Archaeology of Daily Life

Canım arkeoloji, Ben bu satırları yazarken, sen her zamanki gelenekçi ve elitist tavrın ile önümüzdeki ay başlayacak olan o şaşalı beş çaylarını düşünüyor olacaksın. Darılma, yadırgamıyorum. Bize seni böyle kabul etmemiz gerektiği tembihlendi. Sadece üzülüyorum. Olan bitene nasıl bu kadar kayıtsız kalıyorsun? Bilmem farkında mısın ama itibarın iki paralık ediliyor. Horlanıyorsun. Çanak-çömlek eşittir boş iş diyorlar. Sen çıkıp da benim işim bu değil, benim amacım bu değil demiyorsun. Sahi, neden demiyorsun? Popülerliğini borçlu olduğun filmler dahi tv'lerde yayınlanmamaya başlarken neden ortaya çıkıp "hey! Bende buradayım" demiyorsun? Alacağın olsun. Yaptığın işleri bilimsel olmamakla suçlayanlar varken neden dostlarının adını zikredip, bakın biz koca bir bütünüz arkeojeoloji, arkeobotanik, arkeozooloji, antropoloji, sosyoloji el eleyiz demiyorsun? Haklısın, ben sayınca hatırladın değil mi

This article offers a basic model and background methodological approaches to the establishment and development of Ottoman Archaeology in rural Greece, by presenting two surveyed ciftlik-estates in the region of Tanagra and their associated material culture (housing and surface ceramics). The site of Guinosati (6,5 kilometres southeast of Tanagra) and a group of four linked long-houses (here referred to as Bardzi) on the acropolis hill of the ancient Tariagra city-site comprise our present case-study of Ottoman villages dated between the 15th and 18th centuries.

The concept of privacy looms large in studies of ancient Greek houses. The house is often conceptualized as a self-contained, cloistered unit within the larger city, a microcosm of the city-state unto itself, cut off as much as possible from a competitive and potentially threatening outside world. Indeed, the preoccupation with Greek domestic privacy in modern scholarship has been strongly influenced by ancient texts which describe a separation between the public and private worlds and express outrage at the violation of the domestic sphere by outsiders. Without denying the importance of the internal world of the home, I would like to challenge the idea of total household privacy, and even its desirability, through an examination of some of the activities of daily life in the Classical (480–323 BC) and Hellenistic (323–31 BC) periods. In particular, I will consider how domestic craft production and agricultural processing—activities in which many Greek households engaged—impacted domestic privacy.

The sights, sounds, and smells of domestic production were part of the experience of everyday life in ancient Greek cities. Thus, when examining the practicalities of domestic production, moving beyond sight to a consideration of other senses causes the inner world of the home to appear less private. While householders could easily restrict the visibility of domestic activities to the outside world, other sensory signals were more difficult to control. Though some economic activities in ancient Greek cities took place in an alternate ‘invisible’ economy outside of the control of the state (Cohen 1992), I argue that even if domestic production was taking place unseen within private Greek houses, it was never truly ‘invisible’ in a social sense, because other sensory signals extended the performance of production into the street where it could still be ‘observed’ by neighbours and passers-by. Some crafts were more visually, olfactorily or acoustically intrusive than others, so my focus here is on craft activities that were particularly messy, noisy or smelly.

Nous nous intéressons dans cet article au discours dont rend compte l’iconographie procheorientale entre le IVe et le Ier millénaire av. J.-C. Les rapports entre l’homme et le cochon étaient-ils de simples confrontations ou le premier prêtait-il au second des vertus que nous avons oubliées aujourd’hui ? La représentation du cochon avait-elle une dimension politique ? C’est ce que nous allons tenter d’éclaircir en analysant le discours iconographique.