45 Traditional and general models of the introduction, spread and impact of the Neo- lithic way of life tend to assume that novel reorientations and developments are something that happens elsewhere to which people merely respond—for example, by adopting agriculture, settling down and creating permanent houses. What pre- dominantly are the historically contingent results of agency are perceived as one de-contextualised entity, habitually in terms of a Neolithic package, while archi- tecture and the creation of the house as a notion and a social unit are taken for granted or are treated as a supra-contextual given. This does not help us to under- stand any society fully or deeply, let alone the Neolithic societies that were in the unique position of inventing new solutions to new problems and of creating what was ultimately a new way of life based on new social, economic and ideological relationships. Although during the last two decades, the Neolithic literature has become more contextual, included consideration of the small scale and the conduct of everyday life and gradually illuminated the subtle diversities of Neolithic ways across Europe and the Near East (e.g. Bailey et al. 2005, 2008; Edmonds and Richards 1998; Hodder 2006; Kuijt 2000; Whittle 2003), the way we look for and interpret evidence for the significance of the house is still influenced to a large extent by essentialist arguments and adaptationist thinking. Debate has focussed on the impact of external forces—the mechanisms by which domes- tication was introduced and the periods of time it took for full agriculture to emerge—and on the ways social units were organised or changed in adaptation to such impact. While we may gain an increasingly detailed understanding of the origins and spread of a farming way of life (e.g. Ammerman and Biagi 2003; Lichter 2000; Price 2000; Whittle and Cummings 2007), we have rarely con- sidered the house as a producer of transformation rather than merely a response to it. D. Hofmann, J. Smyth (eds.), Tracking the Neolithic House in Europe, One World Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5289-8_3, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Chapter 3 Diversity, Uniformity and the Transformative Properties of the House in Neolithic Greece Stella Souvatzi S. Souvatzi () Hellenic Open University, 2 N. Plastira, 13561 Athens, Greece e-mail: stellasouvatzi@hotmail.com