Inhabiting Domestic Space: Becoming Different in the Early Iron Age Western Mediterranean

Abstract

The archaeology of indigenous houses in the western Mediterranean during the Orientalising period has been largely neglected. Scholars have traditionally focused on funerary contexts and the ‘Orientalising’ style of native elites, to the point that we know little of the everyday life of people before and during colonial contact in Italy and Iberia. Drawing on the Deleuzian concept of becoming (different), this study explores the flow of continuities and discontinuities in houses and household activities in two western Mediterranean regions—the Bay of Naples in Italy and southern Spain—between the ninth and sixth century BC. The aim is to obtain a better understanding of the close relationships between domestic space, people, material culture, memory, sensorial experiences, and sociocultural practices in these two areas over a period of almost 400 years.