household studies in complex societies miriam müller

The ninth annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Post-doctoral Seminar, with the title “Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches,” organized by Miriam Müller, was held on Friday, March 15, and Saturday, March 16, 2013, in Breasted Hall. Over two days, the papers and discussions focused on household archaeology, a topic that has generated considerable interest in recent years, particularly for the region of the Near East. Well implemented in New World archaeology, the subdiscipline still lacks the recognition and definition in Near Eastern archaeology. With an equal integration of texts and new scientific analyses, so-called microarchaeology, the Oriental Institute with its wide range of research interests covering the entire Near East seemed to be the best place for tackling household archaeology in an interdisciplinary approach. Since a major part of research in this field is currently being undertaken in Europe, this year’s conference had an exceptionally high number of international scholars, from Austria, Egypt, England, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Household archaeology is a relatively recent development that was introduced in the 1970s as a potentially new subfield in archaeology. With the advent of processual archaeology in the late 1950s, an integration of cultural anthropology and archaeology, and a stronger