Household e spazi domestici nell’età del Bronzo italiana

This paper presents a reconsideration of the concept of ‘household’ in late Prehistoric archaeology. The discussion about the ‘household’ concept had begun in an- thropological studies and was then applied by archaeologists, especially those focusing on Prehistory and Protohistory. The New Archaeologists, but not exclusively them, highly contributed to this discussion, highlighting the importance of this concept to overcome the typological approach to the settlement analysis, in which a mere descriptive aspect prevails. Yet, being that of household a social concept, the correspondence with archaeological data in the diverse contexts is not straightforward. Some of the main cultural aspects of the Italian Bronze Age are taken into consideration in the paper, calling attention to those more suitable for applying the household concept. An important point in the discussion is that figuring out the dimensional and spatial characters of individuals huts/houses does not suffice to understand the ‘households’. What is needed is to acquire an overall picture of the settlement fabric and of the spaces and ways in which base activities where organised and performed, as these might have entailed the collaboration of some co-resident units. Hence the importance of paying specific attention to the activity areas, which were often located outside the huts/houses, and more generally to the planimetric organisation of open spaces, which can provide us with relevant data to understand the social organisation of the community and the configuration of sub-units related to these activities.