Household Archaeology: Introduction

 

 

Byzantine houses from excavation in Athens are presented here as a topic of of interest in order to learn more about daily life in Byzantium. In this part of the exhibition we look at their architecture and pottery assemblages.

 

Of course, it is interesting to show which types of pots, plates and cups Byzantines were using, but we would like to see the broader picture. A myriad of questions could be asked, here we will focus on two:

 

  • What did an average Byzantine house look like and what was inside of such a house?
  • What was the pottery found used for? What did people actually use to cook and consume their food and drinks?

 

After adopting a household archaeology approach, we incorporate various types of evidence, looking at both textual sources and archaeological data in order to present the Byzantine house, the contents of such a house and as a case-study three Byzantine houses excavated in the Athenian Agora.