Some of the most vivid surviving images of the Greek world are to be found in the numerous scenes on painted pottery which appear to show, not great battles or civic occasions, but the minutiae of everyday life – a world enclosed within the walls of the private home, the oikos. The attraction of these scenes is enhanced by the strict privacy accorded to the oikos in surviving written sources, which offer only glimpses into this interior world. But can such images be taken at face value, or do they need more careful interpretation? And how can we successfully integrate this iconography with textual, and particularly with the large amount of surviving archaeological, evidence to explore how a Greek oikos actually worked? Starting from these issues of how we evaluate critically different forms of evidence, the seminar will move on to consider the contribution made by the growing discipline of household archaeology, which we shall use to explore a variety of aspects of the oikos as a physical and a social unit. We shall combine exploration of the Greek evidence with work on general issues of scholarship/skills, paying particular attention to discussion of research methodologies and theoretical approaches. Students interested in issues of source evaluation, in the Greek oikos as an institution, and in household archaeology more generally will all be equally welcome. The precise topics to be covered can be adjusted depending on the interests of participants.
