Although several recent conferences and publications have concentrated on the study of ancient houses and households in the Mediterranean, relatively little work has emphasised household analysis on a regional as opposed to a cross-regional or even site-based level. This volume fills that need by presenting the papers of the international colloquium on the archaeology of houses and households in ancient Crete held in Ierapetra in May 2005. The 38 papers presented here range from a discussion of household activities at Final Neolithic Phaistos to the domestic correlates of "globalisation" during the early Roman Empire. These studies demonstrate a variety of methodological approaches currently employed for understanding houses and household activities. Key themes include understanding the built environment in all of its manifestations, the variability of domestic organisation, the role of houses and households in mediating social (and perhaps even ethnic) identity within a community or region, household composition and, of course, household activities of all types, ranging from basic subsistence needs to production and consumption at a supra-household level. These themes reflect the current research of the archaeologists who "dig houses" of all time periods on Crete and also highlight common ground for productive dialogue concerning the material, behaviour and social aspects of ancient households
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