Social and monumental space in Neolithic Thessaly, Greece

Abstract

The article considers the ways in which material culture and especially architecture is used in the negotiation of social relationships in Neolithic settlements in Thessaly, Greece. Thus it reconstructs the possibilities past agents had to form an identity in relation to houses and subsequently the consequences of two different habitation strategies, i.e. rebuilding on the same spot or relocation to another area, in relation to the conceptualization of time and the past. It is suggested that the different entanglement of memories with the material culture played an important role in the negotiation of relationships, by allowing agents to use the past as cultural capital and, even more, in the late Neolithic, to appropriate its reference points spatially and thus lay preferential claims over it.