B9222 - Household Archaeology (LM)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course students will have thoroughly studied and analysed domestic realities in a comparative, diachronic and diatopic perspective. They will understand the concept of the domestic nucleus and its relationship with the social unit, the different architectural structures, material culture and politico-social and urbanistic organization inside and outside the settlement. Students will be able to analyse domestic contexts of different eras and critically insert them within a social and historical framework of reference. They will be independent in studying the scientific literature of this topic, in using the different methodologies applied to reconstruction of contexts and in fitting them correctly into the social and economic models pertaining to the different archaeological cultures.

Course contents

The course focuses on ancient households from a variety of perspectives: architecture, material culture, decorative objects, family relationships and dynamics, production activities, religious and cultural background of houses, patterns of social hierarchy, social networks, gender, status and power. By integrating macro- and micro-archaeological techniques with textual sources and iconographic documents, the course aims to analyze houses and palaces as crucial units for understanding everyday life of past societies. Through the study of selected case studies across the Late Roman Mediterranean, students will acquire theoretical and practical knowledge of the discipline and will be able to critically engage with the current debate on the residential private sphere in relation to wider social processes.

Special attention will be paid to the topics of eating practices and functional use of spaces though the lens of material culture, and religious agency in household domain between the Roman and the Late Antique world.

The course will be organized in three main sessions:

1. A place to live. Introducing Household Archaeology: theory, methods and practices

2. Households in Late Antique society: from palaces to houses

3. Feeding the Late Roman house

4. Private worship in Mediterranean households

One or more field trips to archaeological contexts and museums are planned during the course.

Additional readings, papers, book chapters will be assigned according to personal interests and discussed collectively in the last part of the course. Materials will be downloaded from the Online Teaching platform (https://virtuale.unibo.it/).

Readings/Bibliography

Readings for students attending classes:

• Allison, P. M., ed., 1999, The Archaeology of Household Activities, London/New York, pp. 1-29.
• Baldini, I., 2025, Private Architecture, in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Late Antique Art and Archaeology Volume 1: Architecture, Artefacts and Evidence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 175 - 192
• Bourbou, C., Garvie-Lok, S., 2015, Bread, Oil, Wine – and Milk: Feeding Infants and Adults in Byzantine Greece, in Papathanasiou, A., Richards, M., Fox, S. C. (eds.), Archaeodiet in the Greek World, OWLS volume 2, Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
• Kienlin, T., 2024, Household(s) – Practices: An Introduction, in Kienlin (ed.), Household Practices and Houses – Current Approaches from Archaeology and the Sciences, Bonn, 9-28.
• Marsili, G., 2024, Sub tectis et in abditum. Identità religiose e pratiche cultuali in ambito domestico nel Mediterraneo tardoantico in: Abitare Nel Mediterraneo Tardoantico, Atti del IV Convegno Internazionale del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi sull’Edilizia abitativa tardoantica nel Mediterraneo (CISEM) (Cuenca 7-9 novembre 2022), Bari, Edipuglia, 2024, pp. 351 - 360.

Non-attending students are required to prepare all the readings of the block A and four among the readings of the block B:

Block A:

• Allison, P. M., ed., 1999, The Archaeology of Household Activities, London/New York, pp. 1-29.
• Baldini, I., 2025, Private Architecture, in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Late Antique Art and Archaeology Volume 1: Architecture, Artefacts and Evidence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 175 - 192
• Bourbou, C., Garvie-Lok, S., 2015, Bread, Oil, Wine – and Milk: Feeding Infants and Adults in Byzantine Greece, in Papathanasiou, A., Richards, M., Fox, S. C. (eds.), Archaeodiet in the Greek World, OWLS volume 2, Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
• Kienlin, T., 2024, Household(s) – Practices: An Introduction, in Kienlin (ed.), Household Practices and Houses – Current Approaches from Archaeology and the Sciences, Bonn, 9-28.
• Marsili, G., 2024, Sub tectis et in abditum. Identità religiose e pratiche cultuali in ambito domestico nel Mediterraneo tardoantico in: Abitare Nel Mediterraneo Tardoantico, Atti del IV Convegno Internazionale del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi sull’Edilizia abitativa tardoantica nel Mediterraneo (CISEM) (Cuenca 7-9 novembre 2022), Bari, Edipuglia, 2024, pp. 351 - 360.

Block B:

• Bowes K., 2011, Christian Images in the Home, AnTard, 19, 171-190.
• Fugger V., 2017, Shedding Light on Early Christian Domestic Cult: Characteristics and New Perspectives in the Context of Archaeological Findings, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 18-19.1, 201-235.
• Petridis, P., 2022, Olla et domus: interpreting the history of Late Roman houses based on the study of pottery and vice versa, in Pottery Function and Use: A Diachronic Perspective, ed. by J. Vuković and V. Bikić, Belgrade, 323-336.
• Putzeys, T., 2008, Domestic Space in Late Antiquity, in Objects in context. Objects in use. Material Spatiality in Late Antiquity, Leiden-Boston 2007, 49–62.
• Uytterhoeven, I., 2007, Housing in late Antiquity: thematic perspectives, in Lavan, L., Özgenel, L. and Sarantis, A. (eds), Housing in Late Antiquity: from Palaces to Shops. Boston and Leiden: 25–66.
• Walmsley, A., 2008, Households At Pella, Jordan: Domestic Destruction Deposits Of The Mid-8th C., in Objects in Context, Objects in Use. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Teaching methods

Classes will include frontal lectures and active discussion. Regular and active participation in classwork will be taken into account in the final assessment. Ppt presentations will be used in class, combined with additional digital resources such as audio-video content, documentaries, multimedia data.

During the course, specialists will be involved to talk about specific topics.

The last week of the course will be devoted to peer discussion of selected lectures, presented individually or in groups.

A field trip to a museum and/or a local archaeological context is also planned.

Assessment methods

For attending students, grades will be awarded during the course through assessment of active participation in class discussions, oral presentations of a selected context/case study and an oral exam.

A student who attends at least 75% of the lectures is considered a regular attendee.

The final exam consists of a written essay and an oral exam.

The written essay (10,000 characters including notes and bibliography) will analyze a specific context/case study related to course contents. The topic will be agreed with the lecturer who will provide the basic scientific literature. Specific bibliography will be independently compiled by the student. The essay must clearly present the topic, objectives, analysis, and conclusions. Detailed guidelines will be provided.

Plagiarism or academic dishonesty will result in failure of the exam.

The essay will be synthetically presented to the class during the last part of the course and discussed in details in an oral exam during the scheduled sessions.

During the oral exam, two additional questions will assess the student’s ability to present topics using appropriate academic language and to connect different texts in order to develop a coherent argument. Knowledge of the recommended bibliography and the topics covered during the lectures is required.

Evaluation criteria:

• Participation and attendance: 15%
• Steering a discussion and critical thinking: 15%
• Class presentation of selected topic/case study: 25%
• Oral exam: 45%

Non-attending students will take an oral examination.

The overall assessment will take the following parameters into consideration:

- an excellent knowledge of the subject matter, the ability to analyse topics, to refer to them using terminology specific to the field and to critically discuss specific issues, supporting one's own opinion, will be rewarded with an excellent mark.

- a mnemonic knowledge of the subject matter with the ability to analyse, with a correct, though not always field-specific, command of language will be rewarded with a 'fair' grade.

- a minimal knowledge of the subject matter will not be sufficient to pass the examination.

Exams are scheduled on a monthly basis, specifically in January, February, March, April, May, June, October, November, and December.

Teaching tools

PDFs of ppt presentations, additional readings and other support materials will be available on the Online Teaching platform (https://virtuale.unibo.it/).

Students with learning disorders and\or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students ) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

With regard to assessment, the use of AI is prohibited. Any such use constitutes a breach of academic integrity.

Office hours

See the website of Giulia Marsili