Houses and cultural change: An interdisciplinary methodology for the exploration of the built environment in Contemporary Rural Spain

Abstract

This paper presents an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of recent transformations in the households of rural areas in Spain. Houses constitute a key repository of the biographies and cultural memory of the communities inhabiting these territories, since they work as outstanding elements in shaping personal, family and communal identities. Therefore, houses are useful elements for the archaeological study of the social and productive transformations affecting rural areas in Spain. Indeed, the built environment is one of the most illustrative elements in the articulation of these changes in the everyday life of rural communities, in which the materiality of the households plays a key role. To fulfil these aims, this paper builds on two case studies in the districts of Maragatería (León) and Somiedu (Asturias), in Northwest Spain. In exploring these cases, this paper contributes to the theoretical and methodological development of other comparable archaeological, ethnographic and heritage studies research being carried out in Spain and elsewhere.