When we study later prehistoric societies, it is clear that people shared the ways they built their houses, managed their refuse and made special deposits as a sort of offerings. This can be seen in similarities in the material remains of these communities. In addition to this, there are also variations within these practices. Traditionally, archaeologists study the shared norms in practices and pay little attention to the variations. This is regrettable, because by studying both norms and variation, we can understand how people expressed their association with larger communities and, at the same time, their belonging to smaller social groups. In this thesis, housebuilding practices, refuse management and special depots from (Roman) Iron Age settlements (800 BC – AD 300) in the northern Netherlands are studied on different scales in order to understand how households used practices as a way to express their affiliation. Analyses show that norms on housebuilding, refuse management and special deposits varied in intensity through time and between different spatial and social scales. From this follows that these practices played different roles in the expression of a sense of community. Through time the emphasis shifted from a local community beyond the household, to the household proper and finally to the settlement as point of reference. At the same time different practices were used to refer to different types of communities the household belonged to. Large-scale affiliations could be stressed in one practice, while the importance of a smaller social group was emphasised in another practice.