The archaeology of households is well established in providing a cross-cultural window into the particulars and commonalities of often concealed domestic economies and lifeways from the ground up, starting with residential refuse, architectural debris, and yard spaces. An editorial trio of up-and-coming and distinguished scholars has organized this engaging ensemble of nine chapters, beginning with Mary Beaudry's detailed introduction to materiality, textual analysis, and material habitus as major themes and approaches in household archaeology. With the addition of two chapters, the majority of the volume represents research originally presented at the 2013 Society for Historical Archaeology conference. The new perspectives of Beyond the Walls effectively demonstrate how studies of historical households, in the context of wider communities of which they were a part, can shed light on instrumental connections to wider power relations. In line with Beaudry's opening salvo on “tearing down the walls” through case studies that reveal how “domestic life fit into larger social processes at work on local, regional, and global scales” (p. 12), the contributors adeptly traverse the microscale and macroscale by marshaling a wide array of materiality representing diverse households.
Seven case studies aptly illustrate innovative perspectives and approaches, beginning with Matthew Reeves's comparative, scalar analysis of decision-making based on early nineteenth-century assemblages from slave quarters at Montpelier, Virginia, to the Atlantic trade network as represented by households in Jamaica. While otherwise mundane dinnerware fragments reveal dissimilar socioeconomic structures, relative proportions of window glass provide a figurative window into differences in decision-making among enslaved households. Contrasting studies from two South Carolina plantations—Witherspoon Island in the northeastern Pee Dee region and Dean Hall in the tidal region outside of Charleston—show how disparate datasets inform distinct research directions. In the first, Kevin Fogle focuses on the duplicity of intimate or small-scale idealized household landscapes of the enslaved in projecting both moralistic, humanitarian proslavery reforms and justification of enslaved labor in the plantation economy. In the second, Nicole Isenbarger and Andrew Agha show how the internal economy of colonoware production was tied to choices in material acquisition and foodways—personal decisions that can run counter to the faulty logic of assimilation and shed light on the “subtle nuances of daily life” (p. 184).
The maturity and rigor of household archaeology are reflected in the wide range of evidence and approaches presented here. Through correspondence analysis of faunal and botanical data from sites in the North Carolina Piedmont spanning the mid-fifteenth to early eighteenth century, Ashley Peles generates insight into persistence and change in foodways. Decisions on procurement and consumption hinged on the collective agency of households, within larger communities and through time, in what might otherwise be glossed over as subsistence strategies. James Nyman and Brooke Kenline examine place-making and the construction of household identities through ritualized refuse discard patterns at George Washington's Ferry Farm in Virginia, pointing out that routinized practices involving disposal and cleanliness varied through time and space.
As might be expected, the Atlantic World is dominant in Beyond the Walls. Only two case studies skirt its influence: one on ranching station households in the formation of the Hawaiian ranching community and the other on Chinese households in a nineteenth-century mining boomtown in Nevada. Benjamin Barna's study shows how identity and community were negotiated through the hybrid, work-centered households of transnational and multiethnic immigrants in Hawai'i. Microhistories of activities such as tea and alcohol consumption shed light on inclusive interpersonal relations in juxtaposition to institutionalized segregation. Consumer practices of Chinese immigrants in Aurora, Nevada, may have reflected transnational strategies in disproportionately male households, although Emily Dale rightfully acknowledges the lack of comparative data on households of family members in China.
Charles Cobb closes with an insightful appraisal and compelling overview on the status of historical household archaeology, including what is known and what remains to be learned. The materiality of households provides new and intimate ways of understanding how domestic life and global structures intersected as opportunities and constraints, as seen in foodways and consumer practices. Cobb argues that household archaeology can reveal the transformative entanglements of colonialism and capitalism, as seen through microhistories and critique of “micromodernities.” His metaphorical “spooky entanglement” of quantum physics is a clever way of accentuating the limitations of what Beaudry calls a “diverse and eclectic practice.” Households are indeed a multifaceted medium, and no unified theory can substitute for historical context in examining the multiscalar, hybridized mediation of agency and structure. This remarkable collection advances both the theory and practice.
