dowries paid to their husbands at the time of their marriages (Goldberg, 1999: 158). What is not argued is that women had less power than men, was it then for this reason that men had different rooms from women? For instance, the andron was a room that historians have related to the male domain. It is thought that this was where symposia would have taken place (Goldberg, 1999: 149); how Implementation action plan ever, this is not a phenomenon that is mentioned in Roman houses as having b Implementation action plan e Implementation action plan en something that was prevalent. Maybe this is due to the idea that women in Roman society were deemed to have had slightly higher standing than their counterparts in Classical Greece (2005: 231). Ault et al. complain in an article published in 1999 that ‘both artefacts and architecture are studied as isolated entities’ (Ault et al., 1999: 45), but what there has not been enough investigation into is the link between the two and what each one can tell us about the household as an entire unit. As alluded to above, the open areas within houses in both societies being looked at were busy places within the house. Within the Greek houses they were a ‘defining feature of Athenian houses’ (Jameson, 1990: 179) but also served a wider purpose, as a temperature control for the r Implementation action plan est of the house and were a tool within the economic goings on of the society in that they ‘served as enclosed yards to ensure the protection of the household property’ (Goldberg, 1999: 144). The courtyards were considered to be the women’s domain, although it wa Implementation action plan s not unusual for men to be found here and it would have been used as a thoroughfare for male visitors wishing to get through to the andron (Goldberg, 1999: 147). It is only in more recent years that fewer assumptions have been made as to the value of each of the rooms. By looking at the evidence again historians are now better educated as to the functions of items of furniture and where they fit within rooms and what this tells us about the households and to a certain extent society. These gender divisions which have been described by Goldberg (1999) are not always as clear as it would appear, for instance, the spaces within houses which have been assigned to females are not actually marked archaeologically by ‘women’s objects, like mirrors or jewellery boxes’ (Goldberg, 1999: 149). However this works in the opposite direction when assumptions have been made inaccurately about the function of certain houses just because there is a presence of one particular artefact, for instance loom weights. This is a topic also covered by Allison (2004) within the context of Pompeii, w Implementation action plan here inaccuracies were made about room nomenclature. The presence of loom weights does not necessarily presuppose that the house is a weaving shop (Allison, 1999: 70); it could be that there were just a larger number of looms within a particular house and the theory that they were mobile would mean that they could quite possibly have stored more than one or two looms in one household (Allison, 1999: 70). What it is more possible to assume is that the presence of loom weights in certain areas of the house, such as the courtyard, would suggest that these areas were dedicated to females (Allison, 1999: 71). In Roman society women would have done the weaving in the forecourts of the house as this was the ‘well-lit part of the house’ (Allison: 1999: 70). In comparing the houses from the two societies being studied it is clear that there are some spaces that one society demonstrates that the other doesn’t. For instance, in Greek houses wells for water are frequent (Goldberg, 1999: 153); this is not something that is mentioned within sources on Roman housing. Neither did Roman houses include a room just for the purpose of male entertaining. Even the atriumwasusedby women for weaving (Allison, 1999: 71). It is perhaps also worth noting that from the sources included within this study there has been no mention of urban villas Implementation action plan  having a second floor. However, there are examples where houses are situated above shops such as in Ostia (Storey, 2001) and are raised off the ground. This is also difficult to verify withi Implementation action plan n excavation reports purely because if the building no longer exists then there may be evidence of a floor plan for the ground floor, but no evidence of the second floor would remain. With studies like this one we encounter problems. To really investigate this topic, more research needs to be done which links the artefacts which are uncovered and what this can tell us about the household that they were found within. It is not safe to assume that just because an item was found in a room that this is where it belonged long term, an excavation is merely a ‘diachronic sample of debris reflecting patterns of use and behaviour over an extended period’ (Ault et al., 1999: 52), and this snapshot of the household may not be entirely accurate. Through the course of writing this essay it has been observed that conclusions are difficult to draw due to the nature of the material being dealt with. For instance, the irregular layout of Greek housing means that patterns are not easily identified as they are in Roman housing, there are of course similarities between them and patterns in the rooms that most often ap Implementation action plan  Implementation action plan pear but there is no rigid layout which means we can predict what we will find, for instance, not all houses had andronesand some houses had second floors whereas others did not. Another fact to be taken into account is that a lot of the uses of these rooms is speculative. There is little evidence from primary sour>