“semitisches pantheon”. eine “männliche tyche” - MOSAIKjournal.com

116|ANASTASIA CHRISTOPHILOPOULOU
FINAL REMARKS
In our attempt to interpret space through the extremely diversified
archaeological material of the Dark Ages and the Geometric, the
shortage of well studied ethnographic parallels, the lack of textual
evidence and the danger of applying biased meanings from text to
archaeological reality, all mean that the task can be highly conjectural.
Nevertheless, there is at least something that any kind of archaeological
material, or later Classical sources, or ethnographic
and cross-cultural research about space agrees on, and that is that
few aspects of life were so charged with meaning as household
space. 123 There is, further, another reason why household archaeology
in the Early Iron Age (and beyond) can be a rewarding area of
research. As recently summarized by L. C. Nevett: „The household
becomes an even more provocative unit to consider, as house studies
continue to reveal its continuing transformations in the ancient
Mediterranean world”. 124 Indeed, the degree of diversity, regional
differences and the number of functional transformations occurring
in particular geographical areas within limited periods of time,
as well as the very nature of the “household”, allowing an important
number of questions about social meaning to be asked to,
make the investigation of Early Iron Age and Archaic households
in Greece – and in the rest of the Mediterranean – a very promising
research direction. Overall, considered outside the framework of
the Aegean Iron Age, understanding the nature of change in
household organisation would bridge the existing “mid-level theory
gap” in archaeology. When households are seen as an essential level
of inquiry, we can in fact move, as R. Wilk and W. L. Rathje have
stated it, „from the grand theories of cultural change to the practical
archaeology of everyday material culture.” 125
123 MORRIS (2000) 280–281.
124 NEVETT (2007) 204.
125 WILK – RATHJE (1982) 617.