Occupancy and the Use of Household Space Among the Dukha

Abstract

Archaeologists commonly encounter the occupation surfaces of ephemeral prehistoric houses. Within those spaces, artifacts can exhibit considerable spatial structure raising the question of what that structure can tell us about human behavior. We explore a simple site-formation model in which household occupancy, defined here as the average number of individuals who simultaneously occupy a house, positively predicts artifact dispersion. We confront the model with ethnographic observations on the use of space in 19 houses inhabited by Dukha reindeer herders of the Mongolian Taiga. The analysis shows that average occupancy predicts dispersion in the use of household space but that systemic noise, sampling error, and event mixing are likely to overwhelm the behavioral signal. Other factors may therefore be equally or more important in driving the spatial dispersion of household artifacts. The study further suggests an analytical framework for exploring relationships between behavior and archaeological structure using ethnoarchaeological data.

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