyster shell), bottle and table glass, elements of clothing (e.g., buttons, buckles), tools, toys, personal items, and such household decorative items as ceramic figurines and other kinds of bric-a-brac” (Davidson 2004, 102). These items allow for the determination of social class, number, age, and occupation of residents, and also often suggest religious beliefs, ethnicities, nationalities, and the race of historical occupants. Archaeologist Paul Mullins, in a paper on African-American consumerism during the Victorian age, suggests that decorative objects found at nineteenth and early twentieth-century African-American residential sites demonstrate consumerism as a critical means by which blacks might cast off their white-imposed mantle of inferiority and achieve a measure of equality through judicious consumption” (Davidson 2004, 102).
Going even further, Deetz says that artifacts are also an indicator of cultural changes and societal perspectives over time. Studying aggregated assemblages found at New England household sites, Deetz argues that the artifacts reveal “a profound transformation in worldview over two centuries, from a ‘medieval’ perspective emphasizing an ‘organic, corporate commonality’ to the ‘Georgian mindset,’ one privileging rationalism, individualism, and privacy” (Deetz 1977 as cited in King 2006, 300). Many archaeologists influenced by Deetz’s models believe that “the rise of the modern world and the changes it brought about in worldview were clearly (and materially) evident in artifact patterning “(King 2006, 301).
Historical documents, when available, offer unique insight into numerous aspects of historic households and domestic dwellings. Whether these are mundane inventories, transaction records, storage counts, family histories, mythical tales, or religious tracts, documents present voices directly from past individuals, cultures, and organizations. Documents are extraordinarily powerful tools when coupled with archaeological information. According to King, documentary evidence helps to reveal the life and developmental cycles not apparent through archaeology alone (King 2006, 299). King offers the example of probate inventories, which can “reveal an individual’s material goods and debts at a single point in time, while meticulously recovered archaeological evidence can reveal other sorts of material goods, where these goods were used and discarded, and changes in household material culture through time” (Carson 1990; King and Miller 1987; Main 1982 as cited in King 2006, 299).
Davidson successfully coupled documentary evidence from the 1900 federal census with excavated archaeological evidence during his work at the nineteenth-century African-American neighborhood called Freedman’s Town in Dallas, Texas. Davidson notes the additional context provided by the census information that “a total of 71 individuals lived in the 16 residences on this block of Juliette Street” (Davidson 2004, 89). Additionally, the data demonstrated that the typical household on Juliette Street in 1900 was “composed of two-parent nuclear families (in some cases with additional persons, such as lodgers, older parents, etc.) were known in every case, save for three cases of single-parent households resulting from the death of a spouse” (Davidson 2004, 89). Davidson also used the documentary architectural evidence via city maps to provide information not possible through excavation; for example, the architectural footprint for each house, the approximate square footage, and that all of the homes on Juliette Street were single-story frame buildings, (1899 Dallas Sanborn Maps from Davidson 2004, 89-96). Additionally, the maps provided the identification of the largest house, approximately 1,100 square feet, the smallest house, around 300 square feet, and the average square feet per person, about 10 x 14 feet (Davidson 2004, 89-96). Additional information provided by comparing census documents included resident occupation and principal head of household, level of home-ownership and stability, and household cycles such as marriages, births, changes in employment, increase or decrease in wealth, age of residents, and deaths (Davidson 2004, 96).
The University of Florida’s excavation of Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island, started by Charles Fairbanks in 1968 and continued through 2015 by James M. Davidson, is an excellent example of combining architectural, artifactual, and documentary sources for information. Initially, the field of Plantation archaeology focused primarily on the slave owner and his family’s main house, and secondarily on farming and other structures related to production. This approach is not surprising, since production and consumption are “enduring themes in the archaeology of households” (Pluckhahn 2010, 342), and are elements that “archaeologists have traditionally used to define households (Pluckhahn 2010, 342). The Kingsley Plantation project is the “earliest attempt at plantation archaeology in the United States that specifically addressed issues about slave life” (Davidson 2015, 77). The excavation began with a focus on the architectural investigation of the slave quarters with “excavations exposing all or portions of the interiors of four slave cabins: W-12, W-13, W-15, and E-10” ( Davidson 2015, 79 from Davidson 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012). These cabins were among the sixteen tabby-walled slave cabins erected in 1814 by Zephaniah Kingsley on each side of Palmetto Avenue, the main road to the plantation. The cabins formed “an unusual and highly symmetrical semicircle or arc configuration” (Davidson 2007). The use of tabby as a construction material was typical in Florida during the eighteenth century, is a form of concrete made out of sand, oyster shell, and lime mortar (Sickels-Taves and Sheehan 1999 from Davidson 2015). Davidson notes that “Virtually all of the cabins consisted of two rooms, termed a ‘hall and parlor’ configuration” (Davidson 2015, 79).
The excavations within the slave cabins have produced an array of artifacts that “potentially held religious significance for the first-generation enslaved Africans who lived there between 1814 and 1839” (Davidson 2015, 76). The most notable artifact is the remains of a chicken believed to be a ceremonial sacrifice buried just inside a cabin doorway (Davidson 2015, 76).
“The bird’s body was constricted (i.e., wings tightly folded) and in alignment with the east wall of the cabin, with the spine essentially orientated on a true north/south axis. The neck extended from the body northwards, but then turned back towards the south, with the head/beak lying over the lower neck, and the right eye looking straight upward. The beak was completely intact and unaltered” (Davidson 2015, 86).

Research by Fairbanks at Kingsley Plantation led him to create a model emphasizing “socioeconomic patterns and status differentiation, based largely on table ceramics” (Davidson 2015, 78). Kingsley, and later John Solomon Otto, his doctoral student, were able to distinguish between Euro-American and African-American assemblages through the identification of native African utilitarian ceramics and African foodways (Baker 1980; Fairbanks 1974; Ferguson 1980; Orser 1990, pp. 122–124 from Davidson 2015, 78). To achieve the most in-depth understanding, according to Davidson, “one must attempt to discern intent through relatively precise contexts, modification of an object or objects, an unusual assemblage, and unique form” (Davidson 2015, 81). Determining items as mundane or supernatural is inherently speculative and always challenging. Davidson describes the problems of ambiguity and notes, “There can be no easy, mundane rationale that explains it” (Davidson 2015, 81).
Documentary evidence from Kingsley Plantation, while not detailing the exact origins of the slaves present on Fort George Island, consists of a list of slaves lost at Kingsley’s former plantation called Laurel Grove, which had been raided by Seminole Indians in 1810. According to Davidson, “This extraordinary list assigns nationalities, language groups, or embarkation points to some individuals, which can through extrapolation offer insight into those Africans who lived on Fort George Island between 1814 and 1839 “(Davidson 2015, 83 from Davidson 2007, p. 24).
Overall, material evidence is the most significant source of archaeological information. The recovery of artifacts provides us with new information about past occupants of a space, possessions, farming methods, political systems, and societal structures, but it can even correct misconceptions often passed down as legend and myth. Material evidence confirms the advanced rate of technological progress, military innovation, and population growth. Even so, the stories that archaeology tells are never as clear, concise, and as complete as possible. For example, determining artifacts as elements of household ritual is difficult, as “ritual objects may be quite ordinary, and ritual activity may be situated within quotidian tasks” (Bradley 2003; Hutson and Stanton 2007; Robin 2003, p. 321 from Pluckhahn 2010, 359). As a result, Pluckhahn suggests that “multiple lines of evidence may be required to identify feasting and other rituals at the household level” (Pluckhahn 2010, 361). The addition of architectural analysis and historical documents pushes our information as close as we can get to the truth.
Combining different sources of evidence to reconstruct domestic activities and social relations within households is an excellent advantage to archaeologists today. Still, determining the internal relationships within households remains a challenge. The archaeological record does not always reveal subtle variations in relationships of domination and resistance within social relations at the household level. The archaeology of buildings is an integral part of determining historical household dynamics, from social class to family size changes. Artifacts allow archaeologists immense insight into daily practices in historical households and are the most valuable tool in archaeology. Documentary evidence will enable archaeologists to zero in on specific individuals, their familial and household relationships, occupations, births and deaths, marriages and divorces, and reveal previous generations’ personalities. One of the advantages of studying historic households, in general, is that the household is a social formation to which many archaeologists can easily relate (Pluckhahn 2010, 333). Most everyone today is or has been part of a household. As long as there is awareness of potential pitfalls, it is a logical approach to consider households as “subsets of larger systems, the latter imposing on each household a degree of uniformity” (Pluckhahn 2010, 336). Although the methods and theories for studying historical domestic activities and social relations vary widely and are sometimes limited in scope, studying archaeology at the household level offers invaluable information that could not otherwise enhance our knowledge of the past. Ultimately, it is the combination of sources, buildings, artifacts, and documents, that gives archaeologists their most powerful tool and their best opportunity to complete accurate descriptions of the past.

Works Cited

Centre, U. W. (n.d.). Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük. Retrieved August 3, 2020, from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1405

Davidson, J. M. (2004). “Living symbols of their lifelong struggles”: In search of the home and household in the heart of Freedman’s Town, Dallas, Texas. In Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology (pp. 75-106). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Davidson, J. M. (2015). “A Cluster of Sacred Symbols”: Interpreting an Act of Animal Sacrifice at Kingsley Plantation, Fort George Island, Florida (1814–39). International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 19(1), 76-121. DOI:10.1007/s10761-014-0282-1

Greene, K., & Moore, T. (2010). Archaeology: An introduction. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 38-46.