Bambara Household Organization

The Bambara households of Kala are very large domestic organizations, in comparison with those found elsewhere in West Africa. This chapter examines the factors which encourage persistence of large domestic groups, including the advantages reaped from production, investment and reproduction, alongside protection of the individual from risk. The drawbacks to the individual from incorporation within a household are examined, such as loss of control over labour and other resources. Membership of a household involves agreement with an unspoken contract regarding the duties and expectations of members; however, such terms are subject to some flexibility and can be renegotiated. Modelling relations within the household allows for a review of options for cooperation, vulnerability to demographic risk, the significance of economies of scale, acquisition and maintenance of productive assets, game-theory, cooperation, conflict and division.

Historical Chinese Microdata. 40 Years of Dataset Construction by the Lee-Campbell Research Group

The Lee-Campbell Group has spent forty years constructing and analysing individual-level datasets based largely on Chinese archival materials to produce a scholarship of discovery. Initially, we constructed datasets for the study of Chinese demographic behaviour, households, kin networks, and socioeconomic attainment. More recently, we have turned to the construction and analysis of datasets on civil and military officials and other educational and professional elites, especially their social origins and their careers. As of July 2020, the datasets include nominative information on the behaviour and life outcomes of approximately two million individuals. This article is a retrospective on the construction of these datasets and a summary of their findings. This is the first time we have presented all our projects together and discussed them and the results of our analysis as a single integrated whole. We begin by summarizing the contents, organization, and notable features of each dataset and provide an integrated history of our data construction, starting in 1979 up to the present. We then summarize the most important results from our research on demographic behaviour, family, and household organization, and more recently inequality and stratification. We conclude with a reflection on the importance of data discovery, flexibility, interaction and collaboration to the success of our efforts.

The Impact of Education in South Asia

Education is produced within power relationships; therefore, power and social dynamics are central to any analysis of the impact of education. The acquisition and benefits of education are similarly intertwined by class, family, gender and social tensions, relentlessly mutating into different varieties, environments and appearances, and endlessly involving control. This is the essence of The Impact of Education in South Asia. Drawing from case studies, ethnographic research, and interviews from different parts of India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, the authors attempt to provide perspective to the relationship between education and society. Formal education challenges society by changing gender roles, household organization, family, and the caste system. Individuals negotiate and transform culture and the educational system.

Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean

Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean examines the diversity of living environments that the enslaved inhabitants of the colonial Caribbean by analyzing archaeological evidence collected from a wide variety of sites across the region. Archaeological investigations of domestic architecture and artifacts illuminate the nature of household organization; fundamental changes in settlement patterns; and the manner in which power was invariably linked with the material arrangements of space among the enslaved living and working in a variety of contexts throughout the region, including plantations, fortifications, and urban centers. While research in the region has provided a considerable amount of data at the household-level, much of this work is biased towards artifact analysis, resulting in unfamiliarity with the considerations that went into constructing and inhabiting households. The chapters in this book provide detailed reconstructions of the built environments associated with slavery and account for the cultural behaviors and social arrangements that shaped these spaces. It brings together case studies of Caribbean slave settlements through historical archaeology as a means of exposing the diversity of people and practices in these various landscapes, across the British, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies in both the Greater and Lesser Antilles as well as the Bahamian archipelago.

First technological and provenance analysis on obsidian artifacts from Tafí Valley (Tucumán Province, Argentine Republic)

The aim of this paper is to report the first analyses carried out on obsidian artifacts recovered from two archaeological sites of the Tafí valley (Tucumán, Argentina), dating to the first and second millennium C.E. The study addresses the sourcing and use of this raw material in their contexts, as well as the inclusion of the study area within the obsidian distribution circuits in the Northwest of Argentina. The methodology included techno-morphological and morphological-functional analyses as well as chemical provenance studies (XRF). The results enabled us to detect, so far, the use of the Ona-Las Cuevas source, located approximately 240 km far from the sites, and to suggest the implementation of indirect procurement practices within complex distribution circuits. We have also established that the obsidian artifacts would have been used intensively in daily activities which were part of household organization, such as long-distance relationships, hunting and processing food. Based on this information, we discuss the practical uses of obsidian, as well as other possible roles of this raw material in pre-Hispanic contexts which contribute to broaden knowledge about the cultural developments of Tafí valley.

Roman Household Organization

This chapter surveys current perspectives on children and stages of childhood within Roman households and examines how archaeological evidence for household organization can change these perspectives. It discusses what can be gleaned from analyses of archaeological evidence for household space and household activities, and notably from assessing skeletal remains, material culture, and decoration. It discusses what this evidence can tell us about potential numbers of children in households, how they might have inhabited this space and played with their pets and their toys, and how this evidence might be used to deepen understandings of children and their sociospatial practices within household organization. It uses two case studies, from urban elite households in Pompeii and from provincial non-elite households, notably military households of ordinary soldiers.