household goods: Africa 537 used just to get from one day to the next has its own powerful fascination Furthermore, household goods can tell archaeologists much about a culture For instance, finding nearly identical furniture at different sites could suggest that they had a culture in common Household goods can indicate how prosperous people were and how well people benefited from their governments and natural resources This is not a simple matter One might look at the paucity of household goods in some medieval central African cultures and infer that the people were poor, even miserable, yet this was not the case The paucity of household goods in those cultures stems more from a lack of interest in material wealth A fancy pot might be displayed by some people to show off their status, but in general people were more interested in building good relationships in families and villages than in acquiring furniture; they saw wealth as an accumulation of social debt, a matter of befriending others so that they owed favors in return Children and respect mattered much more than goods To those people, they had a high standard of living in which material goods mattered little Household goods would vary according not only to social attitudes toward what constituted wealth but also to environment In medieval Europe chairs in the north were made primarily of oak, but in the south Alpine pine prevailed This meant that northern chairs tended to be heavily carved, because oak was a hard wood, but southern chairs were more likely to be painted, because pine was a soft wood that did not hold carved edges as well as oak did In each case, the chair could be sturdy, serviceable, and attractive, with the difference in decoration a matter of which wood was available rather than a cultural preference Social conditions could have a strong effect on the particular household goods people used In much of Australia and North America people were hunter-gatherers moving from place to place They knew where to go at different seasons to find certain ripe fruits or fresh birds’ eggs, and they also knew where to go to obtain water during a drought or to escape a wildfire The key aspect was that they moved often, sometimes daily Their goods had to be what they could carry Thus baskets were of special importance, because they were lightweight and could be used for fetching food Bags of animal skins or tree bark could be sewn into bags for carrying weapons, body ornaments, totems, or objects that indicated status within a social group Furniture tends to be more common among settled groups than unsettled ones Medieval Australians were unlikely to carry wooden benches with them On the other hand, portable tables and chairs were common in medieval Europe, especially in the early centuries of the medieval era Some archaeologists interpret the portable furniture as signs that Europe was unsettled at the time, with people moving often because of war or other social upheavals, but portable furniture could have been just a convenience In a medieval European home a table that could be assembled at mealtime and disassembled and set aside later meant that the center of the main room could be open for use most of the time Folding chairs in medieval homes also could be put out of the way when not in use Monarchs who traveled their lands to meet with people frequently used folding chairs as mobile thrones Thus, the furniture could be a sign of unsettled daily lives, or it could be a sign that the material wealth of people was improving enough that they could afford something that they wanted just because it was convenient to use Cooking and eating utensils offer similar complexities of interpretation Were the peoples of eastern Asia living primitive lives because they often used two sticks to eat their food? Even emperors used chopsticks More interesting is to examine the interplay between what was eaten and the utensils used to prepare and eat it In the case of chopsticks, it is possible that their use inspired a culinary tradition in which meats and vegetables were cut into bite-sized bits, easy for the chopsticks to grab In its turn, that may have created a need for cleavers and sturdy knives for cutting food when preparing it Thus, the pleasure in studying cooking and eating utensils may lie not in what they may say about the wealth of those who used them but instead in the complex interplay of the utensils in eating habits, food sources, and techniques of preparation of food Africa by Bradley Skeen Because of the relative remoteness of the areas involved and the wide dispersal of the remains to be studied, archaeological excavations concentrating on the Middle Ages have been comparatively rare in Africa away from the homelands of the ancient civilizations of the north coast and Nile Valley For this reason archaeologists have spent little time on the remains of ordinary households compared with important monuments and significant works of art Nevertheless, some idea of the range of household goods employed in medieval Africa can be made out from the archaeological record as well as the oral historical traditions of modern-day African peoples In Egypt before the Islamic conquest (mid-seventh century), ordinary household items would have differed little from other parts of the Roman Empire Household implements would have been made of iron or bronze The main kind of ceramic jar in use for storage of olive oil, wine, and many kinds of materials (including, for instance, carpenter’s