Anthropology of Houses: Reflections from Existing Literature

on Architecture
Arghya Santra1* and Amit Kumar Kisku2

ABSTRACT

The architecture of houses ever built can broadly be divided into two main divisions: one,
polite or modern architecture and another, vernacular architecture. The former type is built
by textually trained architects and the later type is built by the inhabitants themselves
through learning the craftmanship from their own experiences. Researches on architecture
have been initiated and mostly done by architects and architectural historians. But these
researches mainly focussed on the polite architecture. Anthropologists, to some extent, have
researched on vernacular architecture but not as much as they have given importance to the
study of kinship, religion, society, and culture of particular group of people. Reflecting on
the existing literature, this paper attempts to illuminate on the nature of architectural research
so far conducted by anthropologists and also opportunities for further research.

INTRODUCTION
This paper focuses on the scope for anthropologists to research on architecture.
Architecture reflects the ways houses or buildings are made. It thus includes designs,
materiality, technology, labour force, art, and economy in connection with constructions
of houses or buildings. Architecture can broadly be divided into two types - Polite or
modern architecture and Vernacular architecture (Rapoport, 1969; Vellinga, 2011). Polite
Architecture means those constructions which are made by textually trained architects.
It thus includes all the modern and post-modern buildings, monuments, houses, and so
on. The term ‘vernacular’ defined in general sense as folk, indigenous, regionalist, and
primitive styles. It is not commonly seen as high architecture sense. Vernacular
architecture, in simplest sense, refers to those constructions which are made by those
architects who are not textually trained and therefore refers to houses of rural and
remote areas. It is also synonymous to folk or indigenous architecture and mostly refers
to mud houses (Vellinga, 2011). Such houses are built using locally available resources,
and craftsmanship for constructing these houses is learned through direct experiences

*Address for Communication: *Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore–721102,

West Bengal.

The Oriental Anthropologist, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2017, Pages 277-287

© OICSR, Allahabad
Corresponding Author E-mail: arghya.santra@yahoo.com
278 Arghya Santra and Amit Kumar Kisku

(Rudofsky, 1964). These houses are also made keeping in mind the cultural traditions
and ritual beliefs of particular society/ies. The vernacular architecture thus reflects the
environment, culture, and historical context in which it exists.

Researches on architecture have been mostly done by historians, architects, and

scholars of other related disciplines which mostly focussed on polite or modern
architecture but rarely on the vernacular architecture. Though, vernacular architecture
has cultural and ritualistic importance, anthropologists also have ignored to research
on that as much they have given importance to the study of kinship, religion, culture,
and so on.

Through an intensive literature review, this paper attempts to illuminate on the

kinds of role anthropologists have played to the research on architecture, more specifically
on vernacular architecture. The paper further attempts to explore into the opportunities
the discipline architecture has for anthropologists to research on.

Evolution of architectural styles

Houses have been built since time immemorial and the architecture of houses has also
changed over time and across the world. It is evident that, about 16 million years ago,
the early ancestors of Homo built the ground nest on loose vegetation. In the Ice Age,
men established dwellings by leaves, stones, unbaked or sun-dried mud. In the Neolithic
period, people lived in permanent sedentary village in mud or brick-made houses. In
the Bronze Age, cities and states were formed and featured mud brick made boundary
walls, gateways, barbicans, guardhouses, towers, ramparts, palisades, and parapets. In
the Iron Age constructions, building making materials were same as that of the former
age but new technologies were adopted such as the use of roller, plaster of paris, glass,
the use of staircase, and geometric shaped buildings. Pyramids of the Egyptians (3100-
2040 BC), White Temple of the Sumerians (3200-323 BC), Parthenon temple of the Greeks
(600-27 BC), and Colosseum of the Romans are the examples of Iron Age constructions
(Hamlin, 1909).

During the late medieval age, Gothic architecture flourished in Europe with its
characteristics of pointed arch and the ribbed vault. Many of the great cathedrals, abbeys
and churches of Europe exhibit this architectural design. Consecutively, during the
mid-12th century, with the influences of European Renaissance, Baroque architecture
replaced the Gothic architecture. The Baroque architecture contained the characteristics
of new explorations of form, light and shadow, and dramatic intensity (ibid).

In the 18th century, through colonialism, European architecture spread over to the
rest of the world (Kniffen, 1965). The Industrial Revolution of Europe in the late
eighteenth century brought the mass production of iron and steel. The world thus

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 Anthropology of Houses: Reflections from Existing Literature on Architecture 279

experienced brewery, factory, winery, and mill structured buildings as well as high-
rise buildings and monuments. Thus, the architectural tradition of 18th century continued
in 19th century. Beside this tradition, the classic historical style of architecture evolved
organically to all over the Europe which later led to the modern architectural design
(Amiri, 2016).

In the 21st century, the world architecture turned towards new and contemporary
mode. The earlier building making materials such as adobe and masonry (stone, clay,
concrete blocks, and timber) were replaced by hard, machine-made building materials
(Dey Sarkar, 2015). In this period, architecture designs and styles become plural and no
single style of architecture is found to be dominating the world. Furthermore, the computer-
aided designs and new technology have opened opportunities for the contemporary
architects to work on thousands of different styles ranging from the post-modern and
high-tech architecture to highly conceptual and expressive styles such as those resemble
sculptures. The contemporary buildings are seen to be wrapped in glass or aluminium
screens with asymmetric facades. Above all, where the major monuments of modern
architecture of 20th century concentrated mainly in United States and Western Europe,
the contemporary or post-modern architecture dispersed across in China, Russia, Latin
America, Gulf states of the Middle East and rest of the world. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai,
Sanghai Tower in China, Twins tower in Kuala Lampur, Federation tower in Russia are
the notable examples of the architectural designs of this period.

On the basis of historical development, Indian architecture can be classified into

five major groups namely the architectures of Indus Valley Civilisation, the architectures
of Post-Mahajanapads period, the Indo-Islamic architectures, the Colonial architectures,
and post-modern architectures. The architecture of Indus Valley Civilisation is
characterised by multi-storied houses, drainage system, ventilation system, and bitumen
water-proof great bath. Its settlement pattern is marked by socio-political differentiation
similar to that of a modern city (Ching et al., 2011). The architecture of Post-
mahajanapads Period is distinguished through Stupa architecture and rock-cut
architecture. Islamic architecture consisted of the Persian and Central Asian architectural
elements consisting bulbous dome, tomb, thick wall containing passages, and staircase.
Most of the wall floor was made by shurki, limestone, and marbles. The Colonial
architecture is characterised by a mixture of Indo-Islamic, Indo-Mughal and Indo-Gothic
Architecture (Stamp,1981). The influence of cultural history, use of decorative elements,
neo-traditional architectural designs, humour, simultaneous use of two opposing
elements, and metaphor and symbolism writ large in the post-modern architecture of
India (Mukherji & Basu, 2011).

In the above paragraphs we discussed on the evolution or development of high-

modern or polite architecture. However, the ‘vernacular’ or ‘traditional’ architecture

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280 Arghya Santra and Amit Kumar Kisku

co-existed in rural, suburban, countryside of the world with least changes (Patidat &
Raghuwangshi, 2014). The Resthus house of Germany, Shotgun houses of United States,
Batak houses of Sumatra, and the traditional Brgule of Serbia have retained this tradition.
India has also retained its vernacular architectural style and its planning. Thakars house
of Maharashtra, the Do-chala-bari, Chachala-bari, Kotha-bari of West Bengal are the examples
of such architectural designs (Anonymous, 2014).

From high-modern to Vernacular: research interests of non-anthropologists

The ‘building’ activity of human and their ancestors began about 5000 years ago. But
writing and research on the ‘buildings’ is only about 2000 years old. Literatures suggest
that most of the researches were carried out by the architects, architect historians, and
historians. They have studied buildings and dwellings in search of aesthetic knowledge,
tectonic, and material properties to propose theories on architecture (Stender, 2017).
The researches on architecture began in 1st A.D with the hands of Vitruvius in the
period of antiquity and Leon Batista Alberti in Renaissance period. However, full-
fledged architectural researches flourished during the Age of Enlightenment when some
architectural theorists such as Julien-David Leroy, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Robert
Adam, James Stuart during put forward their contributions in this period.

Several art and architectural movements of 18 th century such as Rococo

movement, Neo-classical movement, and Romanticism movement pushed up the
architectural study and research (Upton 1990, Architecture 19th century, n.d.). Notable
contributions of Western artists, painters, and intellectuals such as Jean Antoine
Watteau, Philip de Lange, Thomas Jefferson and their aesthetic sense helped to
emerge the subject as a distinct discipline. Some archaeological discoveries at Pompeii
and other sites prompted the intermixture of classical art and architecture; the trend
to which Prussian art critic of Johann Joachim Winkelmann in mid-18th century termed
as ‘Neo-classicism’.

Besides the study of high-royal architecture of mid-18th century, architectural

researches turned towards the study of origin of architecture. In An Essay on Architecture
(1753) Marc-Antoine Laugier proposed the concept of ‘primitive hut’. He advocated
that architecture originated from the nature for need to shelter. The concept of primitive
hut was widely accepted in the mid-18th century which explored the relationship between
man-natural environments. The concept propounds the ideal form of architecture which
symbolizes what is natural and instinct.

Researches on architecture were initiated as well as continued mainly by architects

and architectural historians. Their primary objective was to propose architectural theories
on the basis of architectural style of particular periods. Their focus of study was buildings
and monuments. However, they rarely paid attention to the society through the lens of

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 Anthropology of Houses: Reflections from Existing Literature on Architecture 281

architecture practices. This is the area where anthropologists have given attention to
some extent.

Anthropologists in Architectural research

According to French anthropologist Levis-Strauss, a house is

……made up of both material and immaterial wealth, which perpetuates

itself through the transmission of its name, its goods and its titles down a
real or imaginary line considered legitimate as long as this continuity can
express itself in the language of kinship or of affinity and, most often, of both
(1982).

Since 18th century to the long 19th century, the study of material culture gave limited
attention on architecture (Stocking, 1985; Buchli, 2002). Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995)
noted that ‘houses are taken for granted by the anthropologists’ for long-time. As for
Humphrey (1988) there is ‘no place like home in anthropology’.

The foremost anthropological attention on house came in the 19th century with the
hands of Laugier’s primitive fantasies, Morgan’s (1881) work on the American Aborigines,
and several archaeological excavations by Pitt-Rivers. These works facilitated to
understand of architecture and material culture of past and present people. But these
works are not scholarly researches on ‘anthropology of architecture’ in true sense.

Some anthropological monographs gave partial interest on house study. These

monographs mainly focussed on building types, settlement pattern, layout of villages
and analysis of spatial management in coordination with cultural meaning and indigenous
construction methods (Horowitz, 1967; Heider, 1979 & Chagnon, 1983). These
ethnographic studies analysed architecture of traditional houses to better understand
the host human society.

Some classic studies on the anthropology of architecture were done by Cunningham

(1964), Rapoport (1969), Bourdieu (1973), Glassie (1975), and Waterson (1990). In the
book Order in the Antoni House (1964), Clarke Cunningham presented the spatial
symbolism associated with a gender opposition among Antoni, an Indonesian ethnic
group. Rapoport (1969) proposed that the house form, culture, religion, and economy
correlated with each other. Bourdieu (1973) presented architecture as a symbolic capital,
in where the idea, belief, and aesthetic sense of inhabitants are embedded. Glassie
(1975) studied the folk house of middle Virginia and illustrated that housing style of
middle Virginia depends on historical events, political, social condition of it. Waterson
(1990) presented centrally significant role of house in South-Asian social system with
reference to Indonesia.

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282 Arghya Santra and Amit Kumar Kisku

With the legacy of Claude Levi-Strauss’s concept, a house society (1982) the
architecture begins to resume a fundamental significance in the understanding of human
society and culture. The notion of a house society helped to anthropologists and
archaeologists have understood dwellings and reproduction of human societies (see
Carsten and Hugh-Jones, 1995). According to Levi-Strauss, the house is a material and
immaterial wealth which express itself in the language of kinship and relations (ibid).
The concept of a house society advocated the anthropologists to researches on particularly
in traditional or vernacular architecture and architecture in general.

Carsten and Hugh-Hones (1995) noted that the relationship between the body and
built form is difficult to uncoil; and both have complementary relation. According to
him, ‘Vitruvius man’ concept of Da Vinci’s played a key role for the study of embodiment
and architecture.
From the mid-20th century, architects and anthropologists both shared common
interest to study ‘common’, ‘everyday’, ‘native’, ‘indigenous’, ‘traditional’ and
‘vernacular’ architecture; the constructions which are built for meet the need of people
living in rural, sub-urban, remote area of the world specially isolated from the civilized
and developed areas. Therefore, vernacular architecture perceived a new field of
architectural research. Through the compliance of Rapoport’s book House form and Culture
(1969), and Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the world (1997) by Paul Oliver
architecture took a position into the anthropological researches. The Encyclopaedia of
Vernacular Architecture became a milestone in global traditional house researches.

In the last quarter of 20th century, a new branch of anthropology opened ‘Habitat
Anthropology or Architectural Anthropology’ with new framework, which related to
culture and space and architecture. According to Eganter (1992)- “…human space
perception and space conception originally were formed in small, local settlement units,
in which architecture provides the semantic systems for spatial organisation”. He also
defined architecture through the anthropological knowledge and divides into five
patterns such as- subhuman, semantic, domestic, sedentary, and urban architecture.

In Indian context, anthropological works in architecture is limited but the Indian

anthropologists have not ignored the architectural study. The Indian anthropologists
mainly studied vernacular architecture rather than studying monuments. In the 20th
century, most classical work on Indian material culture was conducted by N.K. Bose
under the Anthropological Survey of India. In his book The Peasant Life in India: A study
in Indian unity and diversity, he described different kinds of material elements of Indian
peasant society such as house type, food, fats or oil used, costumes, foot gear, bullock
cart, plough, husking implements so on. In this book, Biswas and Behura wrote a chapter
on ‘types of cottage’ (1969) in India, they described in details about area wise house

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 Anthropology of Houses: Reflections from Existing Literature on Architecture 283

types and patterns with effective environmental cause. Furthermore, the cultural
perspective anthropological work on architecture has been done by Mitra (2002), who
studied the architecture of Santals of Birbhum. His study reveals that architecture in
the Santal community is shaped by its culture, environment, economy and religious
faith. For him, the house achieves its durability both through materials and spiritual
ways.

However, looking at the contribution of anthropologists in the field of architectural

research it is evident that anthropologists have not yet studied the houses from a
comprehensive cultural point of view. The contribution of Indian anthropologists in
studying houses is scanty and those which exist are also not all encompassing in view of
human built houses.

Scope for anthropologists in architectural researches

In the previous section argued that anthropologists have so far played a negligible role
in the field of architectural research. In this section we focus on the scope for
anthropologists to conduct research in the field of architecture with their methodological
competence.

Architects have been working for a long time to build houses along with some
others such as monuments, bridges and so on. They emphasize on the plans, drawing,
models, materiality and technology. Moreover, architecture is a continuous changing and
dynamic discipline - it changes in historical perspectives (Askland, 2014). Different patterns
and styles of architecture have been found in different historical periods. Architecture
thus becomes a social agent or a part of society. After the World War II, post-modern
movement in terms of literature, humanity, arts, philosophy emerged out that led to
change architectural practices and expressions. Most of buildings built after Second World
War focused on the functional and cultural relevance such as the Neue Staatsgalerie in
Stuttgart, Germany and the EMP Museum in Seattle, Team Disney building in California,
PPG Palace in St. Pittsburg, and SIS building in London. The prominent features of post-
modern architecture are diverse aesthetics sense and the principle of “anything goes”
which gives the unique forms of these buildings (Amiri, 2016).

However, in the 21st century, due to increasing population size and large scale of
urban migration of different cultural people, the concept of space has changed. Besides,
the utilization, value, and management of space vary according to the culture of
inhabitants (Ward Thompson, 2002). Because of the lack of knowledge on the cultural
utilization, value, and management of space, most of the governments in developing
countries face the problem of accommodating its subjects or to provide them shelter –
one of basic human needs. There are several instances across the world, where
government initiated housing schemes have failed (Bhattacharya, 1990). Unfortunately,

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284 Arghya Santra and Amit Kumar Kisku

architects can minutely contribute in this arena, which opens the scope for anthropologists
to conduct research in the field of architecture. The spatial management will be better
understood through the anthropological researches.

Anthropologists mainly study the human society, culture, and development from
all time. As discussed in the previous section, they have exclusive expertise on participant
observation, worm’s eye view, and emic approach. Their specialized knowledge can
help to understand better than the architects what people need from their build
environment. Anthropologists can emphasize not only on shaping particular building
but also on the purchasing power, social sustainability, need, energy consumption,
environmentality, comfortability, and aesthetic sense of the inhabitants.

Anthropology at present is suffering from identity crisis as an academic discipline.

To cope up with such a situation, anthropology need to wider its horizons and
anthropologists also should take up more socially relevant issue to research on
architecture (Srivastava, 1999). Anthropologists need to take a key role in the architectural
researches where they are better position to understand the societal and cultural
dynamics in connection with space utilization, value, and management.

CONCLUSION
The paper attempted to explore the kinds of role anthropologists have played in
architectural research and the scope architecture has for anthropologists to research on.
Researches on architecture have mostly been done by architects and historians. However,
their researches mainly focussed on what may be called polite or modern architecture.
They studied the monuments and private and public buildings. However, the offshoot
architecture styles namely the vernacular architecture, have been ignored by them.
Though, these kinds of architecture existed since the remote past and with little changes
in styles there have not been concerted attempts to study them by historians and
architects.

It was not until the late 19th century that some anthropologists and social scientists
became attracted to study the vernacular architecture. However, the amount of such
studies is scanty. Anthropologists have been attentive towards studying the society,
culture, kinship, religion, rituals, and customs of human being. In short, anthropologists
have studied human beings outside of their houses. In that attempt, houses, in which
those studies human being lived, have been mostly ignored or say overlooked.

However, the vernacular architecture consist the houses of people living in remote
rural regions, more particularly the houses of tribal, indigenous, adivasi people.
Anthropologists are mostly interested to study these people, their society and culture.

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 Anthropology of Houses: Reflections from Existing Literature on Architecture 285

Interestingly, the houses of these people are built by locally available resources which
are hardly bought or available in markets. The resources also vary according to the
climate and geography of particular region/s on which culture of human being is also
dependent upon. The craftsmanship of building such houses is only learned through
direct experience and not by textual training. The house are built keeping in mind the
local tradition, practices, and beliefs apart from the needs of the people who live in
them.

Such knowledge of architecture i.e. vernacular architecture is only known by people

who are involved in it and minutely known to the academia. Anthropologists with
their exclusive expertise on participant observation, worm’s eye view, and emic approach
are in the best position to research on and record such knowledge; unfortunately, so
far, they neglected this important aspect.
Acknowledgement
The authors are thankful to the faculty members and research scholars of the Department
of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University for their comments and suggestions on the
various stages of the development of this paper.

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