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The politics of house shape: round vs rectilinear domestic structures in Déla compounds, northern Cameroon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Diane Lyons
Diane Lyons*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC, Canada V5A 1S6. E-mail: lyons @sfu.ca Social Sciences Division, Douglas College, New Westminster BC, Canada V3L 5B2
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Abstract

Building floor plans are frequently recovered by archaologists. A common first sorting of the shapes of small domestic buildings is between round houses and rectangular houses. What do these differences mean? Why do social groups change their building form from one to the other? An ethnoarchaeological study from northern Cameroon illustrates how four ethnic groups in a single community use building shape to blur or define group boundaries for political self-interests.

Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 70 , Issue 268 , June 1996 , pp. 351 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1996

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