Household Analysis: Site Layout and Building Design
This chapter analyzes building design and use of yard spaces over the different household occupations through time. The evidence suggests that the Knight & Shenton store building was built partly as a status symbol and enlarged to keep a strong public
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Household Analysis: Site Layout and Building Design
Household Analysis The previous chapters have highlighted many interesting questions which can only be answered by archaeological investigation at the excavation level. These include questions about adaption to environmental conditions such as how did Cossack residents try to cope with extreme heat, cyclonic winds, and tidal surges within their building design and layout? Questions about the facilitation of trade: Did the facilitation of trade include facilitating imports as well as exports? How integrated with the British trading networks were the households of the northwest? Questions about social relations and the expression of domination and resistance in the built environment and material culture of households: Can the effect of early regional elite resistance and then the collapse of that resistance be traced in the archaeological records left by households in Cossack? Was that resistance expressed differently by the pastoral, pearling, and urban elite of the northwest in their built environment and material culture? Were there differences in surplus accumulation between the regional development elite groups of the northwest? How is the domination of the urban and pearling elite expressed in the built environment and material culture of households in Cossack? How is resistance to local elite domination expressed in the built environment and material culture of Cossack households? How different was surplus accumulation in the households of the northwest to that of households in the southwest of the same period? Not all these questions can be answered from one excavation site. Questions regarding the differing expression of status or surplus accumulation by different groups during the same time period obviously cannot be answered from one site. As an urban site, the store cannot answer questions regarding the rural pastoral elite or their workers. The site is also not situated in the pearling master’s enclave, Chinatown or an Aboriginal fringe camp, so it cannot answer questions regarding pearling masters and their workers in the nineteenth century, but it is placed to look at this question after the successful spread of Asian resistance out of Chinatown in the twentieth century.
G. Nayton, The Archaeology of Market Capitalism: A Western Australian Perspective, Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8318-3_8, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
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8 Household Analysis: Site Layout and Building Design
The Knight & Shenton store site is better placed to answer questions regarding urban elites, trade, and adaptation. The history of site use at the excavation site can be summarized as: • • • • • • •
1870–1872 Knight & Shenton store/partner’s house 1872–1875 McRae & Co store/partner’s house 1875–ca. 1883 McRae & Co store/Jnr. partner’s accommodation Ca. 1883–1892 McRae & Co Jnr. partner’s accommodation 1892–1907 W.D. Moore store managers (relative of owner) accommodation 1907–late 1920s Japanese laundry/laundry
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