9 Tracing Everyday Life at Trimithis (Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt) Anna Lucille Boozer City University of New York ABSTRACT This article explores how concepts of “trace” might help archaeologists disentangle and interpret the material remains of ordinary life. Trace is a theoretical vantage long exploited by social theorists to explore the unintentional, quotidian residues of ordinary people. The term trace is relevant to archaeology because it refocuses attention from active agency to more subtle undercurrents within daily life rhythms. I explore two Romano-Egyptian houses from the same city from a trace perspective in order to reveal the small-scale daily life choices of individuals. The results of this exploration suggest future directions for the archaeological use of trace to explore materiality, everyday life, and subtle signatures of multi-cultural scenarios. [Trace, Roman Egypt, domestic archaeology, materiality] T he analyzed material and documentary records con- cerning identity in Roman Egypt are sparse and some- times contradictory. On the basis of these records, scholars of Roman Egypt commonly suggest that categories of Egyp- tian, Greek, and Roman were entirely conflated by the third and fourth centuries C.E. These assertions of a uniform iden- tity can be found explicitly stated in some texts, while others implicitly embed them within other arguments. Identity is a “given.” The growing body of material evidence from houses and burials undermines the assumption that ethnic identities fused together seamlessly in Roman Egypt. While drawing together common threads of Pharaonic, Roman Mediter- ranean, Hellenistic Greek, local and distant traditions, each household blended these contributing threads differently. Some influences were emphasized at the expense of oth- ers, and the ways in which these influences were combined could vary depending upon life course stage, gender, con- text, locality, economic stratum, and so forth. By their very nature as “insignificant” contexts, archae- ologists have ignored the dwellings of ordinary Romano- Egyptian households. Currently, Romano-Egyptian mate- rial evidence is weighted heavily toward tombs and temples. We often lack other components of life in Roman Egypt. Houses and their contents can provide crucial testimony regarding the diversity of lived experiences in Roman Egypt. The present work argues that we gain a stronger assess- ment of identity expression through exploring domestic ar- eas from a broad range of society, rather than examining only the monumental echelons of society. I suggest that in- dividual households employed material culture differently, depending upon their economic stratum, gender, age, and other vectors of their identity. By exploring the residues of ordinary life activities, we gain a vivid image of daily life in Roman Egypt. The present emphasis on ordinary houses and activities in Roman Egypt resonates with a body of literature that em- phasizes the importance of ordinary life experiences. The- orists such as de Certeau (1984) assert the possibility that rituals, representations, and laws imposed by an outside or- der can be subverted not only by rejecting or altering them but also by using them in divergent ways. By employing signatures of the dominant social order for ends and refer- ences foreign to the overarching system, individuals deflect systemic power. This reinterpretation of goods and ideas re- sults from localized procedures of consumption (de Certeau ARCHEOLOGICAL PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, Vol. 26, pp. 122–138, ISSN 1551-823X, online ISSN 1551-8248. C  2015 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/apaa.12063.