INTRODUCTION

Since its earliest years of practice, our discipline has maintained a long-standing tradition of ‘household archaeology’. Current directions have begun to explore the material implications of domestic sites as venues for labour, as arena for inter- and intra-gendered relations, and sites of consumption. These approaches have encouraged historical archaeologists to consider how the growing tide of mass-produced industrial commodities – the ‘stuff ’ of empire – inextricably transformed the ways ordinary people lived and worked within their own homes from the 18th century onwards.

Further, by recognising that the material world of a household operates simultaneously on multiple geographic scales, these studies have demonstrated how the familiar process of ‘making home’ is at once an internal and external dynamic, as also discussed by Charles Orser, this volume. It is both an experience of intimate social relationships, and a reflection of transnational economic forces. Accepting this paradox encourages us to ‘think globally, dig locally’ in order to grasp the material articulations of class mobility and community life within the archaeological household.

ON MEMORY AND MATERIALITY

Oral histories off er a powerful means for engaging withthis crucial dialectics of scale – for understanding how global products enter into regional domestic patterns, and how they inform local processes of community building and social belonging.