[Fotini Kondyli]

Call for papers: Archaeological Approaches to the Byzantine House Proposed Colloquium Session for the 2022 AIA Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, January 5-9, 2022

Co-organizers: Fotini Kondyli – Katerina Ragkou

Household archaeology has long been recognized as a fruitful avenue for peopling ancient living spaces, exploring the socioeconomic and political activities of ordinary people, and examining ancient households’ relation to broader social structures (Robin 2003; Souvatzi 2008). Yet the Byzantine house remains a more static unit of analysis, with emphasis in scholarship placed mainly on the description of empirical data and on issues of house typologies and function. On the one hand, such studies are important because they provide a solid foundation for the study of Byzantine houses, and if anything, more work is needed on the house form and function of non-elites. On the other hand, theoretical interpretive approaches can help us develop a more robust social archaeology of households and engage with larger conversations about Byzantine social and spatial practices through the study of micro-household histories.  This session seeks to contribute to the discussion of Byzantine houses in three main ways. The main goal is to explore how the study of houses relates to broader questions of individual and collective identities. We seek to reconstruct house and household biographies, relying on architectural and archaeological features, as well as finds assemblages. In doing so, we consider not only architectural forms and activity areas in and around houses, but also the sociopolitical role of households as reflected in the archaeological record. We also approach houses as both public and private spaces; we thus turn to houses’ spatial organization as well as to their relation with other structures and spaces such as churches and streets, and examine how such spatial practices informed and reflected notions of safety, privacy, comfort and collectiveness.  We are equally interested in the symbolic aspects of the Byzantine house from evidence of household cult and rituals to features as elements of social memory (e.g. household burials, use of spolia), and of socio-economic status (e.g. house facades, storage facilities). We seek contributions that span geographically and temporally and showcase different methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of the Byzantine house. We welcome the discussion of new archaeological material as well as the critical reevaluation of already published sites and houses. We particularly encourage junior colleagues to present their research, even if it is still “work in progress”.

If you are interested in giving a paper please email Fotini Kondyli: fk8u@virginia.edu

This topic was also posted in: Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest Group.

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