An archaeology of social relations in an Egyptian village

Postprocessual archaeology has placed great importance on individuals and social interaction, though in practice this often proves a difficult project to realize. The rich archaeological and cultural data offered in an Egyptian context suggest that it is possible to identify how specific individuals and groups functioned with a domestic context, taking into account the complex vectors of social inequality - age, sex, class, status, and life experience. In the process, this paper seeks to question the narrow construal of gender as analogous to the domain of women, and show the inadequacies of such an approach. It offers an opportunity to mesh material culture with social theory by linking sociocultural, spatial, and temporal data. © 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation.