Amy Elizabeth Clark

Homes are spaces where we rest, prepare food, eat, care for children, and enjoy the company of our loved ones. The physical space varies culturally and might be indoors, outdoors, or both. It might be permanent year-round, or it might be reconstituted repeatedly as one moves from place to place. Yet no matter the context, the home is the setting for some of the most important aspects of our social, cultural, and economic lives. It is no wonder, then, that home holds a special emotional and symbolic significance for humans. But how did the home come to be? And how did the home itself play a role in the evolution of humans? In “At Home in the Paleolithic: The Making of the Home and its Archaeological Signatures”, I consider the material signatures of the myriad economic, symbolic, and social behaviors that together constitute the home. I then track these signatures through time, focusing on the origins and evolution of homemaking within the Paleolithic.