In this seminar, co-taught by Maher and Shelton, we explore domestic spaces and the daily lives of people in the past through the study of household remains. This includes examining architecture, deposits and artifacts—the items of everyday life—associated with the construction and life of ‘homes’. By investigating these materials, we reconstruct how people lived, what they ate, how they worked, and how their social, political and economic lives were organized. Starting with earliest human households, we look at shifts from temporary structures to more permanent settled village life to the household transformations associated with urbanism and city life across the Mediterranean. The diachronic study of households helps reveal the intimate, everyday aspects of ancient life, highlighting how individuals and families interacted with their environment, how they used space, and how their domestic practices were tied to broader cultural and economic developments.