Approaching intimacy: Interpretations of changes in Moloko household space

摘要

How were the changes in household units experienced and conceptualized by the people living at the Moloko settlements on the Western Highveld, in particular the changes in household space defined by the introduction of stone walling? By focusing on the household as asocial and spatial unit of analysis, this article emphasizes the importance of small-scale and intimate interaction between people and material culture in order to approach diachronic change in the archaeological record. To make inferences about social interaction and relationships between people and material culture at a household level involves ail engagement with the domestic group as a set of different social actors. But it is not only about people. Whereas material culture often is conceptualized as passive reflections of human interaction it is argued here that materiality is important in the making of social relationships and for the reproduction of society. The internal relations of the household are inextricable from the larger political structure of society and, specifically in the Eastern Bantu world, underlying principles governing social structures expressed in organizational principles of settlements, formulated in normative models such as the Central Cattle Pattern. However, I argue that a focus on the small scale entails not only that people responsible for the material culture must be viewed as actively engaging their world, but also that it brings about an alternative account of material change, based on bodily experienced everyday life, where the meanings of key symbols of society are constructed and reproduced.