T D S R V O L . I I I N O .

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MEN AND WOMEN IN PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE

R U T H T R I N G H A M
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CAT HER I NE e HAN G

Many aspects of the use and significance of space that are considered vital to the study of tra-

ditional architecture, such as gender relations in domestic space, have been minimized in the

treatments of architectural remains in archaeology. This paper examines the rationale for

restricting the facts of prehistoric architecture to building techniques and stylistic variability.

It then attempts to overcome these limitations byan experimental interpretation of prehistoric

architectural remains from Neolithic villages in Yugoslavia that addresses the social actions

of men and women in domestic space. The experiment involves a different standpoint on the

construction of knowledge about prehistory, the creative use of graphic representation, and

a critical examination of the archaeologist as mediator between past and present.

THE PREHISTO RY A ND A NCIENT HISTORY OF A RCHITECTURE

RUTH TRINGHAM is a Professor ofAnthropology at the University
ofCalifornia, Berkeley.
CATHERINE CHANG is a graduate ofthe Department ofLandscape
Architecture at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.
have been written on the basis of "facts" provided by archae
ologists. Domestic architectural remains have been preserved
in the archaeological record for many thousands of years.
Their spatial distribution and stratigraphic sequence com
prise, for many archaeologists, the main focus of their excava
tions and the most important aspect of the archaeological
record. Those historians of architecture who have been inter
ested in traditional architecture and who have used this
prehistoric archaeological data have written histories that are
arid, uncreative and dehumanized in comparison to histories
of later architecture and in comparison to the analysis of
modern traditional architecture.' They have limited their
histories, for example, to tracing the origins of building
technology' or to providing evidence for the origins and
diffusion of certain archetypal f oor plan forms.3
10 TDS R 3.1
Many of these limitations have been forced by the nature of
the archaeological studies themselves , especially those that
deal with the prehistoric period, in which the architectural
remains are bereft of any supporting historical archival data.
It is true that the poor preservation of most archaeological
architecture is a severe limiting factor. The ground plan,
foundation works, and, possibly, the lower part of the super
sttucture are generally all that remain of a building on an
archaeological site 4 These must form the basis for any recon
structions of the missing upper parts of the superstructure
(including the roof).
I shall point out in this paper, however, that such limited use
of the architectural remains is not an inevitable fate to which
those who use prehistoric data must resign themselves, but
rather a construct of archaeologists. The process by which ar
chaeologists reconsttuct prehistoric buildings into the kinds of
sttuctures that architects, architectural historians and an
thropologists are used to visualizing in traditional contexts is
a complex series of inferential steps. In practice, each of these
steps is fraught with its own challenge of validation and the
overriding problem of ambiguity. To ignore the ambiguity
and to work within the illusion that the reconstruction is a
"proven fact" is to claim that one's interpretation is knowl
edge rather than a "mode of transmitting knowledge."s
My aim in this paper is to encourage the critical examination
of the sources ofambiguity in the recording and interpretation
of archaological buildings. It will dare to provoke the reader
into facing the ambiguities of archaeological data and ac
tively participating in the process of envisaging past life. This
will be done by presenting reconstructions of archaeological
buildings in which some i nformation is hidden, in which the
viewer is invited to use his or her imagination, and in which
the viewer is invited to play with hypothetical alternative
interpretations. Expanding on my previous work, I shall offer
a more creative and humanistic way of looking at archaeo
logical architecture than that available in the reigning de
humanized, normatized view 6
A DEHUMANIZED AND NORMATIZED VIEW O F
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
The dominant interests of traditional archaeology have fo
cused on technological development, social evolution, and
ecological adaptation. By "traditional" I refer to the work of
American and European archaeologists, practicing both New
(Modern) and not so New Archaeology. In one way or another
studies by these researchers (whether they are concerned with
architecture or not) proceed by extrapolation, the assumption
of a normatized behavior for a whole population on the basis
of a well studied, but restricted sample. Architectural discus
sions in traditional archaeology have focused on building ma
terials, construction techniques, and labor (in terms of man
power needed in construction);? on the adaptation of house
construction to different ecological conditions;8 on activities
within the building;9 on the form and style of the building in
terms of its ground plan and two dimensional division of
space;1O and on the structure and grammar of spatial distances
between buildings and between different elements within
buildings . >! If the people who inhabited or used a building
appear at all in discussions of it, it is normally to make
statements about demographic variability, that is, about the
number of people who resided in the enclosed space based on
its square footage and the use of general correlations between
family structure and use of space.' 2
Another characteristic of most traditional studies is their
treatment of buildings as f nished artifacts. Recently, how
ever, some studies have begun to take into account variables
that might affect the preservation (or lack thereof) of archi
tecture on archaeological sites and the implication this vari
ability might have for the archaeological record. The idea here
is that a building like a person has a life history during
which its form and utilization can be modified, and eventu
ally, the nature of these changes will affect the appearance of
the building in its archaeological persona.')
Some recent studies have therefore theorized that expectations
could be proposed and tested using available empirical ar
chaeological data as to what would happen to a building
during its use life: from its planning, construction, occupa
tion and maintenance, through its decay, abandonment, de
struction and eventual replacement. The aim of such enter
prises is to be able to design "middle range research" that will
provide a rigorous framework within the rules of scientific
methodology for testing the validity of hypotheses about
human behavior by observing archaeological (in this case,
architectural) remains.'4 Test expectations about the modifi
cation of buildings have come from such sources as ethno
graphic (in particular ethnoarchaeological) observations'5 and
actual experimentation with traditional building materials.'6
Surprisingly, however, these recent considerations of build
ings as artifacts which have gone through various stages oflife,
f nally encompassing dirt, decay and abandonment, have not
led to a great change in the way archaeological architecture is
interpreted and reconstructed textually or graphically. Nei
ther has it led to an increase in the depiction of people in
reconstructions. In this sense, archaeological architecture
remains as dehumanized as ever. It is worth examining how
and why this has happened.

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASIS FOR SCIENTIFIC
VALIDATION O F RECONSTRUCTIONS OF
PREHISTORIC ARCH ITECTURE
Three interrelated conditions exist which contribute to the
continued passive and arid nature of the graphic and textual
representation of archaeological architecture, and which will
have to be changed before the writing of prehistory can be
humanized: (l) the requirement of attributing the archaeo
logical record to past behavior; (2) the dominance of interest in
mac to scale questions; and (3) the consideration of material
culture (architecture) as a passive ref ection of behavior.
According to the methodology of logical, positivist science (a
dominant way of creating knowledge in Western society), it is
the ability to assign the archaeological record directly or indi
rectly to behavior that enables the empirical testing of hy
potheses about past human social and economic behavior.
This theoretical and methodological framework is based on
the supposition that material culture is a passive refection of
society's behavior. According to this view, any action by which
social behavior has modif ed a material (i.e., architecture) can
potentially be reconstructed given an analysis that is careful
enough to extract the right information from the material.
The other side of this coin, however, is that any action that did
not modify the archaeological record, or which cannot be
identified as having modified it, cannot be reconstructed and
is therefore not testable. Thus, many aspects of the use and
signifcance of space that anthropologists and architects con
sider vital to the study of traditional architecture have consis
tently been ignored or minimized in the archaeological treat
ment of architectural remains. Among these aspects are social
relations, especially those based on gender and age, and the
social action of individuals within space. The rationale for the
exclusion of these areas from study is that it is impossible to
demonstrate conclusions about them with any scientific valid
ity, since they are refected only very indirectly in the material
culture. In other words, the archaeological data cannot be
attributed to these actions, categories or relationships.
Attempts to attribute architectural units in the archaeological
record to specif c social units, such as the "family" or "house
hold, " or "male" or "female" spaces, have been countered by
ethnographic or ethnoarchaeological cautionary tales that
warn researchers of the dangers of such an approach.I? The
result has been that topics such as prehistoric people and their
variability at a micro scale (within the family or the house
hold, or between men, women and children) have been re
garded as untestable and have consequently been marginalized. IS
As can be seen from the list of topics covered by studies of
archaeological architecture, "what has dominated the interest
T R I N G H A M: P R E H I S T O R I C A R C H I T EC T U R E 11
and energies of archaeologists in the (re)construction of pre
historic life has been what goes on beyond the household
the corporate production of surplus goods, exchange and
alliances on a regional and inter regional scale, the struggle of
humans to control the environment, the hierarchies and
dominance structures between settlements. "19 This has been
the case even though most archaeological excavations of settle
ments retrieve data which is most pertinent to the study of
households and the products of domestic labor (housework).
At the macro scale, however, an archaeologist is more able to
accept generalized assumptions about household action,20
despite the fact that these have been severely criticized as
underestimations of the richness and variability of the social
context of domestic action. 21 "Meanwhile prehistory which
continues to use them is left hanging in a cloudy nowhere
land of faceless, genderless categories. ""
GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION I N
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE: THE
ARCHAEOLOGIST AS MEDIATOR
The accepted strategies of graphic representation of archi
tecture in traditional archaeology manifest the same charac
teristics of dehumanization mentioned at the beginning of the
previous section. In textbooks on archaeological illustration,
the "right" or "appropriate" way of illustrating excavated
buildings emphasizes accuracy (of scale, for example) and
clarity in the presentation of empirical archaeological data
(i . e . , as much as possible is to be represented) in order to allow
the possibility of using the illustrations even reconsttuc
tions as the basis of further research.2) Most projections in
archaeological reports are orthographic (two dimensional).
As for three dimensional representations, axonometric pro
jections are preferred because they can show exterior and
interior spaces, and because they emphasize the main source
of empirical information, that is, the ground plan . 2 4
Jean Paul Bourdier has, however, pointed out in the context
of comments on the nature of postmodernism in the study of
traditional architecture that "representation plays a central
role" as the "mode of transmitting knowledge."25 Expanding on
this theme, I would say that the archaeologist, like the architect
and anthropologist, can also act as a mediator, limiting or en
couraging the reader to view, visualize and imagine the build
ings of the past and their inhabitants. He or she can accom
plish this through the medium of graphic representation.
It is by understanding and accepting this role as mediator that
archaeologists may identify the sources of ambiguity present
in the graphic illustrations that they use to record and
interpret archaeological architecture. The primary condition
12 T D S R 3.1
here is that it is the archaeologist who selects what is to be
represented and emphasized about a building's construction,
whether concerning its exterior appearance or ground plan,
and it is he or she who also determines how this will be rep
resented. Thus, the archaeologist structures both his/her and
the reader's experience of the building by choosing between
graphic variables (e. g . , between a two dimensional or a three
dimensional representation).,6
Choices made in the process of graphic representation ref ect
much about the excavatorlinterpreter/(pre)hisrorian in ad
dition to his/her basic knowledge about structures and build
ing materials. For example, they refect the priority he/she gives
to different questions: for example, what interests him/her,
what kinds of questions he/she thinks others would ask about
a building, and who he/she thinks would ask these questions
(other archaeologists, architectural historians, museum visi
rors). They ref ect what he/she thinks of the power of archaeo
logical data to validate ideas: for example, when he/she thinks
it is appropriate and "legitimate" ro use speculation and
imagination, and when it is not. They reflect his/her assump
tions about the way space is lived in by people: whether space
is a passive or active arena, and to what extent the things people
do there relate ro how they interact with one another. And
they reflect his/her underlying assumptions/philosophy about
the past: about the role of the past in the present and future and
about the lives of men, women and children in the past.
Critical examination of the archaeologist as an active media
tor between the past and the present has only very recently
become an issue in archaeological literature. 27 The power of
graphic representation to ref ect and mediate (transmit knowl
edge), however, is something that has virtually never been
discussed in archaeology, even in its postmodern manifesta
tion.'8 When so much archaeological literature has been de
voted to the methods ofarchitectural reconstruction by graphic
representation, it is surprising that so little of this has been
devoted ro "what has informed the drawing and what has
inspired the drawing. "'9
The power of an archaeologist ro manipulate and mediate
between past and present is expressed well by Bourdier's
evaluation ofthe different representational methods available.
As mentioned above, mainstream archaeologists favor axono
metric projections in the reconstruction of buildings. Bourdier
also favors axonometric projection over, for example, perspec
tive views but for very different reasons. In Bourdier's
opinion, perspective drawings encourage passive involve
ment by the viewer, which contrasts sharply wi th the challenge
to both drawer and observer provided by the cutaway axono
metric view.JO With the latter, the drawer has the power to
mitigate the overall crystal ball effect by determining where
the drawer is positioned, how distortions from constructed
perspective will be handled, and what will be hidden and
what revealed 3' In this fashion, the drawer "[invites} the
reader to imagine the experience of walking through several
spaces with their offered and hidden views . . . . The active
involvement of the reader is provoked not only by the unusual
angle of view but also by the range of reading possibilities and
itineraries suggested. The reader . . . must choose and make
up a personal reading path. ")2
Within this framework of archaeologist as mediator, one must
further ask how the aridity of present methods of showing pre
historic lives can be explained in the reconstructions of prehis
toric structures. With one or two exceptions,33 there has been
no discussion in archaeological literature of whether or not to
include people in a reconstruction and if so, how and where
to do so. When people are included in a drawing, they are
generally added more for scale than for humanizing effect. 14 Is
it that people are irrelevant or indemonstrable in prehistory?
Graphic representation and reconstruction are traditionally
aimed at showing what the building looked like when f rst
built or at the height of its occupation. Its modif cation, wear
and tear, partial abandonment, and so on are usually avoided,
as are things such as mud, grime, or people that might clutter
up the pristine material object and detract from the vital
information of material remains!
A H U MAN IZED/ENGENDERED STUDY OF
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARCH ITECTURE
If one does not wish to assume that buildings in the past were
built and occupied by faceless "units of social co operation"
which carried out housework comprising a universal pattern
of devalued at home social action, and if one does not wish to
assume that the roles and relations of men and women in
domestic space have been more or less uniform over time, then
where does one start? If one does not assume that the built
environment looked the same to prehistoric eyes as it does to
ours, should one attempt to visualize it through their eyes; and
if so, how should one proceed? For prehistorians, at least, not
even the historical context is a given entity; it must be created.
If household activity, gender relations, and perception of
space are also not given, then where does one start in the
construction of a humanized prehistory? How can the study
of archaeological architecture be humanized , and would such
a "humanization" make a difference?
A similar question was recently asked with reference to the
"engendering" of prehistory in genera[ l5 and to the "engen

dering" of the study ofpast architecture.l6 "Engendering" must
be understood here as comprising a crucial dimension of the
"humanizing" of the past. As Conkey and Gero point out, to
engender the past does not mean to search for the material
correlates ofgender roles in the archaeological record.l7 In other
words, it does not mean attributing the archaeological record
to gender categories. The aim must rather be to produce a vis
ibility of gender as a social force in the visualization of the
human actors in and around reconstructed archaeological
buildings.l8 But how is one to do this and still retain respectabil
ity within the academic mainstream of "scientif c archaeology I "
Answers to these dilemmas have been considered in some of
the post processual or postmodern trends in archaeology,
including those evident in recent archaeological srudies
within the framework of feminist epistemological theory.l9
One answer proposed by these works lies in treating the
material culture itself in this case, the archaeological record
of architecture differently, so that "traditional" passive
ref ective assumptions about the role of the past built environ
ment are turned around into an "active" medium for and
symbolic expression of, for example, tensions caused by gen
der relations and dominance structures 40 In fact, the built
environment can thus be thought of as the context, or arena,
of social action 4'
Another answer that has been proposed lies in a reevaluation
of the epistemological basis for the creation of knowledge.
This may allow us to avoid being required to attribute the
archaeological record to function, gender, or "domestic unit"
even before we can consider it within the context of gender
relations or household tensions. This involves changing to a
research strategy with a different standpoint on ambiguity
and the scientifc method, one that has been elegantly de
scribed by a number of philosophers.42 An essential aspect of
this strategy is the critical interplay of a variety of interpreta
tions and readings of archaeological architectute, in what
Conkey has referred to as a "dialectics of interpretations,"
where complexity goes well beyond the j uxtaposition of
alternative hypotheses and scenarios.4)
In this way, ethnoarchaeological studies and ethnographic
observations of residential architecture may be used for more
than cautionary tales about the limits of archaeological infer
ence. They can be used to help formulate expectations in
terms of variability in architectural remains that express and
ref ect changes in the role, relations and actions of men and
women in the household in prehistory. They allow the for
mulation of empirical hypotheses and/or "readings" of the
archaeological record on architecture and associated debris in
a rich variety of ways.44
TR I N G H A M : P R E H I STORIC A R C H I T E C T U R E . 13
The graphic representation o f humanized/engendered social
action in its architectural context is a more complex process
than simply "adding men, women and children." What in a
dehumanized presentation of archaeological architecture
would involve only a straightforward presentation of the
building materials, reconstructed in a simple series of foor
plans, elevations, and possible metric and perspective projec
tions (FIGS. 1 5), becomes in a humanized prehistory a highly
complex series of graphic images to illustrate the perception of
space by both archaeologist and prehistoric actor (FIGS. 8 10).
The images are made complex by several elements. For
example, an individual's perception of space will change
duting his/her lifetime according to changes in his/her age and
power to negotiate, and according to changes in the overall
context of social action. Moreover, according to Allan Pred's
"Theory of Place," not only do occupants ofa building perceive
its spaces differently during the coutse of their lives, but the
building itself is a dynamic space with a use life and history.
At any one time, Pred says, a "place" should incorporate the
historical trajectories of not only the animate actors who meet
there, but also its own identity as an inanimate arena of the
social action 45 For this reason, an archaeologist may choose to
represent the building at the moment of its construction, at
some mid point of its occupancy when it is still relatively new,
as it approaches the end of its life and dilapidation sets in, or
after it has been abandoned and/or destroyed.
Moreover, the use of a multitude of views, with spaces hidden
and revealed, allows the introduction of an additionally com
plicating element to this representational process, the active
participation of the viewer in the construction of prehistory,
as opposed to his/her status as a passive recipient of "knowl
edge. " Within such a framework, nothing can be taken for
granted as to the content or method of graphic interpretation.
There must be critical awareness of prehistory on the part of
the constructor as well as critical awareness by the viewer of
whether (and why) the archaeologist has chosen to make
certain aspects of the past invisible.
For example, one can return to the question of why people
have been left out of reconstructions of architectural history
in traditional archaeology. The overt explanation is that
people cannot be "proven" by means of the empirical evidence.
But one might also suggest that, as mediator between past
and present, the archaeologist him/herself ref ects many as
sumptions that may be held (albeit subconsciously) in the
contemporary Western mind. One of these is that the rich
variability of human relations in the domestic sphere is
irrelevant to the course of human history. In this way, what
men and women do in relation to domestic space their
14 T D 5 R 3.1
CLAY FURNITURE
POSTHOLE
negotiations for power, about housework, and where to put
the garbage will not affect the way in which cultural rules
are formed and transformed. It is further assumed that al
though the domestic sphere may be the source of most of our
knowledge about prehistory and early history, it is only in the
supra domestic world of public buildings that important
political action took place, the domestic sphere being merely
the passive background to the latter.
A few archaeologists have begun to explore ways in which
some of these assumptions and sources of ambiguity about
prehistoric architecture can be brought to the foreground and
treated as a starting point for a more humanized prehistory.
OPOVO, YUGOSLAVIA: A CASE STUDY OF
HUMANIZED PREH ISTORY
To demonstrate the potential value in the consideration of
variability at a micro scale, two villages are considered here
whose remains are part of the archaeological record excavated
at the Neolithic sites of Divostin and Opovo in northeast
Yugoslavia.46 These are two contrasting sites, in that Divostin
represents a large village in the fertile, wooded, hilly area
south of the Danube River, whereas Opovo is a small hamlet
in the less hospitable (for farmers) marshlands north of the
Danube. Both villages belong ro the later part of the Late
Neolithic/Early Eneolithic Vinca culture (ca. 4400 4000 B.C.).
We surmise (with a bit of poetic license), moreover, that they
were occupied contemporaneously.
OSb BURNED CLAY RUBBLE
@ CERAMICS
These settlements, like all those of the Late Neolithic/Early
Eneolithic ofSourheast Europe, are characterized by the burned
remains ofdwellings that were built on a framework of uprigh t
wooden posts dug into the ground and had walls of planks,
logs or wattling covered on one or both surfaces by a thick layer
of clay daub. Their foors comprised a thick layer of clay which
was frequently spread over a substructure of horizontal logs or
planks. On the archaeological sites, the whole structure appears
as a bright orange or red mass of burned, collapsed clay rubble
in which the shadows of the wooden framework are impressed
(FIG. 7). Postholes are visible beneath the f oors, and the fact
that there are from one to three rows ofinternal posts indicates
a gabled roof. The traditional floor plan indicates a rectangular
detached house, ca. 6 meters wide, varying in length from
6 20 meters (FIGS. 1,3).
The architectural remains are well preserved because of fire,
but they date f rmly to the prehistoric period and are fully
subject to all the problems of validation and the challenges of
reconstruction discussed earlier. Most importantly in this re
gard, the archaeological remains are separated by many thou
sands ofyears from any written sources, and it would be unwise
to extrapolate backwards through the millennia from descri p
tions of continental European architecture in the records of
Classical Rome or Greece, or even in the Medieval period.
The "traditional" architectural reconstruction ofVinca culture
houses, as expressed graphically in the archaeological litera
ture by simple elevations and isometric projections, focuses,
as might be expected, on how the houses were constructed and
 T R I N G HA M : P R E H I S T O R I C A R C H I T E C T U R E 15

+ + + +

V I T R I F I E D SINTERED
R U BBlE

[il H O U SE R U B B LE

F I XE D HOUSE
R U B BlE

P O T T E RY, FIGUR I N E ,
CLAY W E I G H T

OVEN FLOOR

G R I N D STO N E

D HUMUS

I I I , UN ( Q N S OL I O A T E 0
I r l l l I lil R UB B L E

1 , , 1 ,

58 [Iil E A R TH R U BBLE

FIG. I. (OPPOSITE PAGE) Neolithic site of

Divostin, Yugoslavia. Floor plan ofHouse I4 (afer
Bogelanovic, I988, Plan VII).
FIG. 2. (ABOVE) Neolithic site ofGpovo, Yugosla

via. Floor plan ofHouse 2.

FIG. 3. (RIGHT) Neolithic site ofDivostin, Yugo

slavia. Reconstructed elevation ofHouse I7 (afer

Bogelanovic, I988, jig. 5.28)
16 T D S R 3.1
FIG. 4 . (TOP)Neolithic site ofDivostin, Yugosla
via. Reconstructedprojection ofHouse I7 (afer
Bogdanovic, I988, jig. p8).
FIG. 5. (BOTTOM) Neolithic site ofOpovo, Yugo
slavia. Reconstructedprojection ofHouse 5.
subdivided, and what artifacts and furnishings were found
inside them (FIGS. 1 5),41 Variability in construction focuses
on the foundations (diameter, depth and distribution ofposts,
presence/absence of bedding trenches, clay foundation layer,
timber sub f oor, clay covering of the floor, and the length of
f oor area). The superstructure of the houses has been less
subject to analysis until recently since the empirical data is
harder to f nd . But it generally involves topics such as the use
of different forms and size of timber elements for the frame
(split logs, planks, wattling, etc. ) and the type of daub mix
tures used (i.e. for inner and/or outer surfaces, from varying
mixtures dung, chaff, sand, etc . ) . Discussion of the roof of
prehistoric houses has been especially active when a clear
pattern of postholes is present, as with the Neolithic Linear
Pottery culture houses of Central Europe,.8 but this condition
is rarely present in the Neolithic houses of Southeast Europe.
The traditional reconstruction and i nterpretation of Vinca
culture architecture has been enhanced by detailed research we
carried out at Opovo during 1983 89 . This provided infor
mation on variability of materials, labor requirements and
expenditure in this type of building, external and internal
elaboration of buildings, general spatial arrangement, ex
pected use life of materials, attempts to prolong the use life of
structures, re use of materials, and the nature of the f nal
destruction and abandonment of the site. This comprises part
of the design of middle range research at Opovo to investigate
how various social processes might have been ref ected in
buildings at different stages of their useful lives (FIG. 6).49
The site of Opovo presented some striking contrasts with
what archaeologists had come to expect as the pattern of Late
Neolithic Vinca culture along the Danube River and in the
fertile agricultural valleys and hills to its south, as exemplif ed
by Divostin. The houses at Opovo are at the low end of the
length range for Vinca culture houses. Our overall impression
was that the houses at Opovo were also less well prepared and
less long lived than the majority of Vinca culture houses, and
that the households represented in them were shorter lived and/
or less well established than those in large villages such as
Selevac, Gomolava, Divostin and Vinca in the primary agri
cultural regions of Southeast Europe at this time. 50 This im
pression was strengthened by associated features such as the
relative lack of storage facil ities and vessels and the high
percentage of wild animals among the faunal remains.
Traditionally, archaeologists would have had no problem
explaining these differences by the fact that the "domestic"
structures and the behavior of the occupants of the houses at
Opovo represented an adaptive response to the special eco
logical conditions of this area, which is marshier and less

fertile than the forested region south of the Danube and in the
Morava river basin.
We (the research team of the Opovo project) prefer ro in
terpret the situation at Opovo according to two other possible
scenarios. One proposes that Opovo was a special purpose, short
term, perhaps seasonal settlement oriented toward a limited
range of activities, such as the extraction ofcertain raw materials.
Alternatively, we suggest that Opovo was a more permanent
"bud off' settlement from one of the larger Vinca culture
villages south of the Danube (for example, Vinca itself), and
consisted of a "junior" or "disenfranchised" household(s) mov
ing onto agriculturally marginal land.
In both alternative models we would expect to see much of
the exchange network and symbolic expression and elabora
tion of the Vinca culture settlements intact at Opovo, as
indeed we do. What is changed is that the full complement
of production activities (tool production, storage) is not
present. In both models we would also expect the household
to have a different form and activity than that evident in the
well established, stable households of the aggregated villages
to the south. According to the f rst model, only a limited
number of people would have occupied the settlement at any
one time, possibly of one predominant gender or age group;
consequently one would not expect the kind of cooperation in
production, distribution and reproduction one might f nd in
the larger sites. According to the second model, we would
expect to see a fully developed, stable household organization
with cooperation in production and distribution, but only at
an initial stage of development and only with strong ties of
alliance with the "homeland. "
To demonstrate how these general models o f socioeconomic
change can be translated into the variability observed in the
archaeological architecture, I will focus in this discussion on
the interior spatial arrangement of the houses. The houses at
Opovo contrasted to the Vinca culture houses south of the
Danube by being shorter than average so that they were
almost square (although their width is almost the same as
elsewhere 5 . 5-6 meters).
The variable length of Vinca culture houses ( 6 30 meters)
may be the result of a variable number of subdivisions or
rooms. The Late Neolithic dwellings of Southeast Europe,
including those of the Vinca culture at Divostin and Gomolava,
are characterized by internal f oor to ceiling walls that subdi
vide them into rooms. In the literature on the house forms of
Neolithic Europe, there is still a lively debate as to how such
internal subdivisions of dwellings should be interpreted Y
The crux of the problem is whether the individual rooms
TR I N G H A M : P R E H I ST O R I C A R C H I T E C T U R E 17
housed separate social subdivisions o f the household, or
whether each household was made up of a small nuclear unit
with a complement of functionally specif c rooms (kitchen,
storeroom, cow room, etc.). The dwellings at Opovo were
unusual in having no internal divisions into rooms. In one
house (FIG. 3) there was a low partition wall separating the
oven and food preparation area from the rest of the dwelling.
Another showed evidence of a second story P But internal,
full height walls were absent.
Hunter Anderson has correlated the internal compartmen
talization of rectangular space with the complexity of the
dominance structure and the organization of activities and
meanings within a building.53 Following this hypothesis, one
can conclude that the short, one roomed Opovo buildings,
with their lack of compartmentalization, may have been
occupied by households whose activities and complexity were
very different from those who occupied the large, multi roomed
houses to the south. The following section will try to pry be
neath this impersonal analysis to follow up the vast implica
tions for social relations and social action embedded in this
contrast in compartmentalization.
DIALECTICS OF INTERPRETATION: A
GRAPHIC ESSAY
In our experiment at humanizing the graphic representation
of archaeological architecture, we have attempted to express
some aspects of living in prehistoric domestic space whose
construction is based in the empirical details of the archaeo
logical data. 54 The excavation and analysis of the architectural
materials carried out at Divostin and Opovo and other Vinca
culture sites provide material parameters as to how the houses
were built, furnished and destroyed that go beyond superf cial
appearance and association.
Our experiment is based on the premise that the same empiri
cal data can be interpreted in various ways textually and
graphically by different archaeologists holding different ideas,
philosophies and priorities about what needs to be shown.
These varying interpretations and images are not in compe
tition as to which is more "accurate." Instead, the very plurality
of their presentation, if each is done with enough critical self
awareness, ensures a healthy dialectic of interpretation. Alison
Wylie suggests that archaeological data is not "infnitely
plastic."55 Evidence will constrain the free f ow of the imagi
nation, leading to certain constructions of the past that are more
plausible than others. Thus, to ignore the material parameters
ofarchitectural variability mentioned above would be to remove
all plausibility from our humanized imaginings.
18 T D S R 3.1
But we need more than the excavated material record the
floor plan of the house, the ovens, the ceramics, the figurines,
the household debris. As aids to our creative imagination we
have used comparative observations on space from ethnogra
phy and history for inspiration. 56 The result is graphic visu
alization that sometimes goes well beyond the boundaries of
traditionally acceptable "scientific postulation."
In the original study I began at Gpovo in 1983 in contrast
to that which is beginning to be practiced now the
information on architectural variability would have been as
sumed to provide a passive ref ection of the actions and
behavior of prehistoric households. The end product of the
study would have been a comparison of the architectural and
associated artifactual materials to test conclusions about the
variable actions of households according to various scenarios.
The ultimate aim of the research would have been to attribute
certain architectural features and spatial patterns of associated
materials to units of economic and social cooperation (i . e . ,
households). This would have provided a first and scien
tifically legitimate step in identifying and eventually
reconstructing the transformation of households in prehis
toric Gpovo. Now, however, this same information is being
regarded as providing us (the archaeologists) and them (the
prehistoric men and women) with the material contextofthose
actions and relations and tensions. It is being used as a starting
point to construct a different kind of prehistory, one written at
different scales of analysis and theorizing.
My entry into this endeavor in this paper comprises of two
houses: House 14 from Divostin (FIGS. I, 8 , 9) and House 2
from Gpovo (FIGS. 2, 7, 10, II). I have outlined in the previous
section their material parameters, what they have in common,
and what contrasts they present. I have viewed the two houses
at a macro scale of the Vinca culture and its context of the pre
history of Southeast Europe. I have also described Gpovo as an
example ofa village settled in marshlands within the plausible
hypothesis of "budding off' from the large villages of the
Danube valley and beyond in the later era of the Vinca culture.
Now, I imagine what would happen ifI followed through this
hypothesis by theorizing/imagining at the micro scale of a
single household, using the parameters of a single house and
visualizing through the eyes of a single participant in this
process. Would this contribute to the expression of the social
drama of prehistory?
I present in these illustrations a moment of engendered
prehistory, a moment of social action. I will try to demon
strate that this allows and encourages us to go much further in
our understanding of architectural variability in terms of the
dominance relations and tensions between males and females,
between siblings, between neighbors, and between age groups
as they move within and between the spaces that constitute
what we call the built environment.
Let us assume in our graphic representations that the domes
tic spaces (inside and outside the dwellings) in prehistory
as now were arenas for social action and, moreover, that the
tensions between men and women were expressed through the
medium of the material world. Spatial divisions physical
boundaries such as walls or symbolic markers would me
diate the access to different parts of house . 57 I invite the reader
to assume further that men and women in Vinca culture
houses did not feel equally "comfortable" in all parts of their
domestic space. There is no proof that these conditions existed
in the "reality" of the past, but I believe they 8.re useful
starting points.
We have drawn the view of different spaces as we imagine
they were perceived by different members of the household
(FIGS. 8-10) . I have borrowed heavily from Bourdieu's analy
sis of "light" and "dark" areas of houses in designing these
illustrations. 58
We invite you to fly through an axonometric view of the
dwelling, House 14 at Divostin (a large village in the fertile
low hills south of the Danube) to view the arena ofsocial action
(FIG. 8 C) . As an archaeologist, you are acting as the medium
through which others must view these spaces. You seem to be
able to see everything at once, as through a crystal ball. But
your/our perception is limited to a view that is external to the
social actors and action.
Now we invite you to come down from your God(dess) like
space, to view different spaces in the house as we imagine they
were really perceived by different members of the household.
In one illustration (FIG. 9A) we imagine the "public" room of
the house as viewed by an entertainee sitting there. The room
seems bathed in light, and in his immediate view he can see a
display of artifacts characterized by elaboration full of overt
symbolism: female f gurines, fine pottery, an elaborate deco
rated oven, painted walls, and so on. These are objects that
archaeologists are quick to assume have "great symbolic
signifcance," but we suggest that they comprise an overt
display that is designed to provide meaning about the house
and its household for the outside world. Dimly, through a
curtain the entertainee sees a dark inaccessible area of the
house. He does not want to speculate what kind of social
action goes on there.
We then (in our imagination) enter the eyes of the woman who
spends much of her time in this dark mysterious room (FIG.
 T R I N G HA M : P R E H I S T O R I C A R C H I T E C T U R E 19

SEDENTISM

THE DOMESTICATION
INTENSIFICATION OF
OF HUMANS
PRODUCTION

HOUSEHOLD SOCIAL AND

ORGANIZATION ECONOMIC
OF PRODUCTION ORGAN IZATION

HYPOTHESES ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND FORMU LATION AND TESTING OF EMPIRICAL (M IDDLE-RANGE)
SOCIAL RELATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH HYPOTHESES ON PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE
ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Linking arguments to general theories

Quantitative evaluation and recording of

archaeological data o n architecture

Identification of prehistoric behavior

Themes that underly the endeavor are

located outside the circle __ Observations and experimentation

FIG. 6. ''Middle-range research " design to study archaeological architectural remains.

20 T D 5 R 3.1
9B). The room is the farthest in the house from the entrance,
and we imagine it to be more "private" and quite inaccessible
to most people outside the inner circle of the household
(especially adult males). At present it is f lled with other
women and children. In contrast to the "public" room, none
of its objects, nor any of its furniture or walls, is decorated or
otherwise elaborated. Every object, however, is f lled with an
associated story and with a heavy ritual signif cance vital for
the continued social reproduction of the household. What for
an outside observer (including an archaeologist) is a simple
undecorated oven takes on great signifcance as the source of
all the energy of birth, death, fortune and misfortune for the
woman who sits next to it.,9
In fact, these assumptions could have been turned on their
head, but I have chosen here to follow through the idea of the
need for overt symbolism to deal with bounding the closed
household from other households in this period of European
prehistory.60
By showing the wider view of the house in the context of its
landscape (FIG. 8-A), we remind ourselves that the social arena
of domestic space is not restricted to the dwelling itself, but
includes the areas immediately outside, including the gar
bage pits,61 and the f elds, woods and marshes beyond. As we
again lift ourselves off the ground, we look at the village of
Divostin as a whole (FIG. 8 B), knowing that each of the
many buildings whose outer shell we see houses a similar
arena of social action. We imagine, for example, that the dark
room ofDivostin House 14 has been entered by many women
from other households as they pool their labor and carry out
their network of communication.
In our landscape view of Divostin the clear natural subdivision
of space by hills and valleys is obvious to us , even as modern
archaeologists. As the seemingly more homogeneous marsh
land space of Opovo (FIG. 10) comes into view, however, we
remind ourselves that our (archaeologists' ) perception misses
much of the complexities with which the prehistoric inhab
itants must have perceived and divided up the landscape.
But the perspective view of Opovo nevertheless helps us in
our musings about the bud off scenario for Opovo. What
happened when "the strong ties of alliance" were put into
action) What did a woman sent from that room i n House 14
at Divostin to seal an alliance with the "marginal" settlement
of Opovo have to do, or choose to do?
 TR I N G H A M : P R E H I STOR I C AR C H IT E eT U R E 21

Thus we switch scales once again and view a perspective

drawing of the houses ofOpovo, with their lack ofpartitioning
of space. The view is through the eyes of one of the few
occupants of the village, a young girl who just a few moments
ago we saw in the darkened room at Divostin. Here, she has
come to her betrothed to take up her new position as his j unior
wife. She will spend most of her adult life in this small hamlet
in the marshes until she is released by his death and her last act
in the hamlet, the burning of his house 61 In an axonometric
drawing (FIG. II) we view the interior as an archaeologist, but
as one informed and inspired by imagination, models, and
archaeological context.

As we enter the eyes of the new occupant, she is still in shock

at the unknowns and unexpecteds of her new spatial context.
She is surprised by the small size of the houses, by the fact that
there is no place for storing things and compartmentalizing
activities. If her main working arena in Divostin was a dark
room, then here the light that pervades the whole house
appears as a great surprise and not necessarily a pleasant FIG. 7 . (OPPOSITE PAGE) Burned hottSe daub
one, for here every action in the house is visible to everyone ji-om the Neolithic site ofOpovo, Yugoslavia
else. We surmise that in a small village like Opovo the oppor (photo: M. Trninic).
tunities for pooling oflabor and information were much more FIG. 8. (BELOW) Neolithic site ofDivostin,

limited, especially for women. We imagine that women in Yugoslavia Reconstructed views ofa landscape:
Opovo would have worked alone or in very small groups. A) the prehistoric village in the hills; B) reconstruc

Little is familiar in the houses for the subject whose eyes we tion view ofthe village; C) axonometric projection
have entered, but some things remain the same, such as the ofHouse I4 (drawing: C. Chang).
form and proportions of the oven which we have already

II

II

II
22 T O 5 R 3.1

FIG. 9. (LEFT) Neolithic site ofDivostin,

Yugoslavia. Reconstructedperspective views of
(A) northern room and (B) central room ofHouse

I4 (drawing: C. Chang).
FIG. ro. (OPPOSITE PAGE) Neolithic site of

Opovo, Yugoslavia. Reconstructedperspective view

ofthe landscape and excavatedpart ofthe village
(drawing: C. Chang).

II
surmised plays an important role in all domestic social actions
in these villages . We can imagine other shocks: the quiet at
Opovo after the noise of a big village; the loneliness and
isolation; the mosquitoes . . . .

A BROADENED VIEW

By carrying out this exercise in visualizing engendered space

at Divostin and Opovo, I have not produced any "true" facts

II or pictures of prehistoric social actions in its architectural

context. I have followed through an interpretation of the
signif cant change in the archaeological pattern of settlements
described at Opovo at the end of the Neolithic in Southeast
Europe that is, the dispersal of settlement onto agricultur
ally marginal lands. I suggest that this change had consider
able implications for labor access and resource procurement
for a household as a whole. An interest in gender relations and
social action at a micro scale further enabled me to broaden
these implications to include a rapid decrease in the pooling
oflabor between households and extra kin support, especially
for the female members of households. And I have also
followed through the social and symbolic implications of the
contrast in the internal subdividing of a house between
Opovo and Divostin.

In carrying out my experiment, however, I have dramatically

expanded the scope in which the architectural context of
prehistory (house, artifacts, furniture) can be used to construct
a prehistory many prehistories' Artifacts, such as an
undecorated hearth have become more potentially signif cant,
rather than being forgotten in the depths of an archaeological
report. The signifcance of a f gurine has acquired multiple
possibilities, rather than being limited to one true interpreta

tion. The invisible arena of the most dramatic social action
housework has taken on a more visible and important role.
And a house, or a site, has become important in its own his
torical trajectory, rather than being seen only as a sample from
which the whole is to be extrapolated.
An archaeologist has a choice of scale in which to consider the
archaeological record. Usually we choose the scale of a nor
matized conglomerate of perceptions imagined for a group of
people during a prolonged block of time. I have been arguing
that it is important to consider the scale of the social action of
individual actors frozen at particular moments of their his
tory. Whichever scale is selected, the archaeologist must be
self consciously aware of his/her choice and treat it as a topic for
discussion rather than as something to be concealed or mysti
f ed. There is no doubt that the spatial and chronological
scales of context that I chose for this exercise could have been
subjected to a more creative treatment than that which we
have presented. For example, within the house we could have
TR I N G H A M : P R E H I ST O R I C AR C H I T E eTU R E 23
presented many different perceptions of the social actors. But
the built environment will be perceived differently if one
looks through the eyes of different prehistoric actors who are
of different age, gender, power, and life history. An individual's
perception ofspace will change during his/her lifetime accord
ing to his/her change in age and power to negotiate and
according to changes in the overall context of social action.
It takes a great deal of effort and imaginative power to con
sider human beings in the past who engaged in social acts for
many years and for many hours of each day with many other
people, who each had a history, and whose acts were carried out
within the context of this history, of their gender, and of their
age (generation). But we cannot deny that these social actors
were an essential aspect of the archaeological architecture
which we excavate and reconstruct. When historians and
ethnographers consider social action, they consider a wealth
of information on individual social action and life history
that archaeologists have no access to. But it seems to me that
24 TO S R 3.1

for archaeologists who wish to theorize at a micro scale and Neolithic site ofGpovo, Yugoslavia. Ax
FIG. I I .

contribute a prehistory of engendered social action, the kind onometric projection ofHouse 2 (C Chang)
of dialectical interplay between material remains , compara
tive historical or ethnographic observation, and imagined
social actors and actions attempted here is a legitimate method
ofexpression. It is an incorporation of text and image play into
scientif c enterprise.
 TR I N G H A M :
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2. Kostof, A History ofArchitecture.
3. Cataldi, All' Origine dell'Abitare.
4- In some cases, for example that of the
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P R E H I STOR I C A R C H IT E eT U R E 25
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26 T O 5 R 3.1
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83rd Annual Meeting
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16. A. Bankoff and F. Wintet, "A House
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experimental archaeological investigation"
(M.A. thesis, University of Belgtade, 1985); and
"Middle-range analysis."
17. David, "The Fulani Compound"; L. Donley,
"House power: Swahili space and symbolic
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cal unit," Journal ofAnthropologicalArchaeology
1.2 (1982), PP.132 158; Horne, "The Household
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18. Ttingham, "Households with Faces," P.98.
19 Ibid, pp. 99 100.
20. Many of these assumptions are based on
cross-cultural correlations between social
institutions and division of labor and levels of
technology, such as hoe cultivationllwomen's
labor//covett male powet, or plough cultivationll
P R E H I ST O R I C AR C H IT E eT U R E 27
men's laborlloverr male powet, as suggested in,
for example, E. Boserup,Women s Role in
Economic Development (London: George Allen
and Unwin, 1970); and Jack Goody, Production
and Reproduction (Cambridge: CUP, 1976).
21. H. Moore, Feminism andAnthropology
(Minneapolis: Univetsity of Minnesota Press,
1988), pp.21 24; and S. Yanagisako, "Family
and Household: the analysis of domestic
groups," Annual Reviews ofAnthropology 8
(1979), pp. 161 205
2 2 . Tringham, " Households w i t h Faces, " p.101.
23. A recently published manual on the topic is
L. and R. Adkins, Archaeological Illustration
(Cambridge: Cambtidge University Press, 1989).
24. Ibid , P.139 .
25 Bourdier, "Reading Tradition," PA2.
26. Ibid , PA3.
27. Reading the Past (Cambridge:
I. Hodder,
cup, 1986); M . Shanks and C Tilley, Social
Themy and Archaeology (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Ptess, 1987); and Re
Constructing Archaeology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987).
28. Even in Ian Hoddet's studies, in which the
traditional passive reflective role of material
culture (including architecture) has been turned
on its head and made into an "active" medium
fot and symbolic expression of social relations
and actions, graphic representation has hatdly
been used. See, for example, I. Hodder, The
Domestication ofEurope (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1991).
29 Bourdier, "Reading Ttadition," p. 51.
30. Ibid, pp. 46 48.
31. Ibid., p w
32 Ibid. , P W
33. E . g . , A. Sottell, "The Artist and Reconstruc
tion," Current Archaeology 41 (1973), PPI77 181.
34. E.g., M . Roaf, "The Hamtin Sites," i n Fifty
Years ofMesopotamian Discovery, ]. Curtis, ed.
(London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq,
1982), PPAO 47, FIGS. 30, 32.
35. M.W. Conkey, "Does it make a difference)
Feminist thinking and archaeologies of gender,"
in The Archaevlogy of Gender (Calgary:
Chacmool Archaeological Association, in ptess);
and Gero and Conkey, eds., Engendering
Archaeology.
36. Ttingham, " Households with Faces . "
37 M . Conkey and ] . Gero, "Tensions,
Pluralities, and Engendering Atchaeology: an
introduction to Women and Prehistory," in
EngenderingArchaeology, Gero and Conkey, eds.
PP 3 30.
38. Tringham, "Households with Faces, " P.Il7.
39. M.W. Conkey, "A teporr from the yeat
2050," Archeology Ganuary 1989), PP.35 82; I.
Hodder, " Postprocessual Archaeology, " i n
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory,
vol. 8, M . Schiffer, ed. (New York: Academic
28 T D S R 3.'
Press, 1985), pp.I 26; Reading the Past, and "The
contextual analysis of symbolic meanings," in
The Archaeolo!!J' of Contextual Meanings,
Hodder, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), pp.I IO; M.P. Leone, "Some
Opinions About Recovering Mind," American
Antiquity 47 (1982), PP.742 760; L. Patrik, "Is
there an atchaeological record)" in Advances in
Archaeological Method and Theory, vo1.8 ,
Schiffer, ed., PP. 27 62.
40. Hodder, Reading the Past, and Parrik, "Is
there an archaeological record ) "
The Anatomy ofArchitecture:
4 1 . S . P . Blier,
Ontolo!!J' and Metaphor in Batammaliba
Architectural Expression (Cambridge: Cambridge
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House," inRules and Meanings: The Anthropolo!!J'
ofEveryday Knowledge, M. Douglas, ed.
(Harmondsworrh: Penguin Books, 1973),
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the Swahili rown house reveals the symbolic
meaning of spaces and artefact assemblages," The
Afican Archaeological Review 5 (1987),
pp.181 192; M. Douglas, "Symbolic orders in the
use of domestic space," in Man, Settlement, and
Urbanism, Ucko, Tringham and Dimbleby, eds.,
pp. 63 73; Hodder, Reading the Past, and
"Contextual Archaeology: an Interpretation of
Caral Huyuk and a Discussion of the Origins of
Agriculture," Bulletin ofthe Institute of
Archaeolo!!J', University ofLondon 24 (1987),
PP.43 56; and Moore, Space, Text, and Gender.
42. S. Harding, The Science Question in
Feminism (Irhaca: Cornell University Press,
1986); and "Introduction: is there a feminist
method ) " in Feminism and Methodolo!!J': Social
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Indiana University Press, 1987), PP.I-14; E.F.
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Archaeolo!!J', Hodder, ed., PP.39-46; and
"Gender Theory and the Archaeological Record:
Why Is There No Archaeology of Gender)" in
Engendering Archaeolo!!J', Gero and Conkey, eds.,
PP 31 54
43. M.W. Conkey, "Does it make a difference)"
44. Hodder, "The contextual analysis of
symbolic meanings"; and L. Therkorn, "The
inter-relationships of materials and meanings:
some suggestions on housing concerns within
Iron Age Noord-Holland, " in The Archaeolo!!J' of
Contextual Meanings, Hodder, ed., pp. I02 IIO.
45. A. Pred, " Place as hisrorically contingent
process: srructuration and the time-geography of
becoming places," Annals ofthe Association of
American Geographers 74.2 (1984), PP. 279 297.
46. The architectural research at Divostin is
reporred in M. Bogdanovic, "Architecture and
structural features at Divostin," in Divostin and
the Neolithic of Central Serbia, A. McPherron
and D. Srejovic, eds. (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh, Dept. of Anthropology, Ethnology
monographs 10, 1988), PP.35 142. The
architectural research at Opovo is reported in the
following: R. Tringham, B . Brukner and B .
Voytek, "The Opovo Projecr: a study o f socio
economic change in the Balkan Neolithic,"
Journal ofField Archaeolo!!J' I24 (1985),
PP.425 444; R. Tringham, et aI., "The Opovo
Project: a study of socio-economic change in the
Balkan Neolithic. 2nd preliminary report,"
Journal ofFieldArchaeolo!!J' (in press); R .
Tringham, "Households with Faces. "
47. Benac, "Obre II"; Bogdanovic, "Architecture
and structural features at Divostin" ; B. Brukner,
"Naselje Vincanske Grupe na Gomolavi
(neolitski ranoeneolitski sloj)," Rad Vojvodjanskih
Muzeja 26 (1980), PP.5-55; and "Die Siedlung der
Vinca-Gruppe auf Gomolava (Die Wohnschicht
des Sparneolithikums und Fruhaneolithikums
Gomolava Ia-b und Gomolava va Ib) und der
Wohnhorizont des aneolithischen Humus
(Gomolava II)," in Gomolava, N. Tasic and J .
Petrovic, eds., PP.19-38; Stalio, "Naselje i stan
neolitskog perioda"; J. Todorovic and A .
Cermanovic, Banjica. Naselje Vincanske Kulture,
(Belgrade: 1961); and Tringham, et aI. , "The
Opovo Project."
48. Coudart, "Tradition, uniformity and
variability."
49. See note 1 5 for a bibliographic discussion on
"middle-range research" in archaeology. See also
R. Tringham and D. Krstic, "Introduction: the
Selevac Archaeological Project," in Selevac: a
Neolithic Village in Yugoslavia, R. Tringham and
D. Krstic, eds., (Los Angeles: Institute of
Archaeology Publications, UCLA, 1990), PP 9
R. Tringham, "Architectural Investigation into
Household Organization in Neolithic
Yugoslavia," in 8}rdAnnual Meeting ofthe
American Anthropological Association; and
"Households with Faces."
50. Brukner, "Naselje Vincanske Grupe" and
"Die Siedlung der Vinca-Gruppe"; M.
Garaanin, "Vinca und seine Stellung im
Neolithikum Sud-Europas, in " Vinca and its
World, D . Srejovic and N. Tasic, eds. (Belgrade:
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1990),
pp.II 15; Stalio, "Naselje i stan neolitskog
perioda"; N. Tasic, D. Srejovic, and B .
Stojanovic, Vinca: Centre ofthe Neolithic Culture
ofthe Danubian Region (Belgrade: Kulrura,
1990); and Tringham and Krstic, eds , Selevac: a
prehistoric village in Yugoslavia.
51. Brukner, "Ein Beitrag zur Formierung der
neolithischen und aneolithischen Siedlungen im
jugoslawischen Donaugebiet"; Coudart,
"Tradition, uniformity and variability";
Modderman, "Elsloo, a Neolithic farming
community in the Netherlands"; Soudsky,
" E tude de la maison Neolithique"; Soudsky and
Pavlu, "Linear Pottery Culture"; Stalio, "Naselje
i stan neolitskog perioda"; and Todorova, The
Eneolithic Period
52. House 5 reported in Tringham, et aI. , "The
Opovo Project."
53. Hunter-Anderson, "A Theoretical
Approach."
54. In this last part of the paper, the "we" refers
not ro some kind of academic royal "we," but to
myself and Catherine Chang of the Deptartment
of Landscape Architecture, U.c. Berkeley, with
whom I collaborated in the creation of these
views of prehistoric space.
55. A. Wylie, "Matters and matters of interest,"
in Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity,
Stephen Shennan, ed. (London: Unwin, Hyman
Ltd, 1989), PP.94 I09.
56. Bourdieu, "The Berber House"; Donley,
"House power" and "Life i n the Swahili rown
house"; and Moore, Space, Text, and Gender.
57. Bourdieu, "The Berber House " ; Donley,
"House power" and "Life i n the Swahili town
house"; and 1 . Hodder, "Burials, houses,
women and men i n the European Neolithic,"
in Ideology, Power and Prehistory, D . Miller and
C. Tilley, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984), PP.51 68; and The
Domestication ofEurope.
58. Bourdieu, "The Berber House."
59. I am grateful for this idea of the significance
of unelaborated symbolic artifacts i n prehisroric
arrifactual assemblages ro Mirjana Stevanovic,
July 1990.
60. Hodder, The Domestication ofEurope.
61. Moore, "The interpretation of spatial
patterning" and Space, Text, and Gender.
II; 62. That srory may be read in Tringham,
"Households with Faces. "