Volume 66, nos. 1-2
March-June 2003
HOUSE AND HOME IN THE SOUTHERN LEVANT
ON THE COVER: The houses of Nazareth. A detail from a Byzantine mosaic, The Return from Egypt to Nazareth, in the Exonarthex of the Chora Church in Istanbul. Fourteenth century CE. © Erich Lessing, courtesy of Art Resource.
ARTICLES
Housing Neolithic Farmers
by E. B. Banning
The Four-Room House: Embodying
Iron Age Israelite Society
by Avraham Faust and Shlomo Bunimovitz
Bricks, Sweat and Tears:
The Human Investment in Constructing a "Four-Room"
House
by Douglas R. Clark
Domestic Architecture in
Roman and Byzantine Galilee and Golan
by Katharina Galor
The Qasrin "Talmudic"
House: On the Use of Domestic Space and Daily Life During
the Byzantine Period
by Ann E. Killebrew, Billy J. Grantham and Steven Fine
DEPARTMENTS
ARTI-FACTS
Ancient Weavers at Iron Age Mudaybi'
John M. Wade and Geerald L. Mattingly
Reconsidering
the Neolithic at Toll-e Bashi (Iran)
Reinhard
Bernbeck, Susan Pollock and Kamyar Abdi
REVIEW
The Social Context of Technological Change: Egypt and the
Near East (Elizabeth S. Friedman)
By E. B. Banning
The world’s earliest houses were not merely shelters
from the elements or the setting for food preparation, child
rearing and other domestic activities, but mysterious places
rich with symbolism and even magic. The author synthesizes
decades of research on the Neolithic, one of the most critical
stages in human development, and addresses the many questions
that remain about the relationship of early farmers to their
domestic environment and the impact of settled life on the
development of civilization.
22 The
Four-Room House: Embodying Iron Age Israelite Society
By Avraham Faust and Shlomo Bunimovitz
The four-room house was the typical dwelling in the southern
Levant during the Iron Age. Its widespread use both in time
and space raises many questions about its origins, its function,
and mostly intriguingly, about who lived in it. Did the four-room
house form the quintessential Israelite home? The authors
believe the answer to this question is yes!
34 Bricks,
Sweat and Tears: The Human Investment in Constructing a "Four-Room"
House
By Douglas R. Clark
Imagine having to construct your own house without the benefit
of modern machinery or resources—and imagine doing it
while holding down a full-time job and raising a family. In
this article, the author brings vividly to life the realities
of building a home in ancient Palestine.
44 Domestic
Architecture in Roman and Byzantine Galilee and Golan
By Katharina Galor
Since the early 1970s, the Golan has become one of the most
archaeologically studied areas in the region. The outstanding
quality and quantity of the architectural remains of both
private and public structures provides a vivid picture of
life in the Jewish communities of northern Palestine from
the time of Herod to the Arab conquest.
59 The Qasrin "Talmudic"
House: On the Use of Domestic Space and Daily Life During
the Byzantine Period
By Ann E. Killebrew, Billly J. Grantham
and StevenFine
In the 1980s, Ann E. Killebrew directed excavations in the
domestic quarter of ancient Qasrin, a Jewish village in the
Golan Heights. However, work did not stop with excavation.
In an innovative experiment, a single household unit located
near the synagogue was reconstructed. The process of reconstruction,
combined with ethnographic evidence and the rich evidence
from Rabbinic sources, has allowed the authors to learn much
about the daily life of the inhabitants, and specifically
about the function of the spaces within the house.