No Place Like Home: Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households 9781803271569, 9781803271576, 1803271566

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright page
Contents Page
Introduction
Chapter 1. Introduction: No Place Like Home
Laura Battini, Aaron Brody, and Sharon R. Steadman
Architecture as Archive of Social Space
Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology
Nicholas Picardo
Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity in the Early Iron Age at Tall al-ʿUmayri, Jordan
Monique D. Vincent
Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu: Evidence from the Outer Town at Ayanis
Paul Zimansky
Chapter 5. Living at the Gate: Identification of Military Housing at Neo-Assyrian Tušhan (Ziyaret Tepe)
Timothy Matney, Tina L. Greenfield, Kemalettin Köroǧlu, John MacGinnis, Britt Hartenberger, and Melissa Rosenzweig
Chapter 6. Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective
Laura Battini
Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire: Domestic Foodways and Cultural Practice at 12th Century BC Beth-Shean
Jacob C. Damm
The Active Household
Chapter 8. ‘Work/Life Balance’ in Late Chalcolithic Anatolia: Household Activities and Spatial Organization at Çadır Höyük
Stephanie Selover, Laurel D. Hackley, and Sharon R. Steadman
Chapter 9. Household Archaeology During the Early Bronze III of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath
Haskel J. Greenfield, Jon Ross, Shira Albaz, Tina L. Greenfield, Jeremy A. Beller, Suembikya Frumin, Ehud Weiss, and Aren M. Maeir
Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar: Structure SS1 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, Sultanate of Oman
Jennifer Swerida
Chapter 11. A Closer Look: The Houses on the Southeastern Hill of Jerusalem in Economic Perspective1
Margreet L. Steiner
Chapter 12. The Daily Bread at Tell Halif: An Overview of Food Production and Consumption
Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Tim Frank, and Oded Borowski
Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home: Workshops and Workplaces in Romano-Egyptian Houses
Anna Lucille Boozer
Ritual Space at Home
Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional?: An Ubaid Period Burnt Structure at Kenan Tepe, Turkey
Marie Hopwood
Chapter 15. Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Houses: A Ritualized Space?
Juliette Mas
Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts: An Archaeology of Domestic Religious Admixture in Kültepe-Kaneš
Yağmur Heffron

Citation preview

No Place Like Home Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households

Edited by

Laura Battini, Aaron Brody and Sharon R. Steadman

9

No Place Like Home Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households

Edited by

Laura Battini, Aaron Brody and Sharon R. Steadman

Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 9

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com

ISBN 978-1-80327-156-9 ISBN 978-1-80327-157-6 (e-Pdf) © the authors and Archaeopress 2022 Photo on the cover page: Copyright of the Bade Museum at Pacific School of Religion. From Tell en-Nasbeh collection. The photograph was taken in 1935. No photographer was specified.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

Contents Chapter 1. Introduction: No Place Like Home.....................................................................................................................1 Laura Battini, Aaron Brody, and Sharon R. Steadman

Architecture as Archive of Social Space Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology..........................................................................................6 Nicholas Picardo Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity in the Early Iron Age at Tall al-ʿUmayri, Jordan.............................................................................................................................................................21 Monique D. Vincent Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu: Evidence from the Outer Town at Ayanis.......................................42 Paul Zimansky Chapter 5. Living at the Gate: Identification of Military Housing at Neo-Assyrian Tušhan (Ziyaret Tepe).....58 Timothy Matney, Tina L. Greenfield, Kemalettin Köroǧlu, John MacGinnis, Britt Hartenberger, and Melissa Rosenzweig Chapter 6. Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective..................................................................78 Laura Battini Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire: Domestic Foodways and Cultural Practice at 12th Century BC Beth-Shean...................................................................................................................................................92 Jacob C. Damm

The Active Household Chapter 8. ‘Work/Life Balance’ in Late Chalcolithic Anatolia: Household Activities and Spatial Organization at Çadır Höyük.................................................................................................................................................112 Stephanie Selover, Laurel D. Hackley, and Sharon R. Steadman Chapter 9. Household Archaeology During the Early Bronze III of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath...........................................127 Haskel J. Greenfield, Jon Ross, Shira Albaz, Tina L. Greenfield, Jeremy A. Beller, Suembikya Frumin, Ehud Weiss, and Aren M. Maeir Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar: Structure SS1 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, Sultanate of Oman..............................................................................................................................................164 Jennifer Swerida Chapter 11. A Closer Look: The Houses on the Southeastern Hill of Jerusalem in Economic Perspective ......181 Margreet L. Steiner Chapter 12. The Daily Bread at Tell Halif: An Overview of Food Production and Consumption........................195 Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Tim Frank, and Oded Borowski Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home: Workshops and Workplaces in Romano-Egyptian Houses.............204 Anna Lucille Boozer

Ritual Space at Home Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional?: An Ubaid Period Burnt Structure at Kenan Tepe, Turkey..................220 Marie Hopwood Chapter 15. Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Houses: A Ritualized Space?...........................................................237 Juliette Mas Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts: An Archaeology of Domestic Religious Admixture in Kültepe-Kaneš....................247 Yağmur Heffron i

Authors Biographies Shira Albaz (Ph.D., 2019, Bar-Ilan University) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, Haifa University. She is also the manager of The Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project at Bar-Ilan University (gath.wordpress.com), and also a member in The Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times (aramisrael.org). Her interests focus on Early Bronze Age material culture and societies in the southern Levant. She has conducted fieldwork intensively as part of the Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological project since 2010, as the Area E Supervisor for several years (2013-2017), and as the Area S supervisor in 2021. She has also conducted a number of rescue excavations and archaeological surveys. Laura Battini (Ph.D., 1998, Paris, École Pratique des Hautes Études), joined CNRS–Lyon (2001-2016), moving to CNRS– Paris in 2017. After teaching archaeology at the University of Clermont-Ferrand she now teaches ancient history at the University of Tours. Her early research focused on Mesopotamian domestic architecture and to which she added iconography since 2010. She participates in excavations in Italy, Syria, and Iraq, and also carries out studies in American museums such as the Yale Babylonian Collection, with a particular focus on terra cottas. In 2017 she founded the scientific journal Ash Sharq, and the Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeological Series. She edits the Sociétés humaines du Proche-Orient ancient scientific blog, and has authored or edited ten books and dozens of articles. Jeremy A. Beller (Ph.D., 2018, Simon Fraser University) is currently a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, B.C., Canada). He is a lithic analyst, specializing in prehistoric periods within the Levant from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages. His research explores several topics, including the adoption of metal technology, domestic subsistence at early urban settlements, and the mobility and technological organization of hominins during the Pleistocene. He has been a sessional instructor at the University of Winnipeg and Simon Fraser University and conducted excavations at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel from 2012-2017. He has experience conducting archaeological research in the Israel, Jordan, and Canada. Oded Borowski is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Archaeology and Hebrew in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University. He directs the Lahav Research Project: Phase IV conducting excavations at Tell Halif. He also excavated at Tel Gezer, Tel Dan, Ashkelon, Beth Shemesh. His research relates mainly to household archaeology and daily life in biblical times. His publications include  Agriculture in Iron Age Israel  (1987);  Every Living Thing: The Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel (1998); Daily Life in Biblical Times (2003); Lahav III: The Iron Age II Cemetery at Tell Halif (Site 72) (2013), and numerous articles, book reviews and encyclopedia entries. Currently he is completing Lahav VIII: Tell Halif Excavations in Field III 1977-1987: Life in the Shephelah in the Bronze and Iron Ages.   Anna Lucille Boozer is Professor of Roman Mediterranean Archaeology and Ancient History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). Her research focuses on Roman Egypt, Meroitic Sudan, everyday life, and empires. She directs the CUNY excavations at Amheida (Egypt) and MAP: The Meroë Archival Project (Sudan). She has written widely on the social archaeology and history of Egypt and Sudan. Among her books are A Late Romano-Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis: Amheida House B2 (2015), Archaeologies of Empire: Local Participants and Imperial Trajectories (2020), and At Home in Roman Egypt: A Social Archaeology (2021). Aaron Brody is the Robert and Kathryn Riddell Professor of Bible and Archaeology and Director of the Badè Museum at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. He has excavated primarily at harbor sites in Israel, including Tel Nami, Ashkelon, Dor, and Tel Akko, and has participated in projects in the Negev and Akko Plain and with the OhloneMuwekma at sites in northern California. Research interests include household archaeology; the archaeology of religion; society; economy; identity and ethnicity; postcolonialism; and maritime and deepwater archaeology. Recent publications have focused on household religion, metallurgy, and interregional trade at Tell en-Nasbeh, from holdings in the Badè Museum. Other research has focused on the specialized religion of Canaanite and Phoenician seafarers. Jacob C. Damm (Ph.D., UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology) is an adjunct lecturer in the Sociology/Anthropology Department at SUNY Cortland. His current research explores cultural interaction during the Egyptian New Kingdom imperial occupation of the southern Levant (c. 16th-12th centuries BC), using foodways to understand the relationship between practice, identities, and social entanglements in the cultural contact zone. Moreover, he has explored these phenomena at the New Kingdom garrison at Jaffa (modern Israel) as part of the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP), with that material to be published in the forthcoming final report on Late Bronze Age levels at the site. Recently, he has extended these analyses to the early Iron Age with the Turning Points project at Tel Dan. ii

Tim Frank (Ph.D., Universität Bern, Switzerland) is the Vicar of Papanui, New Zealand. His main interest is Household Archaeology of Ancient Israel. His publications include Household Food Storage in Ancient Israel and Judah (2018) and chapters on archaeological methods and artifacts in various edited volumes. Tim Frank is part of the Lahav Research Project conducting archaeological excavations at Tell Halif.  Suembikya Frumin (Ph.D., 2017, Bar-Ilan University) is currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (National Natural History Collections: Israel Taxonomy Initiative (ITI) Project) and the Archaeobotany Lab Manager in the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel). She is a palaeobotanist specializing in the taxonomic identification of seeds, fruits, and flower from diverse excavations from the Neolithic to the Islamic periods. Her research addresses the intrinsic and human-induced changes in Israeli vegetation: reconstruction of ancient natural environment, human diet and plant use, history of plants domestication, as well as long-distance plant dispersal by human mobility. She has participated in the field and research work of The Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project at Bar-Ilan University (https://gath.wordpress.com/test/staff/) since 2012. Haskel J. Greenfield (Ph.D., 1985, City University of New York) is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Codirector of the Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology Lab, and Coordinator for Judaic Studies Program (University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada). He is an anthropological archaeologist whose research focuses on early agricultural and complex societies in the Old World from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. He has conducted research on butchering technology, spread of metallurgy, regional subsistence and land-use, Secondary Products Revolution, origins of transhumant pastoralism, and intra-settlement spatial organization. Most recently, he has been studying the organization of Early Bronze Age urban communities in the Near East and codirected with Prof. Aren Maeir the Early Bronze Age excavations at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel. Tina L. Greenfield is an archaeologist whose interests lie in the earliest cities and empires of the ancient world. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge and teaches Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology in the Department of History at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan. She is a co-director of the Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology Lab at the University of Manitoba She has participated on field projects in Canada, Europe, South Africa, Turkey and most recently in Iraq (Telloh, Lagash, Darband I Rania) and Israel (Tell Burna). She is the PI of a SSHRC Grant for her project ‘Mobile Economies: A bioarchaeological approach to food economies and mobility in Southern Mesopotamia in the 3rd Millennium BC’. Laurel Darcy Hackley is a Postdoctoral Researcher for the ERC Desert Networks Project and a Research Associate in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is Co-Director for Prehistoric Studies at Çadir Höyük, where she has been excavating since 2008. Her research focuses on ancient activity in arid landscapes, especially in Egypt and Turkey.  Britt Hartenberger is a Faculty Specialist in Anthropology in the Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies, Western Michigan University. Her research interests include household studies, craft specialization, and urbanism in the Bronze and Iron Age Middle East. She specializes in analyzing stone tools, ceramics, and microdebris. Dr. Hartenberger worked with the Titriş Höyük and Ziyaret Tepe projects in Turkey and most recently with the Olynthos project in Greece. Yağmur Heffron (Ph.D. University of Cambridge, Trinity College) held an Anniversary Research Fellowship at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, prior to becoming a Lecturer in the History of the Ancient Middle East at University College, London. She has published extensively on the archaeology of religion in second millennium Anatolia, particularly on issues of hybridity of cult practices as evidenced in texts and material culture. Her research also extends into recent histories of archaeological interpretation, and contemporary labor relations in archaeological fieldwork in Turkey. She has excavated at numerous sites in Turkey, including Tell Atchana, Kinet Höyük, Kilise Tepe, and Zincirli Höyük, most recently joining Çadır Höyük for renewed investigations of the Bronze Age at this site.   Marie Hopwood is a Professor of Anthropology at Vancouver Island University, in British Columbia, Canada. Her current research, Raise Your Glass to the Past, is an experimental archaeology project exploring archaeological evidence for ancient beer production and consumption. Her research highlights the role of food, alcohol and gender in ancient communities from ancient Mesopotamia and beyond. As a member of the Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP), she excavated at the site of Kenan Tepe in southeastern Turkey and served as the Ground Stone Specialist. Marie explores the use of ground stone at Kenan Tepe as evidence for food preparation and household function in the Ubaid period. iii

John MacGinnis is Senior Curator in the British Museum and Lead Archaeologist of the Iraq Archaeological Training Scheme. His interests focus on the archaeology and epigraphy of Mesopotamia in the first millennium BC. He has worked in countries across the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan, and is currently directing the excavation of a Parthian settlement and an Assyrian fort at the Darband-i Rania, a pass through the western Zagros in Iraqi Kurdistan. Aren Maeir is from the Dept. of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel) and the head of the Institute of Archaeology. He is the director of the Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project (gath. wordpress.com), co-director of the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times (aramisrael.org) and director the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies. Among his recent publications: Maeir, A. M. & Uziel, J. 2020. Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath II: Excavations and Studies. AuL 106. Munster: Zaphon; Maeir, A. M. 2021. On Defining Israel: Or, let’s do the kulturkreislehre again! Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 10(2): 106-48. Juliette Mas is a contractual researcher at the CNRS (Paris) affiliated to the UMR 8210-ANHIMA. She is a member of the i3.MesopOil Project (dir. G. Chambon, EHESS & W. Sallaberger, LmU München). Her interests and research focus on Near Eastern pre-classsic pottery and domestic architecture. Since 2001, Juliette Mas is involved in different international archaeological missions working in the Near East and has been entrusted with the study and publication of Bronze age pottery collections from Syrian and Iraqi archaeological sites. Timothy Matney, Professor of Archaeology, University of Akron. Prof. Matney’s primary fieldwork is the archaeology of southeastern Anatolia. He co-directed the excavations at Early Bronze Age Titriş Höyük in the Şanlıurfa Province from 1994-1999 with Prof. Guillermo Algaze (UCSD) and he was the Director of the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition in the Diyarbakır province from 1997-2014. His research interests include early urbanization and city planning, daily life in the Early Bronze and Iron Ages, and the Assyrian imperial economy. Nicholas Picardo, Senior Curatorial Technician, The Giza Project, Harvard University. Field Director of the South Abydos Excavation E Project (Abydos, Egypt). Archaeologist with the Kom el-Hisn Provincialism Project (Roanoke College). Chapter Representative to the American Research Center in Egypt Board of Governors. Research areas include: household archaeology; household organization, administration, and religion; sealing practices; digital humanities; performance studies. Forthcoming publications (2022) include ‘Playful Piety?: Considering Practice, Play, and Performance Studies in the Classification of Ancient Egyptian Household Figurines’ (contribution to a to-be-titled Festschrift; Peeters), and ‘‘Where Did THAT Come From?!’ The Giza Project’s Development of Citation and Referencing Documentation for 3D Archaeological Visualizations’ (contribution to Ancient Egypt – New Technology, Brill). Melissa Rosenzweig is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Anthropology and Program in Environmental Policy and Culture at Northwestern University.  They are an anthropological archaeologist specializing in environmental archaeology of the ancient Near East.  Their research incorporates regional specialization in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant, methodological expertise in archaeobotany, and theoretical specialization in human-environment interactions. They are the author of ‘Confronting the Present: Archaeology in 2019,’ published in 2020 in American Anthropologist.  Jon Ross (Ph.D., 2020, University of Manitoba) is an anthropological archaeologist with a focus on ceramic style and technology. His research centres on the nature of production and how this informs our understanding of economic and social life in Bronze and Iron Age societies of the Levant. He experiments with new ways to differentiate potting communities, based on classifications of vessel manufacture and fingerprints. By combining trace evidence of vessel shaping with fingerprint data and clay recipes, he identifies social boundaries, identities, and local ‘communities of belonging’ in ceramic technology. He has been an instructor at the University of Manitoba, an Albright Institute Fellow (Jerusalem), and excavated at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel (2012-2017). He has conducted archaeological research in the UK, Israel, and Canada. Stephanie Selover is an Associate Professor at University of Washington in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Anthropology, and Adjunct Curator for the Burke Museum. She is the Co-director for Prehistoric Studies at the site of Çadır Höyuk, Turkey, and the Field Director at Khirbat al-Balua, Jordan. Her research interests include the origins of violence and warfare in the ancient world, and prehistoric mortuary studies. Notable works include ‘Weapons, Warfare, and Women: The Dangerous Lives of Early Bronze Age Women in Central Anatolia’ (Journal of Conflict Archaeology Vol. 15(3), 2021), and ‘Reexamining Burials and Cemeteries in Early Bronze Age Anatolia’ with Pınar Durgun (The Archaeology of Anatolia: Recent Discoveries (2017-2019), Vol. III: 2019: 271-283). iv

Cynthia Shafer-Elliott (Ph.D., The University of Sheffield, England) is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Dr. Shafer-Elliott specializes in the historical, cultural, and social contexts of ancient Israel and Judah, particularly within domestic contexts. Her major publications include: Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible (2013) and editor of The 5 Minute Archaeologist in the Southern Levant (2016), along with numerous chapters, encyclopedia and dictionary articles, articles, essays, and papers presented on food, households, religion, and gender. She is currently co-editing the T & T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel. Dr. Shafer-Elliott is an experienced field archaeologist and is part of the archaeological excavations at Tell Halif and Tell Abel Beth Maacah in Israel. Sharon R. Steadman is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Cortland and Co-Director of the Çadır Höyük Archaeological Excavations in Turkey. She specializes in the archaeology of architecture, spatial analysis, and ancient belief systems. Notable publications include The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia, co-edited with Gregory McMahon (Oxford, 2011), and the Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space (Routledge, 2015). Margreet L. Steiner is an independent archaeologist specializing in the Iron Age of the Levant. Together with Henk Franken she has published a large part of Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations in Jerusalem. She has directed excavations in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and is the author of numerous articles and books, the most recent one a review of Henk Franken’s excavations at Tell Deir Alla (1960-1967): Digging up the Bible? (Sidestone Press 2019, with Bart Wagemakers). Together with Ann E. Killebrew she edited The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant (c. 8000 - 332 BC). More information on https://margreetsteiner.wordpress.com/ and https://independent.academia.edu/ MargreetSteiner Jennifer Swerida is a Consulting Scholar for the Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, a Part-Time Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Kennesaw State University, and an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Monmouth University.  This paper was written during her tenure as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Beirut. Jennifer is Co-Director of the Bat Archaeological Project in the Sultanate of Oman. Her research interests centre on household archaeology, material identity, and alternative forms of social complexity in the greater Ancient Near East. Monique D. Vincent is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History and Philosophy at Walla Walla University and Publications Manager for La Sierra University’s Center for Near Eastern Archaeology. Her research focuses on the everyday activities of ancient households as a way to better understand the emergence of Iron Age entities in the southern Levant. She currently co-directs the Baluʿa Regional Archaeological Project excavations at Khirbat al-Baluʿa, Jordan. Paul Zimansky, Professor Emeritus of Archaeology and Ancient History, Stony Brook University, has co-directed excavations at Mashkan-shapir, Tell Hamida, Tell Sakhariya, and Ur in Iraq, and participated in participated in projects at ‘Ain Dara (Syria), Bastam (Iran), and Ayanis (Turkey). His primary specialty is in Urartian studies, specifically the political and economic structures of the state that dominated eastern Anatolia from the 9th to the 7th centuries BC. His books relevant to that field include Ecology and Empire: Structure of the Urartian State (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1985) and Ancient Ararat: A Handbook of Urartian Studies (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1998). He is also co-author of Ancient Turkey. London and New York: Routledge, 2009) with Antonio Sagona. 

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Chapter 1. Introduction: No Place Like Home Laura Battini, Aaron Brody, and Sharon R. Steadman The idea for this edited volume emerged from the collaboration between the three editors who chaired three years (six sessions) of ‘Household Archaeology in the Ancient Near East’ sessions at the American Schools of Overseas Research meetings (ASOR 20172019). These sessions were hugely popular. After the very first session the chairs were approached by three separate publishing agencies asking them to submit the papers for publication. We followed through with one (Steadman and Brody 2018); those papers are not included here. The quality of scholarship remained equally high, and fascinating in subsequent sessions, and attendance was phenomenal. Household archaeology is, in many ways, at the heart of any excavation that includes residential areas, whether in a city or a small village. The methodology employed at one specific archaeological setting is often suitable for use in many others; the results from one set of methodologies regularly provide new avenues of interpretation for archaeologists working in a variety settings. Household archaeology, launched as a subfield nearly a half century ago (e.g., Clarke 1972; Flannery and Winter 1976) and was firmly entrenched by the early 1980s (Deetz 1982; Netting et al. 1984; Wilk and Rathje 1982; for a brief history of the household archaeology subfield, see Steadman 2015: 163-168). It is one of only a handful of subfields in archaeology that comprises ‘transferable knowledge’ across geographical regions and community settings. A journal article on the household archaeological project at a Mesoamerican site may be read as widely by archaeologists working on the Asian or African continents, or in Europe, as it is by Mesoamericanists, and vice versa. It is not surprising, therefore, that methodologies from this subfield were soon to be employed in Near Eastern contexts (e.g., Banning and Byrd 1987); since then a compendium of studies have appeared in countless journals and a growing number of edited volumes (e.g., Mas and Notizia 2020; Müller 2015; Parker and Foster 2012; Yasur-Landau et al. 2011, to name but a few). This volume joins this growing literature on the study of households across the breadth of southwestern Asia and Egypt. It is intended to offer new perspectives in view of a greater contexuality (Hodder 2009) and more in-depth and methodologically based socio-economic analyses (Liverani 2014). Beyond comparative studies, it must not be forgotten that the subject of archaeological No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 1–4

research is a precise society, at a definite time, in a specific environmental and socio-economic situation: the house and the way living spaces are historically, biologically, and socially conditioned (Liverani 2016; Margueron 1982, 1996; Zevi 1956, 1997). For those who want to undertake studies on the household it is therefore essential to start from what has already been defined as the ‘materiality of architecture.’ Following the research of Christopher Tilley (2004) and Tim Ingold (2007), the materiality of architecture consists of the real, technical, and material elements that make up a building. This avenue of research takes scholars beyond the architectural ‘plan’ provided in archaeological reports.The built space is three-dimensional and the only way to experience it and make it your own is by walking through this space from the inside (Zevi 1956). This creation of a third dimension, that is still largely lacking in the ancient Near East, is a critical research step (Margueron 1986). Following similar procedures by historians who restore partially corrupted texts, and pottery specialists who reconstruct the initial shape of a broken vessel, architecture needs reconstructions, which are hypothetical but the only way to understand ancient space as a three-dimensional space. Only in this way can knowledge advance. With the idea of advancing household archaeology in these research directions, the three editors saw an excellent opportunity for collaboration given that our fields, while all related to Near Eastern Archaeology, offered coverage of a variety of regions including Anatolia (Steadman), the Levant (Brody), and Mesopotamia (Battini). Indeed, the papers presented in the ASOR meetings spanned these regions and included Egypt. Immediately after the conclusion of the third year’s sessions, we invited all authors (excepting those in the Steadman and Brody [2018] Near Eastern Archaeology theme issue), to contribute to this volume. Many authors had already pursued publication of their work elsewhere. In addition to the ASOR presenters, the co-editors solicited contributions from a few additional scholars whose body of work was precisely on point with the volume’s goals. Several accepted the offer and their work can be found in this volume. Chapters in the volume feature studies of households on the central Anatolian plateau and in southeastern Anatolia

No Place Like Home and Mesopotamia, as well as eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. A number of chapters represent Levantine studies, and several offer insights into Egyptian households through the ages. The Arabian peninsula is represented by a study focused on a site in Oman.

5) and one by Damm are concerned with ‘what is a house’ in the context of the state systems in which residents at their sites resided. Zimansky asks whether the Urartian state dictated guidelines as to the form of domestic structures at the Ayanis Urartian center. He determines that the houses thus far exposed at this site demonstrate individuality rather than conformity, suggesting that residents, whether families, soliders, or other segments of the society, may have had much freer reign to design the structure of their homes than might have been surmised in a powerful center such as Ayanis. In the same vein, Matney et al. asks whether structures at the Neo-Assyrian settlement of Ziyaret Tepe were indeed houses, and if so, who was inhabiting them. Their careful review of textual data and material culture leads them to the conclusion that these structures may have been inhabited by a very specific segment of the population, namely the soldiers who were expected to protect the city. Though the chapters in this section treat houses and households in places ranging from Egypt, to Mesopotamia, and as far north as eastern Anatolia, the connection between structure and identity is clearly defined throughout the section. Damm (chapter 7) explores food practices in a multiethnic community of southern Levant at the Late Bronze Age as proof of ethnic identity. The community of practices, created by repeated action and socialized learning inherent to the formation of the habitus, allows him to examine cultural contact in colonial and imperial situations, like Beth-Shean under Egyptian domination. Damm demonstrates that higher levels of Egyptian-style ceramics do not correlate with an increase in Egyptian practices: foodstuffs consumed and their mode of preparation are still Levantine.

Once the book was assembled, it became clear that the 16 chapters fell rather naturally into three of the critical areas to which household archaeology so usefully contributes: social structure; activities within households; and ritual action. We therefore created three sections in the volume along these lines: Architecture as Archive of Social Space; The Active Household; and Ritual Space at Home. Chapters in the first section, ‘Architecture as Archive of Social Space,’ profile houses as records of the lives of inhabitants, changing and adapting with residents; many offer a background focus on how human behavior is shaped by the walls within one’s own home. All of the chapters in this section are united in their quest to answer two questions: ‘what is the nature of a house and household’ and ‘who lived in these household spaces?’ Picardo (chapter 2) embraces both of these questions in his investigation of ancient Egyptian structures identified as ‘houses.’ Using theoretical frameworks based on, among others, Lévi-Strauss’ conception of the ‘social house’ (1987), Picardo offers tools researchers may use to identify the social identity of residents who constituted ancient Egyptian households. Vincent (chapter 3) and Battini (chapter 6) also directly address social identity in their studies. Vincent focuses on both the physical structure of Iron I period (transitional Late Bronze to Iron Age) houses at her site in Jordan, as well as the material culture contained within the structures. These offer clues to a neighborhood social identity featuring coopration in both social and economic realms. Vincent’s study also seeks to identify who may have used particular spaces within the households, effectively delineating areas perhaps dedicated to women’s work. Battini (chapter 6) traces an image of neo-Babylonian society starting from Ur’s archaeological remains. Rejecting previous social studies too closely tied to fashionable theories that forced an understanding of Mesopotamian society, she uses theoretical frameworks based on contemporary sociologists and the inductive method–the only way not to preconceive readings of the ancient remains. She demonstrates that at this time Ur had houses of particularly great size and a certain wealth, probably linked to the nearby religious acropoly. The study of the house plots reveals their tormented history of alternating economic fortunes which gradually constituted them.

The middle section, ‘The Active Household,’ focuses on the evidence for how residents carried out household activities including work and food preparation. Chapters include the ‘heart of household archaeology’ in their application of activity area research, but also drill down to the social significance of what residents were doing or eating, and where such actions were taking place. The chapters in this section present two main themes: the defininition and identification, including both of what and where, of daily activities in a domestic setting, and secondly, investigation of the intersection of extra-domestic work and the home setting. Three chapters, Greenfield (chapter 9), Swerida (chapter 10), and Shafer-Elliott et al. (chapter 12) zero in on the detritus of daily domestic life. Greenfield et al. focus their attention on the Early Bronze period (c. 3700–2000 BC, and particularly the Early Bronze III) at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath in the Levant. Their decade of research allows them to document what residents did in their small urban homes, and where they did it. They identify indoor versus outdoor chores,

The other three chapters in this section, one by Zimansky (chapter 4), one by Matney et al. (chapter 2

Laura Battini, Aaron Brody, and Sharon R. Steadman: Chapter 1. Introduction and even non-work activities such as gaming and body decoration, providing a glimpse into the waking hours of residents who lived over four millennia ago. At Tell Halif in the Shephelah, Shafer-Elliott et al. conduct a careful analysis of artifactual and ecofactual remains in the Iron Age II houses at this site. The site is located between Judah and Philistia, the Iron II period is one during which the Assyrian empire exerted considerable pressure (in the form of tribute) on the Kingdom of Judah. Shafer-Elliot et al. are able to determine the intrahousehold cooperation at Tell Halif allowed residents to remain largely free of both the enmity between Philistia and Judah as well as the economic impact levied on Judah by the Assyrians; their research yields critical data on daily life at settlements in the ‘hinterlands’ in this dynamic period. Swerida undertake close analysis of the comparatively meagre remains at the Early Bronze Age (c. 2700–2000 BC) Omani site of Bat. The sites rests on an important exchange network and the Early Bronze Age in this region was one of technological development, particularly that of metallurgy. Swerida is able to trace how residents negotiated the changing need for domestic and work space (the latter dedicated in part to metallurgical endeavors) over the course of seven centuries of occupation.

addition, analysis details how the level of production rose when trade opportunities increased and declines when exchange networks retracted. Selover et al. are also able to demonstrate the Çadır residents’ adherence to a consistency of architecturally-defined spaces over an occupation spanning 1000 years. The final section, ‘Ritual Space at Home,’ features studies on the house as ritual space. The fact that spaces within households were loci of religious ritual should come at no surprise, and yet the more general field of household religion is still relatively young in Near Eastern studies. Happily, material culture and materialized household religion is adding important data and theory to this subfield of household archaeology, as the studies in this section demonstrate. This research fills important gaps in our knowledge of the archaeology of religion in various regions and time periods across southwest Asia, as did the studies in the Steadman and Brody (2018) Near Eastern Archaeology themed issue on the archaeology of household religion; whereas previous textual approaches have both tremendous gaps in representation and biases towards elite or divine households and contexts. The three chapters in the final section, Hopwood (chapter 14), Mas (chapter 15), and Heffron (chapter 16) all focus their attention on the house as a locus of ritual and symbolism. Hopwood investigates the ritual significance of both structure and contents at the site of Kenan Tepe in southeastern Turkey. She focuses on the circumstance of the mid-5th millennium BC ‘Burnt House’ at the site, and focuses on the evidence for an intentional ‘killing’ of the house. In particular, she notes the absence of heavy ground stone tools, typically present in every Kenan Tepe house of the era. She lays out a detailed argument for both the ritual killing of the house and the need to preserve life-giving tools created and used by generations of a home’s residence. Heffron focuses on the ritual activities that took place within Middle Bronze Age homes at the central Antolian site of Kültepe/Kaneš. She reviews the material culture, including sub-floor burials, as well as key textual evidence from the time, to layout a detailed description of the mainly ancestor/family based ritual activities within these homes, carried out in an ‘as needed’ fashion. In a similar vein, Mas explores the presence of domestic altars in Bronze Age Mesopotamian houses, also focused on devotion to family and ancestor. Her analysis identifies activities such as feasting, actions meant to bring about magical protection, and veneration of the ancestors. She makes a powerful case for Bronze Age Mesopotamian houses being viewed as ‘symbolically charged spaces.’

The three other chapters focus on ‘work life’ in Egypt, the Levant, and Anatolia. Boozer (chapter 13) takes on the study of workshops/areas within Romano-Egyptian homes (1st–4th centuries AD). Her study reveals a variety of important work-life circumstances. For instance, rather than ‘workshop clusters’ of similar activities in neighborhoods or sectors of settlements, in Romano-Egyptian settlements residents carried out vocations where they lived, so that a neighborhood might have a variety of craftworkers living side-byside. Boozer also provides a number of other insights into how work and life played out across the RomanoEgyptian landscape of two millennia ago. Steiner (chapter 11) focuses on the Iron Age II houses of Jerusalem, most of which were excavated decades ago. She explores the identification of some of these houses that had been identified as existing in a ‘Royal Quarter’; she effectively demonstrates that rather than ‘royal,’ these houses instead belonged to traders and artisans. Residents dedicated portions of these somewhat larger houses to their trade, and while they were far from the poorest residents of the city, they also did not live the luxurious lives of the elites. Steiner reveals the daily lives of middle class Iron Age entrepreneurs in ancient Jerusalem. Selover et al. (chapter 8) survey the ‘work-life balance’ during a millennium of occupation (c. 3800–2800 BC) at Çadır Höyük in central Turkey. Over the course of this period they trace both the location and the level of production activities at the site. Residents preferred to carry out their activities in open areas where social interaction was possible; in

The reconstructions presented here in the various chapters are certainly fragmented and limited. Limited 3

No Place Like Home because the volume does not claim to be exhaustive, and fragmented because the geographic areas and the periods dealt with are far-ranging. But precisely, this fragmentation allows for a comparative study whose interest is no longer doubted. And at the end of the volume, the house appears as a complex, structural, familial, working, and symbolic entity: multiple and singular at the same time, indispensable for creating and maintaining social ties, the house already appears in the past as a structuring pillar of society, the household, and the family. It is no coincidence that it has been humankind’s companion for millennia.

Campbell (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 11). Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter 2016. Margueron, J.-C. 1982. Recherches sur les palais mésopotamiens de l’Âge du Bronze. Paris: Paul Geuthner. Margueron, J.-C. 1986. Quelques principes mÉthodologiques pour une approche analythique de l’architecture de l’Orient antique. Contributi e Materiali di Archeologia Orientale I: 261–285. Roma: Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche dell’antichità. Margueron, J.-C. 1996. La maison orientale, in K. R. Veenhof (ed.) House and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia: 17–38. Leiden: NINO. Mas, J. and P. Notizia (eds) 2020. Working at Home in the Ancient Near East. Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 7. Oxford: Archaeopress. Müller, M. (ed.) 2015. Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Netting, R. McC., R. R. Wilk, and E. J. Arnould (eds) 1984. Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. Berkeley: University of California Press. Parker, B. J. and C. Foster (eds) 2012. New Perspectives on Household Archaeology. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Steadman, S. R. 2015. The Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space. London: Routledge. Steadman, S. R. and A. J. Brody (eds) 2018. Near Eastern Archaeology 81.3. Tilley, C. 2004. The Materiality of Stone. Oxford: Berg Publishers Wilk, R. R. and W. L. Rathje 1982. Household Archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist 25.6: 617–39. Yasur-Landau, A., J. R. Ebeling and L. B. Mazow (eds) 2011. Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond. Leiden: Brill. Zevi, B. 1956. Imparare a conoscere l’architettura.Torino: Einaudi. Zevi, B. 1997. Leggere, scrivere, parlare architettura. Venezia: Marsilio Editore.

References Cited Banning, E. B. and B. F. Byrd 1987. Houses and the Changing Residential Unit: Domestic architecture at PPNB ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 53: 309–25. Clarke, D. L. 1977. Spatial Archaeology. London: Academic Press. Deetz, J. 1982. Households: A Structural Key to Archaeological Explanation. The American Behavioral Scientist 25: 717-24. Flannery, K. V. and M. C. Winter 1976. Analyzing Household Activities, in K.V. Flannery (ed.) The Early Mesoamerican Village: 34–44. New York: Academic Press. Hodder, I. (ed.) 2009. Archaeology of Contextual Meanings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against Materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14: 1-16. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1987. Anthropology and Myth: Lectures 1951–1982 (R. Willis, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Liverani, M. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, Society and Economy. Translated by Soraia Tabatabai. London and New York: Routledge (originally published as Antico Oriente: storia, società, economia 1988). Liverani, M. 2016. Imagining Babylon. The Modern Story of an Ancient City. Translated from the Italian by Ailsa

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Architecture as Archive of Social Space

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Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology Nicholas Picardo ‘The household is the particularistic context of the individual, and the society, that of the household’ (Deetz 1982: 724). As a starting point for modeling ancient Egyptian society the all-encompassing state has by now proved insufficient as a stand-alone framework. To be fair, surveying ancient Egyptian history invites lofty vantage points: the rise of a seemingly monolithic state administration of the Old Kingdom that fostered the ‘pyramid age’; a pervasive bureaucracy promoting Middle Kingdom prosperity; and a cosmopolitan New Kingdom as a ‘world power’ of the ancient Near East. Nonetheless, increasingly, research trends have narrowed the frame from large-scale, top-down models to hone in on the large-scale influences of smallerscale social groups and processes—what Juan Carlos Moreno García aptly describes as ‘social sectors and networks of power scarcely documented in official sources but indispensable for the actual running of the state’ (Moreno García 2013a: 88). While official state agenda and bureaucracy may have been a dayto-day reality in areas of concentrated state interest and presence, its direct effects on the lives of the nonelite, non-administratively employed populace likely were far fewer and cyclical in nature. Less formal, administratively invisible relationships, dependencies, and obligations were the practical mechanisms through which people met fundamental needs and addressed fundamental problems. One emergent trend of inquiry into these smaller orders of social organization and connectedness is the application of household archaeology theory, territory seldom accessed by Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology. Complementing growing interest in household archaeology in the study of ancient Egypt (e.g., Budka 2018; Müller 2015a, 2015b) is a body of research that looks to the interpretive potential of ‘social house’ theory for the Egyptian archaeological record, highlighting its value not only within domestic contexts but also beyond. This chapter highlights the potential for social house models to add useful granularity to interpretations of social relationships and extended household networks fundamental to ancient Egyptian society as an important complement to other approaches, both old and new. Movement towards greater theoretical appreciation of households has gained momentum from a growing No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 6–20

recognition that many phenomena, once seen as operating partly or predominantly through centerdriven systems, were supported by, if not ostensibly dependent on, less formally structured local and personal social networks. For example, Richard Bussman (2014) describes the state formation in third millennium BC Egypt as separable from, even if intertwined with, emergent administrative systems of the time. Concentration of the center was at least in part due to the consolidation of local models with the structured royal state model of governance, such that ‘ultimately, the hinterland provided the model through which the idea of the Egyptian state was mediated in the long term’ (Bussmann 2014: 88). Consolidation required the resolution of a tension between pre-state legitimation of relationships based on kinship to new mechanisms of forging and maintaining solidarity (Campagno 2000). Another example is the management of the annual Nile inundation, the natural phenomenon singularly responsible for supporting large ancient populations in Egypt. Flood and irrigation management required a coordinated mitigation of floodwaters through basin irrigation as they advanced from south to north that likely relied heavily on efficient coordination of local individuals, households, and communities in cooperative succession (Eyre 2004: 164–165; Lehner 2000). Even the redistributive economy, a cornerstone of pharaonic economic machinery, cedes ground to localized agency under close empirical scrutiny (Perry 2017; Warden 2013). The traditional disciplinary home of Egyptian archaeology is a patch of real estate in the larger neighborhood of academic Egyptology. Though much of Egyptology’s history has an academic basis, the field has not always been consistently fertile ground for discourse that pushes or refines anthropological theory, even if to some degree it was founded on and has drawn on it selectively over two centuries (illustrative summaries: Howley and Nyord 2018; Bussmann 2015; Stevenson 2015; Lustig 1997b). This tendency results neither from a lack of suitable data nor absence of interest for some professionals, often in the minority but growing in number. Rather, it is more so the result of historical development of disciplinary priorities. The

Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology

Figure 1. Two ancient Egyptian words (a and b) commonly translated as ‘household.’ (© Nicholas Picardo; hieroglyphs rendered with JSesh Hieroglyphic Editor)

broadest utility of parsing concepts of households as social units usually is to explore the variety of forms in which they manifest across ancient and modern cultures alike. Cross-cultural comparison, however, only rarely features as an objective in Egyptology or Egyptian archaeology (notwithstanding e.g., Trigger 1979, 1985, 1993, 1997, 2003). Inversely, broadly comparative, synthetic anthropological and archaeological studies venture into ancient Egypt infrequently and often superficially. Nonetheless, household archaeology implicitly begins and ends with conceptions of house and household, including an appreciation of the congruencies and disjunctions between the two terms. This is to say, an archaeology of residential buildings may differ significantly from theory-driven household archaeology, even though some overlap is expected. Most often, Egyptian archaeology has preferred the former approach.

modern words relating to households and domestic groups, and an attempt to disambiguate them is beyond the scope of the present commentary. For purposes here it may suffice to highlight the Egyptian term pr, the word most commonly read as ‘house’ and ‘household’ (Erman and Grapow 1953: I:511; Figure 1a). The initial ‘house’ hieroglyph is a phonogram that may indeed act alone as writing for ‘house.’ Appended to it are male and female signs with plural strokes as determinatives, or silent, ideographic classifiers. In this full spelling the phonogram encapsulates connotations of a building and, by extension, material property, while the pluralized people determinative group captures a human component of the word’s lexical range. While the nuclear family was intrinsic to ancient Egyptian culture, extended household groups were equally fundamental to the functioning of broader society. Between the extremes of absolute royal or administrative authority on one hand, and slavery on the other hand, a broad and varied spectrum of familial, social, and economic ties founded on basic dynamics of patron-client relationships are manifest in the historical and archaeological records in many ways (Campagno 2014; Moreno García 2013a, 2013b; Eyre 2011; Franke 2006; Assmann 2002; Seidlmayer 1997). Patronage relationships underpinned extended domestic or household groups. These groups might be small, extending only slightly beyond the nuclear family to include a few household staff or, when centered on large, wealthy households, might number in hundreds of members (Moreno García 2013b: 1044–1045). The extent to which some relationships could be innately (or explicitly) coercive varied by the socioeconomic status of respective parties, local and/or national sociopolitical conditions, and existing spheres of influence, among many other variables:

That being said, Egyptian archaeology has given due attention to settlements and houses as important units of archaeological study (Moeller 2016). Further, Egyptological scholarship recognizes households— nuclear and extended—as a, if not the, fundamental organizing principle of society both administratively and practically (Moreno García 2012). A disconnect remains, however, from Egyptian archaeology’s underengagement with theory that links households as social units of study to material expressions in the archaeological record, domestic or otherwise. One partial exception to this general statement is the study of the ancient Egyptian kinship system and its influences on society and administration. Ancient Egyptian terms for individuals and groupings of family members and/or non-kin are numerous; use of even the limited inventory of nuclear familial terms of relationship in a fictive or metaphorical sense is common (Olabarria 2020; T. D. Allen 2009; Willems 2015, 1983; Lustig 1997a; Franke 1983; Bierbrier 1980; Robins 1979). Lexical nuances and diachronic shifts in connotations often obscure one-to-one alignment with

‘Control of land and population was characterized by complex hierarchies of authority, and the management of the countryside was marked by 7

No Place Like Home

Figure 2. Visualization of relationships indicated by the letters and accounts of the funerary priest, Heqanakht (Based on J. Allen 2002).

complex local patterns of kinship and patronage. At the core of this complexity is an inherent tension between the fierce self-reliance, necessary to the individual farmer, and the village cohesion that was imposed by the ecological regime and reinforced by the management regime that focussed (sic) on revenue demands made by external authority: absentee landlords, temple endowments or the state and its office holders’ (Eyre 2004: 184).

management details for core holdings of his estate. These include local agricultural fields as well as others distant from his residence. He is sometimes the lessor, sometimes the lessee. Some arrangements are based on private landholding, while others relate to his position as funerary priest. These papyri record the practical necessities of forecasting plantings and seed reserves, planning for tax losses, and accounting for outstanding debts or surplus stocks of commodities such as grain, bread, livestock, and wood.

Depending upon historical circumstances, these everpresent social networks could serve either to synergize national and local processes or to more fully decouple them from each other.

Figure 2 illustrates the extended sphere(s) of Heqankaht’s socioeconomic reach for managing his property and interests. Most notable here are treatments of responsibilities and obligations for individuals on par with those of three ‘houses’: the House of Mentunakht, the House of Tjai’s son Nakht, and the House of Khetyankhef. While some of Heqanakht’s authority and oversight came from his professional career, some resulted from the relative position of his ‘house’ vis-à-vis others with which he interacted or conducted business. The nature and terms of individual relationships, therefore, will have varied.

For present purposes a series of accounts and letters dating to the early Middle Kingdom reign of Senwosret I (1971–1926 BC) presents a self-contained example of the potential reach of a single household to linked individuals and households. One Heqankakht appears to have enjoyed a moderately prosperous life as a funerary priest (J. P. Allen 2002). He had at least seven family members in his own household, plus household staff with additional dependents. Along with homebound matters, including family dysfunctions and ‘human resource’ issues, Heqanakht’s documents record

Patrimonial models, of course, highlight patrimonial relationships, which can vary in nature and scope. When 8

Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology stress falls on the realities of Egypt’s circumscribed agricultural setting—and the consequential importance of land access and ownership for status and wealth— feudal or quasi-feudal aspects of socioeconomic dependencies often are highlighted (Moreno García 2000; Eyre 1994, 1997). Weberian patrimonialism is also a commonly cited paradigm (Schloen 2001; Lehner 2000; Müller-Wollermann 1987/88). When this conceptual role of the king is central to interpretation— as in, for example, the ‘patrimonial household model’— successive iterations of smaller households nested within larger households can be understood as a ‘segmented structure’ that extended all the way up to the king as the pinnacle of society (Schloen 2001: 313– 316). Underpinning this pattern is an ideology of family and, by extension, household, with the metaphorical role of the king as head of household par excellence. The word ‘pharaoh’ deriving from the Egyptian phrase for the Egyptian ruler, pr-aA—literally ‘Great House’— the Egyptian king embodied the great household of households.

in Lévi-Strauss’ thoughts about cultures he called ‘house societies.’ Such societies are, simply put, those with social structures that included ‘houses.’ Social house theory What, then, is this ‘house’ of Lévi-Strauss—the ‘social house’ of newer terminology? His original French has been rendered in English with some variations, but the composite translation advanced by Gillespie is a sturdy benchmark: ‘a corporate body [personne morale/moral person] holding an estate made up of both material and immaterial wealth, which perpetuates itself through the transmission of its name, its goods, and its titles down a real or imaginary [descent] line, considered legitimate as long as this continuity can express itself in the language of kinship [descent] or affinity [alliance] and [or], most often, of both’ (Gillespie 2000b: 27, adapting from Lévi-Strauss 1982: 152, 1987: 174).

That these models are iterative should not suggest that configurations of extended households were highly alike up, down, and/or across society from center to periphery and back again. Modeling an entire society necessitates some reduction, to be sure. Extended household compositions undoubtedly were multivariate, fluid, and even messy, expanding and contracting over time, whether due to the domestic life cycle, economic exigencies, or other motivating factors. As Susan Gillespie notes, ‘individuals spell out their relationships via houses, not to create neatly bounded kin-groups, but to respond to specific situations involving individuals or subsets of a larger collectivity’ (Gillespie 2000b: 45, italics added). Just as practically, from an economic perspective, in an environmentally circumscribed agrarian society, per Christopher Eyre, ‘stress lies on the practicalities, and not the legalities of dependence: leadership is the source of wealth and authority, and these will disintegrate if applied with violence and indifference to the individual. Dependant (sic) relations require the consent of the client, and are not simply enforceable by violence and legal right’ (Eyre 2004: 179).

Several premises characterize the social house model as applied today, having built out gradually from LéviStrauss’ core rationales. These are summarized here. Social House Premise 1 The social house is a configuration of people oriented around material and immaterial holdings, an estate. Material property might include residential buildings, land, means of production and subsistence, and other areas or activities. Immaterial property can include names and surnames, titles, associated status, special prerogatives, rituals, and shared history, origins, origin narratives, or similar concepts. These holdings serve to materialize the group (Beck 2007: 4–10; Gillespie 2000a: 2–6). A house ideology links members, however tightly or loosely, to one or more social houses. The success of a social house expresses as the perpetuation, over time and through generations, of these relationships and holdings, including the recruitment of new members if/when necessary, and with emphasis on the survival of the collective house identity, ideology, and estate (Beck 2007; Gillespie 2000a, 2000b, 2007; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995a) This sustainability applies to the human, material, and intangible components alike:

The ‘house’ to which Gillespie refers above is a concept now referred to as the ‘social house,’ a relatively recent term for a body of theory developed over the last approximately twenty years (Beck 2007; Gillespie 2000a, 2000b; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995b). It originates in ideas introduced by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who observed a common, cross-cultural tendency of emic terms for both ‘house’ and ‘household’ to encompass various notions of not just residential buildings, but also of people, property, and prerogatives (Lévi-Strauss 1982, 1987, 1991). By now an updated social house model includes additional concepts rooted

‘if heirs should cease to exist, then so would the house, as such, cease to exist, though pieces of the estate may pass into the estates of other houses. As long as a living house membership actively keeps the names, titles, honors, and narratives bound to a particular material estate (even should the material itself be lost or dismembered) then the house will persist as a moral person. This ongoing transfer— not of an estate from one generation of heirs to the 9

No Place Like Home next but of personal identity from house members to the house—is reflexive, in that as people confer a persona upon the house, so too does the house situate the personas of its different members within a collective and ideally perpetual existence’ (Beck 2007: 13).

and group membership over time reflect group success or failure. ‘Perpetuity is thus manifested in concrete form in the ongoing activities of persons with respect to localizing phenomena, as a medium for enacting relationships with one another. By the same token, the permanent form of these objects and structures (which may actually require their replacement) facilitates the perpetuation of the personne morale, as long as an ethos of preservation, rather than dispersal, of the estate is maintained’ (Gillespie 2000a: 14). House buildings often are central in the socially and materially mitigated relationships of one or more social houses, both as material holdings themselves and as spaces that facilitated interactions and transactions constitutive of social house membership. As such, their archaeological records may include retrievable, observable correlates of social house strategies, membership, evolution, and preservation over their lifespans (Beck 2007: 6–10).

Houses are detected primarily in comparison to other social houses, manifesting as a hierarchy that, to some extent, is one gauge of the diachronic evolution of individual social houses against the backdrop of broader social and historical circumstances (Beck 2007; Gillespie 2000a, 2000b; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995a). Constituencies can overlap, with individuals belonging to more than one, even several houses simultaneously, occupying different practical or symbolic roles in each. Social House Premise 2 Consistent with a core concept for Lévi-Strauss, social houses have legal or jural legitimacy as distinct corporate entities (Lévi-Strauss 1982, 1991). That is to say, they are recognizable, distinct corporate entities functioning in society as ‘actual subjects of rights and duties’ (Gillespie 2000b: 24–32, quotation from 25). Thus, social houses are identifiable and acknowledged both externally by broader society and internally by constituent members. A recent treatment by the current author adds that there are two corresponding modalities to house identities as ‘moral persons.’ One mode directs inward—an ‘introverted identity’—to maintain and strengthen the cohesion of social house members (Picardo 2015: 247–248). The parameters and limitations of social and economic relationships influencing this identity may be constricted—for example, to within a single residence—or may extend some distance extramurally. Correspondingly, ‘extroverted identities’ project outward from the social house, comprising the public face through which both a house and its members relate to larger social roles, institutions, and societal sectors (Picardo 2015: 247– 248). This identity is most influential in defining the placement of one social house relative to others on the larger social landscape. Extroverted and introverted social house identities may overlap with each other, while individual membership in one or more social houses may be disproportionately affected by each, respectively.

Having outlined core attributes of social houses, a return to Figure 2 may serve to highlight that a charting of Heqankh’s network of obligations and dependencies is a visualization of relationships oriented around property that were constitutive of social houses. Even though not engaging social house theory, Moreno García nonetheless clearly captures the nature of Heqanakht’s social house: ‘the social network built around Heqanakht included people from different social environments (from higher, equal, and lower strata), where a single person could simultaneously occupy different social positions (as a subordinate of Heqanakht, while controlling other dependents, or, like Heqanakht himself, as subordinate to Herunefer, while being the head of a substantial household) and where all the people mentioned could be roughly ascribed to the household proper and to an extended network of social relations’(Moreno García 2013b: 1043). Thus, such a graphic representation of relationships does more than implicate the components of the funerary priest’s social house with its intersections and overlaps with other houses centered on other named individuals, but also situates the relative status of his house vis-à-vis others. Emerging interests and applications As an interpretive framework for capturing ancient social realities in Egyptian archaeology, the social house concept holds considerable promise. The following survey aims to illustrate that it is applicable not just to domestic contexts, but also extends into the arena for which ancient Egypt is perhaps best known, mortuary archaeology. All three case examples deal with evidence from the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040–1640 BC) (Picardo 2009; Callender 2000). Both later ancient Egyptians and modern scholars recognize this period as the classic age of ancient Egyptian culture. Two conspicuous trends

Social House Premise 3 Social houses appear most clearly over time, so the archaeological record often can be well suited to this framework (Gillespie 2007, 2000a: 9–11). Since the orientation of social house members forms around a shared estate comprised of both tangible and intangible holdings, maintenance of those holdings 10

Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology

Figure 3. Sealing types and common applications (Image courtesy Josef Wegner).

grown significantly during contractions of national governance during the preceding First Intermediate Period (ca. 2100–2040 BC). Another facet of this Middle Kingdom milieu, however, was more widespread access and opportunity for private wealth accumulation leading to greater socioeconomic differentiation (Richards 2005).

in state agendas of this era are relevant to the current topic. The first is an investment in planned settlements, externally in conjunction with an aggressive program of territorial expansion, and internally alongside the establishment of royal foundations (Kemp 2018: 211–242; Moeller 2016: 249–327). The second phenomenon is an expansion of state bureaucracy. The system of titles that situated individuals within statesanctioned bureaucratic systems underwent a massive proliferation, in effect linking a greater percentage of the population than ever before to rungs of the formal and informal hierarchy. A manifestation of the amplified importance of titles was a dramatic rise in the practice of sealing as a mechanism of accounting and accountability (Wegner 2018: 238–242; see Figure 3). These trends generally are understood as attempts by the central state to coopt, if not wholly reign in, the authority and influence of provincial elites, which had

Burial Demography and Social Houses The first case summary applies a social house model consistently with Levi-Strauss’ formulation as a unique social structure and a useful alternative to strictly lineage- and clan-based systems of social organization. Gianluca Miniaci (2019) considers social houses to explain shifts in burial practices. The late Middle Kingdom saw a rise in the use of multiple burials relative to earlier periods throughout Egypt. Miniaci 11

No Place Like Home explains that ‘sequential multiple burials’ were more evident across most levels of society in the late Middle Kingdom, but declined in use again thereafter (Miniaci 2019: 117–120, 124–127). Distinguishing this practice from other types of multiple burial is the interment of multiple occupants at different times within a single, shared space, as opposed to discrete individual burial chambers. Sequential multiple burials emphasize ‘temporal proximity, defining those graves which were re-opened at some distance in time after their first closure, in order to allow a second, third, or even more new interments to be made into existing graves…Two of the main aspects that sequential multiple burials tend to highlight are the intentionality of the re-use of the same funerary space and a common link or a direct connection between the burials’ (Miniaci 2018: 293–294, 2019: 122). Miniaci hopes to add necessary nuance and caution to interpreting multiple sequential burials of this era while challenging their frequent but unqualified identification as family burials, offering the social house as an alternative structure to understand such burials because it ‘has the advantage of moving the social organization beyond both the rigid patterns of consanguinity/affinity ties and the material limits of the building itself ’ (Miniaci 2019: 131).

the later Middle Kingdom also prompts a modicum of caution when presuming that later interments in multiple sequential burials are family members, in the absence of evidence to confirm familial relationships. Tomb Biography, Selective Depiction, and Social Houses In this second case summary, Melinda Nelson-Hurst employs a social house model as a tool for critically assessing and reconciling textual and visual expression in an elite tomb. She does so in part by focusing on patrimonial aspects of social house membership and the role of shared origins in perpetuating social house identity (Nelson-Hurst 2015). Tomb 3, one of the largest rock-cut tombs at the Middle Egyptian site of Beni Hasan, belonged to a high official of the late Middle Kingdom, Khnumhotep II (Kamrin 1999; Newberry 1893: 39–72, pls. XXII–XXXVIII). Khnumhotep II’s tomb includes one of the longest Middle Kingdom biographical inscriptions (Simpson 2003: 420–424; Lloyd 1992). As a textual genre, tomb biographies evolved through time in both form and content emphasis, and studies often regard approaches to self-presentation in these inscriptions as reflections of contemporary societal conditions and ideals (Gnirs 1996; Lichtheim 1988, 1992; Nelson-Hurst 2015: 257–258; Stauder-Porchet et al. 2020). For Nelson-Hurst, the social house model is ‘specific, yet flexible, and may have potential to shed further light on both the contexts and motivations behind ancient Egyptian autobiographical texts,’ going some way towards explaining ‘selective bias’ in tomb inscriptions and iconography like those of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan (Nelson-Hurst 2015: 258–260).

For Miniaci, multiple sequential burials are one of several manifestations of a larger social change in the late Middle Kingdom that favored the inclusion of larger numbers and ranges of people in extended household groups. Two are relevant here. A potentially corresponding contemporary development was the appearance of new types of funerary stelae that depict (or list) many individuals, not just one or a few. Inclusion was not limited to family members, and sometimes kinship terms were extended fictively to non-kin, such that, to Miniaci, ‘the one is surrounded—in a closer way—by the multiple’ (Miniaci 2019: 136). Similarly, the misinterpretation of an ostensibly obsolete word in a later Middle Kingdom version of the Coffin Texts (Spell 146) may betray this new social outlook (Willems 2015). During the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, the word Abt (Figure 1b) designated a corporate body or extended household of a rather specific composition. Oddly omitting the wife, this group included a selective subset of close family members along with a specific type of servant. After a period of apparent obsolescence in the earlier Middle Kingdom, use of the term in a later Coffin Text spell seems to implicate an expansion in meaning, to include a wider, more diverse population of family members, plus the addition of associates, friends, workers, and others, perhaps as a reflection of a new social climate with ‘a larger number of persons who played a more active role in the composition and transmission of the household community’ (Miniaci 2019: 138). For Miniaci, the social backdrop that prompted this perhaps erroneous lexical shift in

The historical situation of Khnumhotep II’s life and tomb is significant. He appears to have been the last of a prominent elite family line to hold certain high titles and wealth requisite to commission a large rock-cut tomb in the major provincial cemetery of the Oryx Nome at Beni Hasan. His son, Khumhotep III, was raised at the royal court and appointed to office at the national level. This career trajectory has been characterized as ‘promotion away’ from the provinces as a means of absorbing governing provincial elite as members of the court elite with close ties to the king (Franke 1991). Along with the inscription, Khnumhotep II’s tomb decoration includes depictions of many family members, but also substantially more non-family members—especially subordinates—the latter of whom are named by inscription in numbers uncommon to earlier periods (Nelson-Hurst 2015: 261). Pictorial and/ or textual presence in the tomb may have had the practical advantage of effectively including extended house members in offerings dedicated via the tomb— that is, patronage in life extended to patronage in the afterlife. The location of close subordinates’ tombs nearby strengthens this possibility (Nelson-Hurst 2015: 12

Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology 261–262; Seidlmayer 2007). This increased inclusion is similar to the circumstances posited by the case study by Miniaci above. An additional message of the text may have been to advertise the relative status of Khnumhotep’s own extended household, such that, per Nelson-Hurst, ‘by including members (perhaps heads) of these other social houses within his tomb, Khnumhotep II would be able to express that they were also members of his social house, demonstrating that their social houses were lower in the hierarchy than his’ (Nelson-Hurst 2015: 262).

and status created opportunities for experience that allowed the next generation to assume the same, if not improved, status and office(s). Since the continuance of title and office was not automatic, however, maintaining continuity in a household line is a reliable measure of a social house’s success in perpetuating itself through social reproduction of access to status, performance, and wealth, to retain both membership and standing (Picardo 2015: 268–269). Household Archaeology and Social Houses at South Abydos

Nelson-Hurst is just as interested in the question of omissions when assessing who appears in large, decorated tombs. Who does not appear, and why? Aside from depictions of Khnumhotep II’s subordinates, family members chosen for depiction in his tomb chapel reflect an unusual emphasis on his female blood relatives and children, as opposed to a representation of a complete, or more balanced lineage. Nelson-Hurst considers that this choice was ‘perhaps to highlight Khnumhotep’s role as ruler, protector, and creator in his social house and in the wider community’ (NelsonHurst 2015: 262–263). While iconography may situate his place in ‘present’ society through selective inclusion and exclusion, a section of his autobiographical inscription that highlights his predecessors situates him not within a complete genealogical line, but within the framework of a lineage that perpetuates his house. The text ‘provides only what is necessary to paint a picture of his house’s origins and continuous identity and prestige…along with this connection to the house of his father…and of his wife’ (Nelson-Hurst 2015: 263).

A final case capitalizes on names and titles as often prominent elements of social house capital and identity, and their maintenance over time as necessary for perpetuating social houses. This example deals with material dating to the late Middle Kingdom reign of King Senwosret III, a pharaoh also chronologically relevant to the previous two cases. Fifth pharaoh of Dynasty 12, his and the subsequent reign of Amenemhat III witnessed the high points of Middle Kingdom prosperity and stability. Developments during his reign were to a great extent defining of the late Middle Kingdom era, particularly regarding territorial expansion and burgeoning state administration. Along with a royal pyramid complex at the northern site of Dashur, he established a tripartite mortuary complex for himself at South Abydos in southern Egypt. Its primary components were a subterranean royal tomb carved under the western desert cliffs, an associated mortuary temple closer to the Nile Valley, and a planned, state-sponsored settlement in support of temple operations and the funerary cult of the deceased king (Wegner 1998, 2000, 2001b, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2014; Wegner et al. 2000). The name of Senwosret’s South Abydos town was Wah-sut (WAH-swt). Archaeological exposures of the settlement have so far documented an elite neighborhood in its southwest corner, including a massive (52 m × 82 m) mayoral house and a series of twelve or more smaller (28 m × 32 m) elite residences (Figure 4) that share similar (sometimes mirrored) original ground plans.

Khnumhotep II’s sources parallel the Heqanakht corpus mentioned above in that both present synchronic situations. Nelson-Hurst acknowledges that an autobiographical text ‘essentially provides only one slice in time, though sometimes including a retrospective on previous generations, thus usually revealing only the strategies (and to some extent the relationships) of one point in time, one context, and— since it is written from the protagonist’s point of view— one perspective’ (Nelson-Hurst 2015: 260). But, by relating selective (de)emphasis in Khnumhotep’s tomb texts to criteria for social house membership and, more importantly, perpetuation, she highlights the value of breaking down individual strategies for sustaining social house position and longevity through changing external circumstances. This conclusion partners well with Nelson-Hurst’s larger study of transmission of office during the Middle Kingdom (Nelson-Hurst 2011). She has shown that while bureaucratization created more opportunity for advancement based on individual merit over hereditary conferral, offices and titles still often stayed in a family (and by extension, a household) line. From one generation to the next, existing influence

Excavations in the town since 1994 have recovered a limited number of administrative seals and thousands of mud sealings (and fragments) with stamped impressions. Figure 5 illustrates Josef Wegner’s reconstruction of local administrative structure based on this evidence (Wegner 2001a, 2004, 2007, 2010). The mayoral house and an appended Administrative Gatehouse of the House of the Mayor (arryt nt pr-HAty-a) appear to have functioned in tandem as intermediary conduits between operations of the temple and town. A succession of occupants of the mayoral house (Building A) is known, so residency clearly was tied to office (Wegner 2007: 340–343), but the primary occupants 13

No Place Like Home

Figure 4. Plan of the town of Wah-sut at South Abydos (© Nicholas Picardo).

of the ‘second tier’ elite houses are less evident in the record. Since state investment in settlements has been fundamental in assessments of the Middle Kingdom, as well as a defining criterion in the study of ancient Egyptian urbanism in general (Bietak 1979; Moeller 2009–2010, 2016), characterizing residents of specific house buildings is more than a trivial detail for understanding the socioeconomic matrix of the settlement. In fact, more often than not it is a daunting prospect. Social house theory, however, may prove helpful in this regard at South Abydos for a house known as Building E (see Figure 4). As the residues of accounting and accountability, seals and sealings are data points for study of titles and names in the Wah-sut community not just for reconstructing administrative process, but also as socially relevant identity markers and reflections of household identity, property, and prerogatives (Picardo 2015: 268–269).

Wah-sut (Picardo 2015: 265). An elite house in this urban setting inevitably was a central node to at least one social house. More than just a core material holding, it comprised dedicated space for private residential and official business activities, making it an arena in which multiple aspects of social house status, activities, and capital converged. Bureaucratic hierarchies intervened in many interactions and transactions, so the social import of titles—which, as noted above, were already amplified by circumstances of the Middle Kingdom— will have been visible and experienced on a day-to-day basis. In this environment the social valuation of names and titles would straddle the line between official and private spheres, and between material and symbolic facets of individual and house status markers. In all likelihood, sealing practices were applicable not just to official protocols, but also to private dealings as well (Picardo 2015: 268).

The Wah-sut community lived and worked in an institutionalized setting, i.e., a ‘company town’ of sorts. The archaeological record thus reflects how late Middle Kingdom bureaucracy played out in an urban environment where officialdom and quotidian life cross-pollinated on a day-to-day basis. Josef Wegner expects that ‘within the town a range of domestic administrative titles may articulate with the separate houses as distinct economic entities under the wider umbrella of town administration,’ (Wegner 2001a: 103). The current author has proposed further that these entities constituted the major social houses of broader

Building E is the most completely excavated of Wahsut’s smaller elite residences to date (Picardo 2006, 2015: 254–257; Wegner 2001b: 302–304). Its condition is a familiar one for settlement sites in Egypt, in that it has suffered damage from the scavenging of its ancient mudbrick, likely for use in local fields. Nonetheless, it may be approached as a focal point for at least one social house. Per Susan Gillespie, ‘all houses are not the same. No two houses will incorporate exactly the same estate; each will have its own names, heirlooms, ritual privileges, and material property that serve to differentiate houses and form a basis for ranking them. 14

Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology

Figure 5. Chart of administrative organization and integration across the mortuary foundation of Senwosret III at South Abydos, including the town of Wah-sut (Based on Wegner 2001a, 2007).

1.

Houses are also differentiated in the context of their interactions with each other,’ (Gillespie 2000a: 9). It is reasonably assumed that Wah-sut’s elite houses were integrated with the local institutional landscape, and Building E’s repertoire of seals and sealings supports this idea. With the exception of a royal embalming facility, all institutions known from South Abydos are represented in the sealing corpus of Building E and its immediate surroundings: the royal government and treasury, the military, the Senwosret III mortuary temple (priestly, production, and support personnel), the House of the Mayor, the Administrative Gatehouse, and domestic administration generally. A guiding premise for characterizing ‘Social House E’ is that, in a landscape across which hundreds of names and titles circulated, the spatial association of narrow subsets with one house building over others significantly increases probability of their relevance to the social house(s) concentrated therein, as candidates for retained elements of house identity, prerogatives, and property. From Building E’s inventory of 2,048 seals and impressions, 11% are of the name and title types. Comparing their information with the greater Wahsut corpus, the following prospective social houses are likely to have operated through Building E: 15

The House of Anen: Identification of this house arises from visibility of several carriers of the offices related to storage oversight in Senwosret III’s South Abydos mortuary temple. A complete faience scarab seal of the Storeroom Superintendent of the Chamber of Incoming Goods, Anen, Possessor of Veneration (ἰry-ʿt n ḥnkt Ἰnn nb imꜢḫw) is the strongest indication of Anen’s actual presence in Building E, as opposed to the mere movement of goods sealed and ‘signed’ by him. Sealings of a Chamber Superintendent, also named Anen, appear both in Building E and in refuse deposits in the royal Mortuary Temple’s east block, which functioned as an area for receiving in-coming goods, as well as storage and staging of temple goods (Wegner 2007: 102–03; Wegner et al. 2000: 104–105). These spatially associated instances of administrative titling (Storeroom Superintendent) and personal name (Anen) reflect a trend; it is notable that Building E’s most common sealing by far is for the (female) Storeroom Superintendent, Ipi, Possessor of Veneration (ἰry.t-ʿt Ἰpἰ nb(.t) ἰmꜢḫw). A very rare title in a feminine form, it is the only feminine title retrieved at South Abydos that connotes legitimate administrative authority.

No Place Like Home

2.

Thus, the office of Storeroom Superintendent, especially with the local temple, presents in multiple instances as a probable element of Building E’s social house (Picardo 2015). The House of Khnum: Along with the sealing of Ipi mentioned just above, sealings of two individuals associate with central spaces in Building E: the Estate/House Overseer, Khnum-[?] (ἰmy-r pr 3nm-) and the Commandant of Recruits, Khnum (ḫrp nfrw 3nm), the latter a military title. Both men hold theophorous names incorporating the god Khnum. This naming convention was common throughout ancient Egyptian history, often with chronologically and regionally significant patterns (Vittmann 2013; Lüddeckens 1985; Ranke 1935–77). Names incorporating Khnum, however, are not well attested at Middle Kingdom South Abydos. The god Khnum has no strong associations with the site of Abydos, in general. The only two additional attested instances of Khnum-names at South Abydos are Storeroom Superintendent of the Chamber of Provisions, Khnum-nefer (Ἰryʿt n ʿtpw 3nm-nfr), from the West Block of the royal mortuary temple, and Officer of the Crew of the Ruler Khnum(mes)y (ʿnḫ n ṯt ḥḳꜢ 3nm(ms) y), another member of the military (Wegner 2007: 346–359). This picture may reflect a social house identifiable by positions in the military as well as family naming with the locally unusual emphasis on the god Khnum.

Concluding question: exceptionalism?

Middle

Kingdom

All examples summarized above relate to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, skewing mostly late in the period. Each case also describes circumstances of the times that are to varying degrees peculiar to them. The question should follow whether to credit the idiosyncrasies of the Middle Kingdom with the apparent applicability of the social house concept as a useful heuristic guide to interpretation, even while acknowledging more generally that one historical period never speaks for the whole of ancient Egyptian history. Is it perhaps possible that the hyper-bureaucratic milieu of the late Middle Kingdom has conveniently made some relationships and interactions more evident than in other times by literally stamping them in ways that are materially preservable? Or might society truly have changed so fundamentally that a social house model is unlikely to bear well on other historical periods? The latter seems highly unlikely, but nonetheless, these are timely questions that will be tested soon enough. While Egyptological scholarship has long benefitted from enviable clarity in data sets for individuals in society, currently there is promising movement into methodologies that seek even clearer views of social dynamics at the level of groups, such as extended families, extended households, and other forms of organization. Old Kingdom studies especially are aiming in this direction, with ‘house’ constructs (social or otherwise) appearing in recent research into the iconography of families and households in tombs (Münch 2020; Wen 2018). More broadly, it is promising that the mapping of such information from tomb scenes and inscriptions through social network analysis is beginning to capture social interconnectedness with greater resolution than ever before, often including considerations about household configurations in the data analysis (e.g., Martinet 2020; Stefanović 2019). As these pursuits draw more and more lines to form the skeletons of larger and more complex networks, the importance of sound, relevant theoretical models to add tissue to bone will only increase. Social house theory is one such ‘group’ framework. Far from an end unto itself, however, its ultimate value will be as complement to other approaches, much as in its early applications to ancient Egyptian material discussed above (Olabarria 2020: 98–99).

Inasmuch as household archaeology analysis can infer households from incomplete remains of houses, inferring social houses likewise must rely on a highly fragmented picture. While the two prospective social houses just described present as the strongest inferential candidates for characterizing the main occupants of Building E at Wah-sut, archaeological contexts at the site prevent conclusions about their contemporaneity, partial overlap, or order. This approach, however, allows one or more additional lines for understanding the connection and integration of houses and households with the other institutional components of Senwosret III’s South Abydos, while also establishing a basis for distinguishing among house buildings of highly similar character by way of prospective social houses concentrated in and around them.

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Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology Eyre, C.J. 1994. Feudal Tenure and Absentee Landlords, in S. Allam (ed.) Grund und Boden in Altägypten Rechtliche und Socio-öknomische Verhältnisse: 107–133. Tübingen: Selbstverlag des Herausgebers. Eyre, C.J. 1997. Peasants and ‘Modern’ Leasing Strategies in Ancient Egypt. Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 40: 367–390. Eyre, C.J. 2004. How Relevant was Personal Status, in B. Menu (ed.) La dépendance rurale dans l’antiquité égyptienne et proche-orientale: 157–186. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale. Eyre, C.J. 2011. Patronage, Power, and Corruption in Pharaonic Egypt. International Journal of Business Administration 34: 701–711. Franke, D. 1983. Altägyptische Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen im Mittleren Reich. Hamburg: Verlag Borg. Franke, D. 1991. The Career of Khnumhotep III of Beni Hasan and the so-called ‘Decline of the Nomarchs,’ in S. Quirke (ed.) Middle Kingdom Studies: 51–67. Surrey: SIA Publishing. Franke, D. 2006. Fürsorge und Patronat in der Ersten Zwischenzeit und im Mittleren Reich. Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 34: 159–185. Gardiner, S.A. 1988 [1957]. Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs (3rd edition). Oxford: Ashmolean Museum. Gillespie, S.D. 2000a. Beyond Kinship: An Introduction, in R.A. Joyce and S.D. Gillespie (eds) Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies: 1–21. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gillespie, S.D. 2000b. Lévi–Strauss: Maison and Société à Maisons, in R.A. Joyce and S.D. Gillespie (eds) Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies: 22–52. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gillespie, S.D. 2007. When is a House?, in R.A. Beck, Jr. (ed.) The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology: 25–50. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University. Gnirs, A.M. 1996. Die Ägyptische Autobiographie, in A. Loprieno (ed.) Ancient Egyptian literature: History and Forms: 191–241. Leiden and New York: Brill. Howley, K. and R. Nyord (eds) 2018. Egyptology and Anthropology: Historiography, Theoretical Exchange, and Conceptual Development. Proceedings of the Lady Wallis Budge Symposium held at the University of Cambridge, 25–26 July 2017. Kamrin, J. 1999. The Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan. London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Kemp, B.J. 2018. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization (3rd edition). New York: Routledge. Lehner, M. 2000. The Fractal House of Pharaoh: Ancient Egypt as a Complex Adaptive System, a Trial Formulation, in T.A. Kohler and G.J. Gumerman

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No Place Like Home (eds) Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies: AgentBased Modeling of Social and Spatial Processes: 275–353. New York: Oxford University Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1982. The Way of the Masks (S. Modelski, Trans.). Seattle: University of Washington Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1987. Anthropology and Myth: Lectures 1951–1982 (R. Willis, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1991. Maison, in P. Bonte and M. Izard (eds) Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie: 434–436. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lichtheim, M. 1988. Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies Chiefly of the Middle Kingdom. A Study and an Anthology. Freiburg and Göttingen: Universitätsverlag/ Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Lichtheim, M. 1992. Maat in Egyptian Autobiographies and Related Studies. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lloyd, A.B. 1992. The Great Inscription of Khnumhotpe at Beni Hasan, in A.B. Lloyd (ed.) Studies in Pharaonic Religion and Society in Honour of J. Gwyn Griffiths: 21– 36. London: Egypt Exploration Society. Lüddeckens, E. 1985. Die Theophoren Personennenamen im Pharaonischen, Hellenistisch-Römischen und Christichen Ägypten, in Ägypten: Dauer und Wandel: Symposium anläßlich des 75jährigen Bestehens des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo am 10. und 11. Oktober 1982: 105-113. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Lustig, J. 1997a. Kinship, gender and age in Middle Kingdom tomb scenes and texts, in J. Lustig (ed.) Anthropology and Egyptology: a developing dialogue: 43–65. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Lustig, J. (ed.) 1997b. Anthropology and Egyptology: A Developing Dialogue. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Martinet, E. 2020. Analysing the dynamics among the social groups and the mechanisms of social promotion in the provinces in the late Old Kingdom: SNA Methods and new research approaches, in V. Dulíková and M. Bárta (eds) Addressing the Dynamics of Change in Ancient Egypt: Complex Network Analysis: 71–95. Prague: Charles University, Faculty of Arts. Miniaci, G. 2018. Multiple burials in ancient societies: Theory and methods from Egyptian archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 29: 287–307. Miniaci, G. 2019. Burial demography in the Late Middle Kingdom: A social perspective, in R. Nyord (ed.) Concepts in Middle Kingdom Funerary Culture: Proceedings of the Lady Wallis Budge Anniversary Symposium held at Christ’s College, Cambridge, 22 January 2016: 117–149. Leiden: Brill. Moeller, N. 2009–2010. The Influence of Royal Power on Ancient Egyptian Settlements from an archaeological Perspective. Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et Egyptologie de Lille 28: 193– 209. Moeller, N. 2016. The Archaeology of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt: From the Predynastic Period to the End of the Middle Kingdom. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Moreno García, J.C. 2000. Acquisition de serfs durant la Première Période Intermédiaire: une étude d’histoire sociale dans l’Egypte du IIIe millénaire. Revue d’Égyptologie 51: 123–139. Moreno García, J.C. 2012. Households, in E. Frood and W. Wendrich (eds) UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Los Angeles. Moreno García, J.C. 2013a. Limits of Pharaonic Administration: Patronage, Informal Authorities, ‘Invisible Elites’ and Mobile Populations, in M. Bárta and H. Küllmer (eds) Diachronic Trends in Ancient Egyptian History. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Eva Pardey: 88–101. Prague: Charles University in Prague Faculty of Arts. Moreno García, J.C. 2013b. The ‘Other’ Administration: Patronage, Factions, and Informal Networks of Power in Ancient Egypt, in J.C. Moreno Garcia (ed.) Ancient Egyptian Administration: 1029–1065. Leiden: Brill. Müller, M. 2015a. Introduction, in M. Müller (ed.) Household Studies in Complex Societies. (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches: xiii–xlii. Chicago: Oriental Institute. Müller, M. 2015b. New Approaches to the Study of Households in Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period Egypt, in W. Grajetzki and G. Miniaci (eds) The World of Middle Kingdom Egypt (2000– 1550 BC) 1: 237–255. Oxford: Golden House. Müller-Wollermann, R. 1987/88. Das Ägyptische Alte Reich als Beispiel einer Weberschen Patrimonialbürokratie. Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 9: 25–40. Münch, H.-H. 2020. Representations of Households in Old Kingdom Egypt: A Contribution to a History of Social Order, in V. Dulíková and M. Bárta (eds) Addressing the Dynamics of Change in Ancient Egypt: Complex Network Analysis: 96–104. Prague: Charles University, Faculty of Arts. Nelson-Hurst, M.G. 2011. Ideology and Practicality in Transmission of Office during the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt: An Examination of Families and the Concept of i3t. Unpublished dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Nelson-Hurst, M.G. 2015. The (social) house of Khnumhotep, in G. Miniaci and W. Grajetzki (eds) The World of Middle Kingdom Egypt (2000–1550 BC). Contributions on Archaeology, Art, Religion, and Written Sources 1. London: Golden House Publications. Newberry, P.E. 1893. Beni Hasan Part I. London: Archaeological Survey of Egypt. Olabarria, L. 2020. Kinship and Family in Ancient Egypt: Archaeology and Anthropology in Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perry, D. 2017. Requisition Economics in Provincial Centres and Abusir in the Old Kingdom, in M. Bárta, F. Coppens, and J. Krejčí (eds) Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2015: 331–343. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University. 18

Nicholas Picardo: Chapter 2. ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology Picardo, N.S. 2006. Egypt’s well-to-do: Elite Mansions in the Town of Wah-Sut. Expedition 48: 37–40. Picardo, N.S. 2009. Middle Kingdom History, Politics, and Social Organization, in L.M. Berman, D.M. Doxey, R.E. Freed, and N.S. Picardo (eds) The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC: 17–37. Boston: MFA Publications. Picardo, N.S. 2015. Hybrid Households: Institutional Affiliations and Household Identity in the Town of Wah-sut, in M. Müller (ed.) Household Studies in Complex Societies. (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches: 243–287. Chicago: Oriental Institute. Ranke, H. 1935–1977. Die Ägyptischen Personennamen. Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin. Richards, J. 2005. Society and Death in Ancient Egypt: Mortuary Landscapes of the Middle Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robins, G. 1979. The Relationships Specified by Egyptian Kinship Terms of the Middle and New Kingdoms. Chronique d’Égypte 54: 197–217. Schloen, J.D. 2001. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Seidlmayer, S.J. 1997. Wirtschaftlich und Gesellschaftliche Entwicklung im Übergang von Alten zum Mittleren Reich: Ein Beitrag zur Archäologie der Gräberfelder der Region QauMatmar in der Ersten Zwischenzeit, in J. Lustig (ed.) Anthropology and Egyptology: A Developing Dialogue. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Seidlmayer, S.J. 2007. People at Beni Hasan: Contributions to a Model of Ancient Egyptian Rural Society, in Z.A. Hawass and J. Richards (eds) The Archaeology and Art of Ancient Egypt: Essays in Honor of David B. O’Connor 2: 351–368. Cairo: Conseil Suprême des Antiquités l’Égypte. Simpson, W.K. (ed.) 2003. The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Stauder-Porchet, J.E., E. Frood and A. Stauder 2020. Ancient Egyptian Biographies: Contexts, Forms, Functions (Wilbour Studies in Egyptology 6). Atlanta: Lockwood Press. Stefanović, D. 2019. The Social Network(s) of the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period Treasurers: Rehuerdjersen, Siese, Ihkernefret and Senebsumai. Journal of Egyptian History 12: 259–287. Stevenson, A. 2015. The Object of Study: Egyptology, Archaeology, and Anthropology at Oxford, 1860– 1960, in W. Carruthers (ed.) Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures: 19–33. New York: Routledge. Trigger, B. 1979. Egypt and the Comparative Study of Early Civilizations, in K.R. Weeks (ed.) Egyptology and the Social Sciences: Five Studies: 23–56. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Trigger, B. 1985. The Evolution of Pre-Industrial Cities: A Multilinear Perspective, in H.S. Smith (ed.) Mélanges

offerts à Jean Vercoutter: 343–353. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations. Trigger, B. 1993. Early Civilizations. Cairo: The American University in Cairo. Trigger, B. 1997. Ancient Egypt in Cross-Cultural Perspective, in J. Lustig (ed.) Anthropology and Egyptology: A Developing Dialogue: 137–143. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Trigger, B. 2003. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vittmann, G. 2013. Personal Names: Structures and Patterns, in E. Frood and W. Wendrich (eds) UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Los Angeles. http:// digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/ zz002dwqsr Warden, L.A. 2013. Pottery and Economy in Old Kingdom Egypt. Leiden: Brill. Wegner, J. 1998. Excavations at the Town of ‘Enduringis-the-Throne-of-Khakaure-Maa-Kheru-in-Abydos’: A Preliminary Report on the 1994 and 1997 Seasons. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 35: 1–44. Wegner, J. 2000. Excavating the residence of an ancient Egyptian mayor. Expedition 41: 4–5. Wegner, J. 2001a. Institutions and Officials at South Abydos: An Overview of the Sigillographic Evidence. Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et Egyptologie de Lille 22: 77–108. Wegner, J. 2001b. The Town of Wah-sut at South Abydos: 1999 Excavations. Mitteilungen des Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Abteilung Kairo 57: 281–308. Wegner, J. 2004. Female Seal Impressions in the Middle Kingdom Settlement of Wah-Sut: Historical and Social Implications, in M. Bietak and E. Czerny (eds) Scarabs of the 2nd Millennium from Egypt, Nubia and the Levant: Chronological and Historical Implications: 221– 240. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Wegner, J. 2006. Beneath the Mountain-of-Anubis: Ancient Egypt’s first Hidden Royal Tomb. Expedition 48: 15–22. Wegner, J. 2007. The Mortuary Temple of Senwosret III at Abydos. New Haven and Philadelphia: Peabody Museum of Natural History and University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Wegner, J. 2009. The Tomb of Senwosret III at Abydos: Considerations on the Origins and Development of the Royal Amduat-Tomb, in D.P. Silverman, W.K. Simpson, and J. Wegner (eds) Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt: 103– 169. New Haven and Philadelphia: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University and University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Wegner, J. 2010. External Connections of the Community of Wah-Sut during the Late Middle Kingdom, in Z.A. Hawass, P.D. Manuelian, and R.B. Hussein (eds) Perspectives on Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of 19

No Place Like Home Edward Brovarski: 437–458. Cairo: Conseil Suprême des Antiquités de l’Egypte. Wegner, J. 2014. The Palatial Residence of Wah-sut: Modeling the Mayor’s House at South Abydos. Expedition 56: 24–31. Wegner, J. 2018. The Evolution of Ancient Egyptian Seals and Sealing Systems, in G. Jamison, M. Ameri, S.J. Scott, and S.K. Costello (eds) Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World: Case Studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean, and South Asia: 229–257. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wegner, J., V. Smith and S. Rossel 2000. The Organization of the Temple Nfr-kA of Senwosret III at Abydos. Ägypten und Levante 10: 83–125.

Wen, J. 2018. The Iconography of Family Members in Egypt’s Elite Tombs of the Old Kingdom. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Willems, H. 1983. A Description of Egyptian Kinship Terminology of the Middle Kingdom c. 2000–1650 B.C. Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 139: 152–168. Willems, H. 2015. Family Life in the Hereafter according to Coffin Texts Spells 131–146: A Study in the Structure of Ancient Egyptian Domestic Groups, in R. Nyord and K.S.B. Ryholt (eds) Lotus and Laurel: Studies on Egyptian Language and Religion in Honour of Paul John Frandsen: 447–472. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen.

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Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity in the Early Iron Age at Tall al-ʿUmayri, Jordan Monique D. Vincent

The Early Iron Age southern Levant was at the center of a rapidly changing world. The urban city states of the Late Bronze Age were collapsing. The New Kingdom Egyptian empire’s control over the region was dwindling to a close. The rich interactions across the Mediterranean world were slowly breaking down and populations were set in motion. A number of small, agro-pastoral villages emerged in the highlands and plateaus on either side of the Jordan River for the first time and new identities were forged. With the absence of contemporary local texts known from this time period, archaeology provides our best clues about the residents of these rural villages, their everyday practices, and their worldview. By taking questions drawn from functional-ecological and identity-practice approaches and applying them to an Early Iron Age settlement at Tall al-ʿUmayri, this study contributes to the discussion of social identity in the Early Iron Age southern Levant, and in Jordan in particular. The household is necessarily at the heart of any archaeological study of identity. The remnants of domestic activities preserved in the archaeological record can be analyzed to reconstruct the everyday habitual practices of the inhabitants. The two theoretical approaches, functional-ecological and identity-practice, work to understand the social and subsistence functions and meanings of these material remains and practices. The inhabitants’ subscription to an underlying shared worldview shaped, and was shaped by, these habitual everyday practices at both the household and community levels. Comparing and contrasting patterns in practice across the wider region is then useful to understanding how these practices contributed to the formation of social identities in the Early Iron Age. The functional-ecological model establishes the household as the physical, social, and economic foundation of a given society. Wilk and Rathje famously define a household as the social, material, and behavioral sums of a domestic strategy for survival (Wilk and Rathje 1982: 618). All three of these elements, social, material, and behavioral, can be investigated archaeologically. The preserved architecture can be related to household size, composition, and possible No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 21–41

interactions. The artifacts left in rooms lend ‘insight into household behavior and relationships between social action and material’ (Allison 1999: 6). Artifact patterns can be analyzed and used to reconstruct the social and economic behaviors that sustained a household. The inhabitants, as part of their households and communities, used their environment to survive through seasonal farming and herding. Faunal and botanical studies, alongside ethnographic comparison, help determine what agro-pastoral activities might have been pursued and how they were organized across households. This focus on a household’s organization and adaptation to their local economy and ecology has been an important part of the functional-ecological approach (Wilk 1997: 9) The inhabitants balanced concerns for defense, water, access to arable land, and routes connecting their village with the outside world, all based on their community’s relationship to the environment. Analysis of the houses, their inhabitants, and the inhabitants’ activities recreates a sense of the everyday, bringing an ancient household to life and identifying their behaviors and domestic strategies for survival. At the household level groups of people engaged in various similar practices and so were united in their shared way of surviving. This connection between everyday practices and group identity derives from an adaptation of Yaeger and Canuto’s identity-practice approach (Yaeger and Canuto 2000). The identitypractice method analyzes the patterns behind these practices to understand the motives and worldview of the inhabitants. Archaeologists have used practice theory to focus on how the ordinary, daily practices shape and reproduce the system (Dobres and Robb 2000: 5; Ortner 1984: 154). The household, as both a physical and social place, ties people into society and can be studied as a reflection of the cosmos, especially through ethnography (Gillespie 2000: 136, 157–158). Yaeger and Canuto shift the focus in this paradigm to include the community, where everyday ‘suprahousehold interactions’ reflect and shape group identities (Yaeger and Canuto 2000: 1–6). Analyzing construction patterns, storage and cooking practices, and methods of production allows artifactual evidence to be used to infer social meaning.

No Place Like Home Both of these approaches explore the social and economic world of the household using the physical remains left in the archaeological record. Careful use of ethnographic and comparative evidence can then characterize the practices of the settlement’s inhabitants at the household and community levels. Placing these practices from one settlement into a wider regional context provides insights into the distinctive and shared practices that define emerging social identities. This approach differs from the traditional culture-historical approach to the Early Iron Age southern Levant, which focused primarily on ethnic identities known only from later historical texts. Several recent studies have taken a more nuanced, practice-based approach to understanding identity formation in the Early Iron Age, including studies published on sites in Israel and Jordan. Ilan’s study of Tel Dan investigated the architecture, installations, and evidence for socioeconomic organization to determine community preferences for certain layouts, tools and working conditions, communal storage, eating, and mortuary practices (Ilan 2011). Gadot’s study of four settlements along the Yarkon River looked at architectural practices such as building materials and plans, including the placement of courtyards and entrances, to determine that each settlement had its own distinct patterns that did not align with traditional historical-based ethnic markers (Gadot 2011). Porter’s research on sites in the highland plateaus in Jordan, including Tall al-ʿUmayri, discussed how complex communities were established and adapted to life in marginal zones (Porter 2013). His study focused on the ‘production practices’ at Khirbat al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya—how the inhabitants built spaces, engaged in agro-pastoralism, stored goods, and made ceramic vessels—that created communities in the sedentary villages of Iron I Jordan (Porter 2013: 69–103).

Tall al-ʿUmayri The transitional Late Bronze/Early Iron Age settlement at Tall al-ʿUmayri (Stratum 12, 1200–1150 BC) was a single-phase settlement ultimately consumed by an intense fire that sealed houses, domestic artifacts, and even some of the inhabitants under a thick destruction layer. Radiocarbon samples (currently under study) and ceramics date the Stratum 12 settlement to around 1200 BC, putting the settlement in the Iron IA period (Herr 2006, 2001 [Stratum 12 is ‘Episode 1C’ in Herr 2001]). The Stratum 12 remains are an important example of everyday life in a single phase at the site. The Madaba Plains Projects’ excavations at Tall al-ʿUmayri (1984–2016, most of those seasons engaged with a part of Stratum 12) have so far uncovered a small (.05 ha) but significant portion of this 1.5 ha village on the western edge of the tell, including five domestic structures, a deep refuse pit, and an impressive fortification system (Figure 1). Other possible Stratum 12 remains have been excavated in small soundings elsewhere on the site. Though not connected stratigraphically to the main western portion, the characteristic fiery destruction and distinct storage jars mark domestic remains that are most likely part of the same settlement. Discussions of Stratum 12 features have been published in several articles and in the seasonal excavation reports of the Madaba Plains Project series (e.g. Clark 2001; Herr 2000; Herr et al. 2009, and in the Madaba Plains Project 1-10 publications [see Geraty et al. and Herr et al. publications spanning 1989–2021]). These earlier publications have focused primarily on the parts of the settlement that were excavated in the 1980s and 1990s, and discuss in depth the excavators’ interpretations of the origin of the settlement, its lifespan, and aspects of its social and religious life. Three more structures excavated since 2000, however, have added significantly to the picture of this settlement and are currently in the process of publication. This paper presents the first published overview of the entire western part of the settlement as it currently stands.

The focus of this study is on the transitional Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BC) between the urbanized Late Bronze Age and the nation-states of the Iron II period. The small, rural settlements in the southern Levant during this period provide a window of opportunity in which to analyze households, communities, and the development of social identity across the region. One such small village has been excavated at Tall al-ʿUmayri on the Central Plateau of Jordan. The archaeological remains at ʿUmayri form the core for this study, serving as the primary evidence to research households and community. The functional-ecological approach is used to reconstruct the patterns of behavior at ʿUmayri and a selection of related sites. From these reconstructed patterns, the identity-practice approach is used to infer meaningful practices that were the basis of social identities at the household, community, and regional levels.

The transitional Early Iron Age settlement at ʿUmayri is separated by a brief occupational hiatus from a Late Bronze Age II (1400–1250 BC) stratum marked by a monumental structure interpreted as a palace or a temple (for more on this Stratum 14 settlement see Bramlett 2008). The Stratum 12 buildings, small domestic structures, would seem to mark a departure from this large Late Bronze public structure to their north, though there have been no excavations below Stratum 12 in this area. Following the destruction of Stratum 12, the inhabitants of Stratum 11, later in the Iron IA period (1150–1100 BC), built their houses on top of the debris without reusing any of the Stratum 12 architecture. 22

Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity

Figure 1. Tall al-‘Umayri Stratum 12 plan (© Monique Vincent).

23

No Place Like Home The Stratum 12 buildings share an external western wall, the settlement’s defensive wall, preserved to a height of 2.5 m on an earlier Middle Bronze Age rampart. The five domestic structures also share walls between buildings. The structures’ east-facing walls likely contained the entrances to each building, though such an entrance is only preserved in Building B (which also has an entrance to the north, where no other buildings exist). There is no evidence for shared doorways or courtyards between structures. The only shared feature outside the houses appears to be a large refuse pit 1.5 m northeast of Building B, measuring 8.5 by 3.7 m and filled to a depth of 1 to 2 m. The domestic structures are built with stone walls preserved over a meter high in Building B and to a lesser degree in the other buildings. Mudbrick walls then formed the upper part of the houses and a second story in at least Building B (where excavation photographs clearly show a layer tumbled from an upper story). All five structures had thick, 1-m wide stone walls that could have supported a second story (Kramer 1982: 99). Domestic features related to cooking and storage and artifacts related to a wide range of household activities were found throughout the houses. These houses, features, and contents form the basis of the evidence for this paper on everyday practices.

Number of Occupants by Storage Capacity: 3.3 jars/person/year estimate (Gloria London)

Low estimate - 290 liters/ person/year (Kemp 1986)

High estimate - 500 liters/ person/year (Kemp 1986)

Max estimate - 433 liters/ person/year (Schwartz 1994)

The house, according to Wilk and Rathje, is the place where a household lives and works for its survival (Wilk and Rathje 1982: 618). The four complete domestic buildings excavated from Stratum 12 all contained evidence of domestic use and habitation, including artifacts related to food storage, preparation and consumption, as well as textile manufacture, personal adornment, tools, and weaponry.

A

C

D

130

111

70

73

Roofed dwelling area (without walls, in sq. meters)

50,4

52,2

38

40

10 m2/person of roofed dwelling area (Narroll 1962)

5,04

5,22

3,8

4

6,3

6,5

4,8

5

Total area (with walls, in sq. meters)

5,5

35

15

9,1

8,5

20

8,7

5,3

4,9

17,4

7,5

4,5

4,2

Different approaches can be used to understand more about the size and composition of households. The house sizes, between 70 and 130 m2, fit within the range known for the southern Levant during the Early Iron Age (Routledge 2009: 49) (Table 2). Household size can be estimated based on ethnographic research relating the size of the buildings (roofed dwelling area) to the number of inhabitants (see Schloen 2001: 323 for a consideration of second stories that matches closely to Building B at ‘Umayri and to the rough baseline provided by Naroll 1962) or by determining the volume of storage containers and so estimating their grain storage potential (Kemp 1986; London, personal communication; Schwartz and Falconer 1994). While other factors may influence storage capacity, the results can correlate building size with the number of

Number of Occupants by Area:

8 m2/person of roofed dwelling area (Schloen 2001)

5,5

While the inhabitants built with the same basic materials—stone and mudbrick—their houses exhibited disparity in the use of wooden pillars, their overall size, and the complexity of their layout. Only Buildings B and A used pillars to roof wider spaces, for example (Figures 1–3). This inequality in design, construction, building materials and the resulting need for extra labor on larger houses may have been one way that elites expressed ‘their dominant positions in the social system’ (McGuire and Schiffer 1983: 282; Webster et al. 1997).

Table 1. Calculations of household size based on area and storage capacity. B

9,7

The physical structure of the domestic space is an expression of a community’s social system, built to conform with the ideas and needs of the population, whether these are ideological, functional, or both (Lawrence and Low 1990: 454–455). The four complete structures at ʿUmayri are each built to a different plan, ranging from the four-room style of Building B to a linear style in Buildings C and D (Figure 1). The houses also range in size, from 70 to 130 m2 (Table 1). The structures were laid adjacent to each other, sharing exterior walls that would have required collective cooperation during construction (Figure 1). This close cooperation may betray an underlying kinship or close relationship between the founders of the Stratum 12 settlement in this area. The bounding walls and walled courtyard, on the other hand, indicate a concern for individual household separation.

The households

Building Area:

22

Building Storage Capacity:

Total volume in liters (137 liters 10138 4384 2466 2466 average per collared pithos)

24

Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity

Figure 2. Excavated remains of Building B, with pillar bases, and partially-excavated Building A, with cultic corner exposed (top left). (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project).

Figure 3. Excavated remains of Building C. Note the absence of pillar bases and the presence of a stone table in the back room. (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project).

inhabitants that stored grains could have supported. Whereas the sample size is small, only four houses, the results of these two methods do break the houses into two groups (Table 1). The size and capacity ranges indicate that both nuclear and extended family groups could have lived in these houses. For Buildings B and A, the disparity of size and storage capacity alongside

the unique building materials and style of construction highlight their differences. These houses may have required larger households to attend to extra duties and land that set them apart socially and economically. The destruction at ʿUmayri sealed the houses under 1–2 m of solidly burned mudbrick, mostly 25

No Place Like Home Table 2. House sizes in the Iron Age southern Levant. Site

No. of Houses

Range (sq. meters)

Source

‘Umayri (Str. 12)

4

70.0 – 130.0

Personal calculations using GIS

Madaba (Str. 10)

1

54

Foran and Klassen 2013 (approx. measurements taken from plan)

Zira’a (Str. 13)

8

70.0 – 200.0

Personal communication, Katja Soennecken, October 2014

Fukhar (Str. VIA, Area B)

3

60-85

Ottoson 2015 (approx. measurements taken from plan)

Khirbat al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya 8

71.5 – 239.0

Routledge 2009: 49

Lahun (Iron I settlement)

8

52.0 – 160.0

Routledge 2009: 49

Abu al-Kharaz (Phase IX)

1

368

Fischer 2013: 267 (the ‘cell-plan’ structure)

Giloh (Area C, Bldg 8)

1

125.32

Mazar 1981

43-80, 100-200

Bloch-Smith and Nakhai 1999: 75

Iron I Central Highland Sites Various

undisturbed by later activities at the site. The large number of excavated small, portable artifacts, some of considerable value, like metal weaponry, indicates that most inhabitants were unable to retrieve more than their lives while escaping the burning settlement. The excellent preservation provides an opportunity to study an Early Iron Age assemblage that was hastily abandoned, without time for the inhabitants to carry off their possessions. Even under these circumstances the excavated surface assemblage is not a perfect record. Cultural and natural processes have shaped the deposition over time from the moment of construction to the moment of excavation (for more on formation processes and the ‘life cycle’ of a house see Schiffer 1987, adapted for the Levant by Hardin 2010). The artifact distribution, in combination with a study of the permanent features, however, allows for analysis of household activities (Kramer 1982: 116; LaMotta and Schiffer 1999).

following functional categories (the examples are representative, not exhaustive): food storage (storage jars, jar stoppers, a funnel); food preparation/ consumption (grindstones, bowls, kraters, etc.); textile manufacture (spindle whorls, loom weights, needles, awls); personal adornment (beads, pendants, a cosmetic pot); administrative activities (seals, weights); tools/ weapons (spear points, a roof roller, whetstones); cultic activities (astragali, chalices, figurines—though see more below); and miscellaneous (mixed-use items such as lamps, pounders, and indeterminate artifacts). The artifacts from this assemblage indicate that these houses were centers of numerous activities related to feeding and clothing a household. Five patterns in practices become clear in analyzing the distribution of artifacts and features: 1.

The Stratum 12 artifacts included in this study came from the surfaces and from the destruction debris above the surfaces. The material from the debris layers could have come from features in the rooms, but more likely originated from the second floor or the roof. Careful mapping of artifacts noted on original handdrawn excavation plans for Buildings A and B, and both plans and GPS points for Buildings C, D, and E, allowed me to trace artifacts to house and room, and sometimes to surfaces or debris layers (Figure 4). A series of charts based on all artifacts found in the physically distinct areas or rooms of the domestic structures provide a general idea of artifact and ceramic distribution, but do not note the distinction between surface and debris assemblages as this was not always identifiable in the older excavation records (Figure 5). Artifacts were grouped based on their association with the

2.

26

Storage took place primarily in the innermost or upper rooms of the houses, revealing a concern with concealing or protecting goods. While the charts reflect this for Buildings B and C, some explanation is needed for Buildings A and D. In Buildings B and C most of the pithoi were found on the surface of the innermost room of each house, at least 74 pithoi in Building B and eight in Building C. In Building A, at least 13 pithoi were found crushed on the surface of the innermost room of the house; the remaining examples are pithos sherds primarily from upper story collapse. In Building D, the innermost room had at least two pithoi set into the surface; the remaining pithos sherds were found collapsed with the roofing material. The various rooms contained a diverse range of artifacts, preventing clear identification of specific activity areas. Textile-related artifacts,

Figure 4. Distribution of artifacts in Building A. This plan only includes artifacts with specific spatial information, which were organized here for ease of viewing in basic categories. This plan does not distinguish surface finds from debris layer finds (© Monique Vincent).

Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity

27

No Place Like Home

Figure 5. Artifact distribution in Stratum 12 (© Monique Vincent).

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Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity for example, are found in two or more of the rooms in each structure. Food preparation- and consumption-related artifacts were spread everywhere, though they were slightly more frequent around identified cooking features. Differences in artifact distribution appear more in quantity than diversity, though only Buildings B and A included cultic and administrativerelated artifacts. Grinding and cooking installations were found in each house, indicating each household prepared their food in their own homes, without sharing facilities. This would have limited the interaction of individual households with each other in the production and consumption of their most necessary commodity, food; and like with storage, suggests some concern with keeping and preparing it privately over a desire to share resources and preparation space.

set of features. The main features present included a hearth or oven, a grinding installation, and a plastered stone table that may or may not have been related to food preparation (Figure 6). Cooking installations were found in front or back rooms—only one possible hearth was found in the expected location in the courtyard of Building B (see Baadsgaard 2008, where most cooking installations in the Iron Age Levant were placed in exterior spaces). The plastered stone tables were found only in the innermost rooms, though in Building A the stone table was separated from the main area of food production. Personal preference seems to have dictated the placement of these food preparation features more than a worldview with clear ideas about where one cooks within the home. This flexibility in the location of everyday activities has been examined previously, ethnographically and archaeologically in the Bronze Age Levant and Egypt, where individual preferences balance socially-defined concepts (Daviau 1993; Moeller 2015; Spence 2015).

What conclusions can be drawn from studying these patterns? First, that food preparation was a major concern of the household. This is not surprising. Studying the locations of artifacts and features, however, does draw attention to distinct patterns in Stratum 12 related to this important everyday activity. Food production areas in Stratum 12, for example, do not have a fixed location between houses or an ideal

Analyzing the locations of grinding stones revealed another pattern. Most were found in the debris tumbled from upper stories or the roof, including some of the largest lower grinding stones recovered. Though heavy, it is possible these tools were brought up to the roof where the connected natures of the houses made it easier for the inhabitants to communicate across the barriers of the architecture. With shelters set up

3.

4.

5.

Figure 6. Cooking-related features in Stratum 12, including hearths (top row), and stone tables (bottom row). In the top right image, note the stone storage bin to the right of the arrow. In the top left image, the base of a grinding installation is to the left of the hearth; further visible in Figure 7. (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project).

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No Place Like Home for shade, the roofs would have provided a shared communal space for women to informally interact while working, a space otherwise absent without shared courtyards. In the literature, shared facilities provide one way to socialize (Brody 2011 for Iron Age Tell enNasbeh; Lutfiyya 1966: 30–31 for an ethnographic example). My own casual experience visiting a family in an Upper Egyptian village first brought my attention to the numerous activities carried out on rooftops, including bread preparation and baking, laundry, and rug beating. The visibility of these activities even between non-attached apartments came to mind while doing this research. Rooftop activities are present in the literature (Reich 1992: 14 and Daviau 2001: 200 for cultic activities; Wilson 1906: 69–70 for storage), though the inter-house social role is less prominent (Kramer 1982: 88, 111, briefly mentions rooftops as pathways to social visits between households). Meyers has proposed that the women of the Iron Age southern Levant engaged in informal networks ‘connecting neighboring households’, citing ethnographic examples where women shared and so transformed ‘mundane tasks into ones “of pleasure and intimacy”’ (Meyers 2013: 139– 146). Grinding grain on the roof may have been one way that women in Stratum 12 were able to connect despite the lack of shared installations and the presence of architectural divisions.

grain storage outside of the region, though applying to societies with more hierarchical organization than was present in the Early Iron Age at ‘Umayri, do provide a sense of the social significance attached to how grain is stored and by whom (e.g., Hendon 2000; Christakis 1999). Grain in Stratum 12 was stored primarily in large, collared pithoi within each house; there is no evidence for communal storage of grain outside of the houses. The potential amounts of grain that could have been stored, based on pithos volume, varied for each house (Table 1). This calculation does not include smaller storage jars that might have held legumes, oil, or other additional foodstuffs. The pithoi were crushed in the falling buildings but are largely restorable, giving accurate counts for comparison between buildings. The pithoi were found primarily in the innermost rooms of the houses, though evidence points to some from upper stories and/or the roof. Another method of storage was in mudbrick and stone bins, as found in Buildings A and C (Figure 7). These bins may have been used for more short-term convenience, as they were found next to grinding and cooking installations. They also could have served as an alternative means of long-term storage, as they could have held 180 liters, more than the 137 liters of a storage jar. The social implications of these storage practices lie in considering the differing storage capacity of the houses.

Grain storage was another important part of everyday life at ʿUmayri. While grain is stored for practical reasons, there are also social implications to how commodities are stored. Ethnographic and archaeological studies of

Building B contained over twice as many pithoi as the other houses. Previously, this disparity has been interpreted in various ways. Based on the earliest excavations, which only revealed Buildings A and

Figure 7. Mudbrick bin from Building C, located next to a mudbrick installation that held a lower grinding stone. (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project).

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Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity B, Herr argued that the large number of pithoi in Building B were shared storage for a patrimonial household compound consisting of Buildings B and A (Herr 2009). Now that more of the settlement has been excavated, this argument seems less likely as there is no architectural evidence for a special relationship between Buildings B and A, such as a shared courtyard. London has argued that the surplus represented by these jars was stored for special feasting occasions (London 2011). Porter has argued that the surplus storage created the basis for authority in the settlement (Porter 2013). The large amount of surplus could have come from larger agricultural land holdings by the inhabitants of Building B or from contributions for communal storage or feasting with other community members, as London and Porter have suggested. The surplus storage, taken together with the greater house size, more complex house plans and construction, and the greater range and number of artifacts, does suggest that the inhabitants of Buildings B and A were preeminent in the settlement.

Figure 8. Lithic drill and awl from Stratum 12. (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project).

houses, or near the remains of the individuals caught in the collapse of Building B. London has argued that the seals were deposited in the refuse pit during ritual events to represent the households that carved them (London 2011: 26–27). The idea of discarding valuable artifacts to create meaningful deposits in community memory has been proposed for the Maya, which, though distant culturally and politically, does provide an interesting suggestion for how to understand this kind of depositional pattern (Hendon 2000: 47–49). At ʿUmayri the seals could have been discarded publicly in this communal pit to be remembered and connected to the identity of the depositors.

Other varieties of household-based activities are evident from the artifacts left behind, including the manufacture of textiles and seals. The base of the toolkit for textile-related activities was an ad hoc production of various lithic tools. Rough lithic drills and awls were likely used to turn ceramic sherds into the crude spindle whorls found in each of the complete houses (Figure 8; see discussion of drills below). These spindle whorls were part of a textile toolkit that also included fine bone spindle whorls, bone weaving spatulae and awls, stone loom weights, and metal needles. The significant number of older sheep in the faunal assemblage together with these textile implements further support the assertion by Peters et al. that woolen textiles were an important part of the economy and household clothing (Figure 9; the sheep to goat ratio in Stratum 12 faunal remains was 3:2) (Peters et al. 2002: 319, 327). Finding textile tools, like spindle whorls, in each of the houses indicates that each household was involved in producing the tools and cloth they needed.

The seals found in the refuse pit represent two main types (Figure 10). Some of the rough, abstractly carved seals resemble the conoid or ‘Anchor’ seals known from the Early Iron Age elsewhere in the southern Levant (Buchanan and Moorey 1988: 15–17; Herr 2000: 176; Keel 1994). Others follow international styles such as the scaraboid or cylinder seal and may have been heirlooms or attempts to copy styles popular in the Bronze Age. The overlap between the internationalstyle and conoid seals in the same refuse pit provides access to a unique moment at ʿUmayri when the traditions of the Bronze Age were beginning to change and were being shaped into the practices that would continue at Iron Age ʿUmayri. In the following stratum, Stratum 11 (Iron IA, 1150–1100 BC), a large domestic structure nearby contained only the crude, abstract chert seals, apparently in daily use (see ‘Building M’ seals in Figure 10). Creating their own type of seals, carved from a material that is local to ʿUmayri and its environs, would have strengthened the sense of a local identity in the Early Iron Age.

Another aspect of household production centered on the manufacture of seals from a distinctive, local material now determined to be a type of soft limestone designated microporous chert (Vincent and Nick 2019). A block of the raw material and three lithic drills were found in Building A (Rooms A4 and A1) and a seal blank in Building C (Room C3), indicating that the inhabitants were creating their own seals on a household basis (Figure 10) (for the drills, see Rosen 1997: 68, also personal communication with Julie Cormack about the use of lithics at ʿUmayri, November 2012). This sealcarving was part of an active tradition that continued at ʿUmayri throughout the Iron Age (Herr 2000: 176). Six seals made of microporous chert were found in the refuse pit. No finished seals were found in the

The community Differences, inequality, and architectural boundaries all worked to divide the community. Divergences in the 31

No Place Like Home

Figure 9. Caprine survivorship curves from the domestic and refuse pit contexts of Stratum 12. These data represent my own analysis combining the results from: (1) Peters et al. 2002, which included excavations of the first half of the refuse pit; (2) my own analysis of the unpublished identifications by Joris Peters, Nadja Pöllath, and Angela von den Driesch in 2008 from the excavations of the second half of the refuse pit and the domestic contexts; and (3) unpublished identifications made by Justin Lev-Tov in 2013 from domestic contexts excavated through 2012. The author wishes to thank Nadja Pöllath for her assistance in accessing and interpreting the original records of the team.

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Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity

Figure 10. Seals from Stratum 12: refuse pit (upper two rows) and houses (lower left); from Stratum 11 (Iron IA) Building M (lower right). (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project).

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No Place Like Home construction of houses, in the quantity and diversity of artifacts and in storage capacity were noted above. These kinds of differences spoke of inequality in wealth, which has been tied to land, livestock, and labor in ethnographic studies (Kramer 1982: 57; Watson 1979: 292). The architectural construction of each house separated it from its neighbor with large walls and street-facing entrances. The only exposed courtyard, in Building B, was completely enclosed with restricted access. These economic inequalities and physical separations may have presented significant barriers to community life.

for his original interpretation). Nakhai’s idea of the ‘sacralization’ of space, a ‘temporal’ application of ritual sacredness to an otherwise mundane space makes sense of the features and artifacts found in Building A that strict cultic typologies reject as religious (see Albertz and Schmitt 2012: 190–192; Nakhai 2014: 349–350). Studies on Iron Age domestic ritual emphasize the dominance of women in household cult and the prominence of food and drinking rituals (Ackerman 2008; Daviau 2001: 202; Nakhai 2011: 355–359). Building A held a large proportion of Stratum 12’s grinding stones: 37% of the entire assemblage of 127 groundstones, Buildings B, C, and D contained 20, 14, and 13% respectively. Building A was also the only house with three reconstructed kraters used for olive oil separation. The greater number and concentration of flour- and oil-related tools in this house could be related to the production of grain and olive oil offerings. The cultic corner as a center for ‘ritual feasts and cultic ceremonies’ could have provided a focus for communal piety (Nakhai 2014: 55, 58).

Households, as members of a larger community, worked to maintain ties and create a shared sense of purpose even in the face of these inequalities and differences. At the community level, everyday practices created opportunities for interactions between villagers. These ‘practices of affiliation’ are visible in cooperative construction efforts, ritual activities, and shared concern for agro-pastoral success at ʿUmayri (Yaeger 2000: 131). Community-level practices worked to unite households in the creation of their own local shared identity.

The refuse pit located just northeast of the houses was enormous, with at least 60 m3 of excavated garbage, and was used continuously, with fine layers of ash deposits and tip lines (Clark 2014: 102). The thousands of faunal and ceramic remains found in the pit were likely part of everyday ‘butchery and kitchen refuse’ (Peters et al. 2002: 306). The presence of imported Nile perch remains in the refuse pit, however, has also contributed to theories of feasting at the settlement and specifically at the site of the refuse pit (London 2009, 2011; Routledge 2015). The fish’s value as an imported item may have contributed to a sense of prestige or ritual in communal feasting events, perhaps the same events where seals were discarded, as discussed above.

Cooperation would have been required to build the original settlement. Not only were the houses constructed with shared walls, but each of the four structures included in this study were built with their western walls integrated into the settlement’s impressive defense system. This west-facing fortification system, including a large wall and a rampart, was either constructed anew or rebuilt by the Stratum 12 inhabitants (Herr 1998, 2000). Studies have argued that the importance of large settlement walls could lie in their symbolism, and not just in a functional defensive purpose. Walls visibly demarcate a community’s boundaries and identity and issue its claim to the surrounding landscape (Brody 2015: 299–301; Chesson 2003: 93; Faust 2000: 28; Kolb and Snead 1997: 614; Moeller 2004: 265; Philip 2003: 112). This claim to territory, along with a desire for a sense of security, may have motivated the community to cooperate in constructing and maintaining their wall, building connections between households at the same time (Chesson 2003: 93; Joyce and Hendon 2000: 157; Kolb and Snead 1997: 613).

Other practices that may have helped unite the community require considerable use of ethnographic analogy to reconstruct. For example, the faunal and botanical remains found in the settlement attest to an agricultural and pastoral economy. To support this economy with limited resources, the small community needed to forge supportive relationships, reducing risks by sharing labor and equipment between the households in the care of flocks and fields. Villagers may have shared cattle for plowing (Watson 1979: 112, 293), tools for the production of olive oil (Meyers 2013: 116), and a rotating duty for herding sheep and goat (Watson 1979: 94, 231). In small and large ways the households carried out their everyday lives, cooperating to survive and build their community.

Ritual activities also provided opportunities to bring the community together. The evidence for domestic cult in the Iron Age southern Levant has been extensively discussed (Ackerman 2003, 2008; Albertz and Schmitt 2012; Daviau 2001; Nakhai 2011, 2014; Schmitt 2008, 2014; Zevit 2001). A ‘cultic corner’ in Building A, containing a standing stone and an ‘altar’ stone, a bench, lamps, and figurine, cult stand, and pyxis fragments, has been the focus of several of these studies (Figure 2, upper left of image; see Herr 2006

The regional context The traditional approach to studying the identity of regional groups in the southern Levant has been to 34

Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity

Figure 11. Map of comparative sites from the Early Iron Age southern Levant (© Monique Vincent).

for comparison, as well as a smaller selection of sites from the wider southern Levant that correlate best chronologically with ʿUmayri’s Stratum 12 (Figure 11). Areas of comparison were chosen based on their presence (or clear absence) at most of the sites: fortifications, house plans and construction materials, storage practices, and cooking features and their locations. The sites were divided into geographicallybased regional groupings and a summary of their comparisons is presented in Table 3, with references. Regionally, differences in the manner of fortifying the settlements and storing food present some of the greatest patterns for variation in the everyday archaeological record.

focus on the issue of ethnicity and the identification of textually-known peoples with material culture assemblages. In this approach four-room houses and collared pithoi have often served as markers of an ‘Israelite’ or ‘Proto-Israelite’ identity at settlements in the central highlands. Understanding ethnicity not as tied to a set of material artifacts but instead as an active and conscious expression of cultural differences, derived from practices, allows for studying another aspect of social identity (Jones 1997: 120). This moves the focus from a fixed set of artifacts to patterns in everyday practices (Lucy 2005: 101; Jones 1997: 128). Social identity is a complex creation of household and community practices; investigating these everyday shared social practices at the regional level provides a more flexible way of approaching identity in the Early Iron Age, when there is a general paucity of contemporary textual material. Contextualizing the practices of the Stratum 12 inhabitants at ʿUmayri within patterns in the wider region, it is possible to see the ways in which these particular villagers may have been creating their own local identity.

Fortification of a settlement, which would have required considerable community organization and effort, as discussed above, was one of the clearer areas for comparison given the visibility of large walls. Inhabitants on the Central Plateau in Jordan went to considerable effort to rebuild earlier Bronze Age fortifications at ʿUmayri, Madaba, and Safut. On the Northern Plateau, Fukhar and Irbid have reused earlier Bronze Age walls, at least as part of building their domestic structures, while Jarash was unfortified. In the Jordan Valley, only Dayr ʿAlla reused an earlier Bronze

Comparative sites were chosen based on the presence of domestic remains at the very beginning of the Iron I period. All such known sites in Jordan were included 35

No Place Like Home Table 3. Early Iron Age practices compared. NEI indicates not enough information was available. Site:

Perimeter Wall:

House Plans:

House Construction Materials:

Storage Types:

Storage Cooking Cooking Source: Locations: Installations: Locations:

Central Plateau: (Reused) Pillars, stone Collared Tall al-Umayri Four-room, Bronze Age walls, stone-paved pithoi, clay (Str. 12) irregular wall surfaces bins

In houses

Ovens, hearths In houses

In house

NEI

NEI

Foran and Klassen 2013

In house

NEI

NEI

Chesnut 2013; 2019

Tall Madaba (FP 10)

Reused EB wall

Four-room Stone walls

Tall Safut (Area B)

Reused MB wall

NEI

NEI

Tall arRusayfa

NEI

NEI

Mudbrick walls

Collared pithoi

NEI

NEI

NEI

Ghrayib 2009

Stone walls

Collared pithoi

In and around houses

Ovens

In and around houses?

Strange 1997, 2015; Ottoson 2015

Public building complex

NEI

NEI

Lenzen 1988, 1992, 1997; Lenzen and McQuitty 1989; Kafafi and Dalu 2008

NEI

Braemer 1987, 1992

Northern Plateau: Reused Tall Fukhar (B, Bronze Age Irregular Str. VIA) wall (?)

Collared pithoi

Collared pithoi, clay bins

Tall Irbid (C, P2)

Reused MB wall

NEI

NEI

Collared pithoi

Jarash

None

NEI

NEI

Collared pithoi, stone- NEI lined pits

Oven

Stone and Four-room, mudbrick walls, courtyard stone-paved surfaces

In and Stone-lined around pits, clay silos houses

In and Ovens, hearths around houses

Pits?

NEI

Ovens

In and around houses

Smith and Potts 1992; Bourke 1997

Jordan Valley: Tall Ziraa (Str. 5)

None

Vieweger 2011; Vieweger and Häser 2010, 2007; Vieweger et al. 2014

Pella (P 1B)

None

NEI

Tall asSaidiyya (AA Str. IX/XV)

Stone and mudbrick walls, stone-paved surfaces

NEI

NEI

Stone-paved surfaces?

Collared pithoi

NEI

NEI

NEI

Tubb et al. 1996

Tall Dayr Alla (G/H, A/D)

Wall

NEI

Stone and mudbrick walls

Jars, pits

NEI

Ovens

NEI

van der Kooij 2001; van der Steen 2008; Kafafi and van der Kooij 2013

In and around house

NEI

NEI

Mazar 1981

Oven

Courtyard Lapp 1969; Rast 1978

Central Highlands: Giloh

Wall

Pillars, stone Collared Four-room walls, stone-paved pithoi surfaces

Taanach (Period IA)

NEI

Irregular

Pillars, stone Collared Pits in walls, stone-paved pithoi, stonecourtyard surfaces lined pits

Age wall, while Ziraʿa and Pella were unfortified. Giloh to the west also had evidence of a settlement wall. This pattern indicates that inhabitants in settlements on the Central Plateau, and only some of those in other regions, felt the necessity of a perimeter wall. That not all sites on the Northern Plateau and in the Jordan Valley included fortifications may be attributed to a sense of security or to restrictions in the presence of the waning Egyptian empire. Alternative suggestions could be made based on

the unique geography of each site, the ease of access to earlier Bronze Age walls, or the size of the settlements and the number of inhabitants that could be gathered for such large projects, though such suggestions would need support from further excavation. At ‘Umayri, the houses were built into (Building B) and against their fortification wall (Buildings A–E), tying the construction of their fortification to the household level of organization, as well as that of the community. 36

Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity food preparation needs with their own installations. This practice contrasts with that of the later Iron Age, when shared facilities, including food storage facilities, were more common (see the discussions of Nasbeh in Brody 2011 and Stager 1985).

A closer study of the order of construction in other settlements and a wider exposure at ‘Umayri would clarify how involved individual households were in the process of building their settlements’ defenses. From the available evidence it is possible to suggest that the Central Plateau sites were well organized and harbored a strong enough concern, security-based or ideological, to warrant the construction of settlement walls. Comparing how inhabitants stored their commodities raises a contrast during this period between community cooperation on large, joint projects, and yet the private, or even hidden, storage of food at the household level in fortified settlements. Central Plateau inhabitants stored their grain in collared pithoi in the innermost rooms of their houses, as we saw with all four buildings at ‘Umayri. On the Northern Plateau collared pithoi were found but excavation records do not make it possible to discuss their contexts. In the Jordan Valley, a collared pithos was only clearly identified at Sa’idiyya, otherwise goods were stored in pits or silos both in and around the houses at Ziraʿa, and at Dayr ʿAlla and Pella. The different patterns of fortified/hidden storage and unfortified/open storage, while only tentative at this point, emphasize the security-consciousness and organization of the Central Plateau settlements like ʿUmayri.

The fully developed four-room house, Building B, at ʿUmayri is so far the only example, though Madaba and Giloh have similar plans. Linear and pillared structures, like the other houses at ʿUmayri, are evident at other sites. The pattern of wood pillar use at ʿUmayri, employed only for the larger houses, has not been identified elsewhere. The close cooperation evident in shared house walls in all of the settlements with enough exposed evidence may be the result of close-knit community or kin relations between the inhabitants when initially constructing their settlements. The differentiation between houses indicates they were not egalitarian communities, however, and instead, as with Buildings B and A, had architecturally-visible ways of setting themselves apart. The greater size, unique features, larger storage capacities, and distinct artifact categories of these two houses may indicate their prominent position in the local community or their specialized role in specific activities, such as rituals (the cultic corner) or trade (the weights).

Practices related to the production of food were similar across settlements. The individualization of cooking installations, both hearths/ovens and grinding stones, in the houses at ʿUmayri indicate that food preparation remained at the household level. The lack of a clear location for food production activities indicated that households had flexible ideas of where to cook. Ziraʿa is the only other settlement included in this study with several houses allowing for comparative evidence. There, too, cooking installations were found arranged with no fixed spatial location in or around each house. Household-based production of food is found at all of the settlements with sufficient excavated data, with no evidence for sharing or communal installations during this period.1 That each house at ʿUmayri and Ziraʿa had its own cooking installations may indicate that shared facilities were not a common practice in the Early Iron Age, but that households primarily took care of their

This discussion builds a picture of the variety of local expressions of the inhabitants in this time period, defining practices that were shared especially among the closest geographical neighbors. Comparing the settlement at ʿUmayri with other settlements reveals an independent Stratum 12 community that was well organized and cooperative. The inhabitants had welldefined architectural boundaries between households, which formed self-sustaining units for producing everyday necessities like food and clothing, as well as other items, such as seals. From a study of the practices around an object or space, both the social and functional meanings can be extracted. By using the archaeological evidence and interpreting it with the assistance of ethnographic examples, it is possible to identify the ways that mundane, everyday practices contributed to the emerging identity of this one small village as it moved into the Iron Age.

These observations are based on personal communication with Katja Soennecken in 2012, who shared with me the plans of Ziraʿa’s Stratum 13, Iron I, that are currently in preparation for final publication, though the data can be reviewed in her dissertation published online at http://elpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/servlets/ DerivateServlet/Derivate-7242/da1703.pdf

1 

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No Place Like Home Chesnut, O. 2013. There is no Middle Bronze glacis at Tall Safut: An examination of the Middle Bronze III. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 57: 535–550. Chesnut, O. 2019. A Reassessment of the Excavations at Tall Safut. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Andrews University. Chesson, M. 2003. Households, houses, neighborhoods and corporate villages: Modeling the Early Bronze Age as a house society. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16: 79–102. Christakis, K. 1999. Pithoi and food storage in Neopalatial Crete: A domestic perspective. World Archaeology 31: 1–20. Clark, D. 2001. Laboring to build a house: The human investment in Iron Age construction in the Madaba Plains. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 7: 285–294. Clark, D.R. 2014. Field B: The western defense system and northwestern domestic area, in L.G. Herr, D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) Madaba Plains Project 6: The 1996 and 1998 Seasons at Tall al-’Umayri and Subsequent Studies: 77–185. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Daviau, P.M.M. 1993. Houses and Their Furnishings in Bronze Age Palestine: Domestic Activity Areas and Artefact Distribution in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Daviau, P.M.M. 2001. Family religion: evidence for the paraphernalia of the domestic cult, in P.M.M. Daviau, J.W. Wevers, and M. Weigl (eds) The World of the Aramaeans II: Studies in History and Archaeology in Honour of Paul-Eugene Dion (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 325): 199–239. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Dobres, M.-A. and J.E. Robb 2000. Agency in archaeology: Paradigm or platitude? in M.-A. Dobres and J.E. Robb (eds) Agency in Archaeology: 3–17. London: Routledge. Faust, A. 2000. The rural community in ancient Israel during Iron Age II. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 317: 17–39. Fischer, P.M. 2013. Tell Abu al-Kharaz in the Jordan Valley, Volume 3: The Iron Age. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademi der Wissenschaften. Foran, D. and S. Klassen 2013. Madaba before Mesha: The earliest settlements on the city’s west acropolis. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 11: 211– 219. Gadot, Y. 2011. Houses and households in settlements along the Yarok River, Israel, during the Iron Age I: Society, economy, and identity, in A. YasurLandau, J.R. Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow (eds) Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 50): 155–181. Leiden: Brill. Geraty, L.T., L.G. Herr, Ø.S. LaBianca, and R.W. Younker (eds) 1989. Madaba Plains Project 1: The 1984 Season

References Cited Albertz, R. and R. Schmitt 2012. Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Ackeramn, S. 2003. At home with the goddess, in W.G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds) Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina. Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research Jerusalem, May 29–31, 2000: 455–468. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Ackeramn, S. 2008. Household religion, family religion, and women’s religion in ancient Israel, in J.B.S. Olyan (ed.) Household and Family Religion in Antiquity: 127–158. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Allison, P.M. 1999. Introduction, in P.M. Allison (ed.) The Archaeology of Household Activities: 1–18. London: Routledge. Baadsgaard, A. 2008. A taste of women’s sociality: Cooking as a cooperative labor in Iron Age SyroPalestine, in B.A. Nakhai (ed.) The World of Women in the Ancient and Classical Near East: 13–44. Newcastle upon Tyne (UK): Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bloch-Smith, E. and B.A. Nakhai 1999. A landscape comes to life: The Iron Age I. Near Eastern Archaeology 62: 101–127. Bourke, S.J. 1997. Pre-classical Pella in Jordan: A conspectus of ten years’ work. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 129: 94–115. Braemer, F. 1987. Two campaigns of excavations on the ancient tell of Jarash. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 31: 525–529. Braemer, F. 1992. Occupation du sol dans la région de Jérash aux périodes du Bronze Récent et du Fer. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 4: 191–198. Bramlett, K. 2008. Eastern Front: The Transjordan Highlands in Late Bronze Age Hegemonic Contest. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto. Brody, A.J. 2011. The archaeology of the extended family: A household compound from Iron II Tell enNasbeh, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R. Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow (eds) Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 50): 237–254. Leiden: Brill. Brody, A.J. 2015. Living in households, constructing identities: Ethnicity, boundaries, and empire in Iron II Tell en-Nasbeh, in M. Müller (ed.) Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches (Oriental Institute Seminars 10): 289–305. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Buchanan, B. and P.R.S. Moorey (eds) 1988. Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, Volume 3: The Iron Age Stamp Seals (c. 1200–350 BC). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 38

Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity at Tell el-ʿUmeiri and Vicinity and Subsequent Studies. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Ghrayib, R. 2009. Results of recent excavations at Khirbat ar-Rusayfah. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 10: 563–576. Gillespie, S.D. 2000. Maya ‘nested houses’: The ritual construction of place, in R.A. Joyce and S.D. Gillespie (eds) Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies: 135–160. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hardin, J.W. 2010. Households and the Use of Domestic Space at Iron II Tell Halif: An Archaeology of Destruction. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Hendon, J.A. 2000. Having and holding: Storage, memory, knowledge, and social relations. American Anthropologist 102: 42–53. Herr, L.G. 1998. Tall al-ʿUmayri and the Madaba Plains region during the Late Bronze-Iron Age I transition, in S. Gitin, A. Mazar, and E. Stern (eds) Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE: 251–264. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Herr, L.G. 2000. The settlement and fortification of Tell al-ʿUmayri in Jordan during the LB/Iron I transition, in L. Stager, J. Greene, and M. Coogan (eds) The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of James A. Sauer: 167–179. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L.G. 2001. The History of the Collared Pithos at Tell el-ʿUmeiri, Jordan, in S. R. Wolff (ed.) Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighboring Lands in Memory of Douglas L. Esse (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations 59): 237–250. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Herr, L.G. 2006. An Early Iron Age I house with a cultic corner at Tall al-ʿUmayri, Jordan, in S. Gitin, J. Wright, and J. Dessel (eds) Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever: 61–74. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L.G. 2009. The house of the father at Iron I Tall alʿUmayri, Jordan, in Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager: 191–198. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L. G., D.R. Clark, and K. Bramlett 2009. From the Stone Age to the Middle Ages in Jordan: Digging up Tall al-ʿUmayri. Near Eastern Archaeology 72: 68–97. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, Ø.S. LaBianca, and R.W. Younker (eds) 2002. Madaba Plains Project 5: The 1994 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) 2000. Madaba Plains Project 4: The 1992 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) 2014. Madaba Plains Project 6: The 1996 and 1998 Seasons at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent

Studies. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, and M.D. Vincent (eds) 2017. Madaba Plains Project 7: The 2000 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies. Riverside (CA): La Sierra University/Center for Near Eastern Archaeology and Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) 2019. Madaba Plains Project 8: The 2002 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies. Riverside (CA): La Sierra University/Center for Near Eastern Archaeology and Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) 2020. Madaba Plains Project 9: The 2004 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies. Riverside (CA): La Sierra University/Center for Near Eastern Archaeology and Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L.G., D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) 2021. Madaba Plains Project 10: The 2006 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies. Riverside (CA): La Sierra University/Center for Near Eastern Archaeology and Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Herr, L.G., L.T. Geraty, Ø.S. LaBianca, and R.W. Younker (eds) 1991. Madaba Plains Project 2: The 1987 Season at Tell el-ʿUmeiri and Vicinity and Subsequent Studies. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Herr, L.G., L.T. Geraty, Ø.S. LaBianca, and R.W. Younker (eds) 1997. Madaba Plains Project 3: The 1989 Season at Tell el-ʿUmeiri and Vicinity and Subsequent Studies. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Ilan, O. 2011. Household gleanings from Iron I Tel Dan, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R. Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow (eds) Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 50): 133–154. Leiden: Brill. Jones, S. 1997. The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present. New York: Routledge. Joyce, R.A. and J.A. Hendon 2000. Heterarchy, history, and material reality: ‘communities’ in Late Classic Honduras, in M.A. Canuto and J. Yaeger (eds) The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective: 143–160. London: Routledge. Kafafi, Z. and R. A. Dalu 2008. Tell Irbid during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Ugarit-Forschungen 40: 453– 470. Kafafi, Z.A. and G. van der Kooij 2013. Tell Der ’Alla during the transition from the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 129: 121–131. Keel, O. 1994. Philistine ‘anchor’ seals. Israel Exploration Journal 44: 21–35. Kemp, B. 1986. Large Middle Kingdom granary buildings (and the archaeology of administration). Zeitschrift für Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 113: 120–136. 39

No Place Like Home Kolb, J.M. and J.E. Snead 1997. It’s a small world after all: Comparative analyses of community organization in archaeology. American Antiquity 62: 609–628. Kramer, C. 1982. Village Ethnoarchaeology: Rural Iran in Archaeological Perspective. New York: Academic Press. LaMotta, V.M. and M.B. Schiffer 1999. Formation processes of house floor assemblages, in P. M. Allison (ed.) The Archaeology of Household Activities: 19–29. London: Routledge. Lapp, P.W. 1969. The 1968 excavations at Tell Ta’anek. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 195: 2–49. Lawrence, D. and S. Low 1990. The built environment and spatial form. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 453–505. Lenzen, C.J. 1988. Tell Irbid and its context: A problem in archaeological interpretation. Biblische Notizen 42: 27–35. Lenzen, C.J. 1992. Irbid, tell, in D.N. Freedman (ed.) The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume 3: H–J: 456–457. New York: Doubleday. Lenzen, C.J. 1997. Irbid, in E.M. Meyers (ed.) The Oxford Encylopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Volume 3: 181. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenzen, C.J. and A. McQuitty 1989. Irbid (tell), in D. Homes-Fredericq and J.B. Hennessy (eds) Archaeology of Jordan, Volume 2:1 Field Reports, Surveys and Sites A–K: 298–300. Leuven: Peeters. London, G. 2009. Feasting at Tall al-‘Umayri in the late second millennium BC. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 10: 889–916. London, G. 2011. Late 2nd millennium BC feasting at an ancient ceremonial centre in Jordan. Levant 43: 15–37. Lucy, S. 2005. Ethnic and cultural identities, in M. DíazAndreu, S. Lucy, S. Babic, and D.N. Edwards (eds) The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion: 86–109. London: Routledge. Lutfiyya, A.M. 1966. Baytin, A Jordanian Village: A Study of Social Institution and Social Change in a Folk Community. London: Mouton & Co. Mazar, A. 1981. Giloh: An early Israelite settlement site near Jerusalem. Israel Exploration Journal 31: 1–36. McGuire, R.H. and M.B. Schiffer 1983. A theory of architectural design. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2: 227–303. Meyers, C. 2013. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moeller, N. 2004. Evidence for urban walling in the third millennium BC. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14: 261–265. Moeller, N. 2015. Multifunctionality and hybrid households: The case of ancient Egypt, in M. Müller (ed.) Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches (Oriental

Institute Seminars 10): 447–462. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Nakhai, B.A. 2011. Varieties of religious expression in the domestic setting, in A. Yasur- Landau, J. R. Ebeling, and L. B. Mazow (eds) Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 50): 347–360. Leiden: Brill. Nakhai, B.A. 2014. The household as sacred space, in R. Albertz (ed.) Family and Household Religion: Toward a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies: 53–71. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Naroll, R. 1962. Floor area and settlement population. American Antiquity 27: 587–589. Ortner, S.B. 1984. Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26: 126–166. Ottosson, M. 2015. 1990–93 - Area B, in J. Strange (ed.) Tall al-Fukhar: Result of Excavations in 1990–93 and 2002, Volume 1: Text of Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus: 15–27. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Peters, J., N. Pöllath, and A. von den Driesch 2002. Early and Late Bronze Age transitional subsistence at Tall al-ʿUmayri, in L.G. Herr, D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty, R.W. Younker, and Ø.S. LaBianca (eds) Madaba Plains Project 5: The 1994 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies: 305–357. Berrien Springs (MI): Andrews University Press. Philip, G. 2003. The Early Bronze Age of the Southern Levant: A landscape approach. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16: 103–132. Porter, B.W. 2013. Complex Communities: The Archaeology of Early Iron Age West-Central Jordan. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Rast, W. E. 1978. Taanach I: Studies in the Iron Age Pottery. Cambridge, Massachusetts: American Schools of Oriental Research. Reich, R. 1992. Building materials and architectural elements in ancient Israel, in A. Kempinksi and R. Reich (eds) The Architecture of Ancient Israel: From the Prehistoric to the Persian Periods. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Rosen, S.A. 1997. Lithics after the Stone Age: A Handbook of Stone Tools from the Levant. Walnut Creek (CA): AltaMira Press. Routledge, B. 2009. Average families? house size variability in the Southern Levantine Iron Age, in P. Dutcher-Walls (ed.) The Family in Life and Death: The Family in Ancient Israel: Sociological and Archaeological Perspectives (Library of Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies 504): 42–60. New York: T&T Clark International. Routledge, B. 2015. A fishy business: The inland trade in Nile perch (lates niloticus) in the Early Iron Age Levant, in T.P. Harrison, E.B. Banning, and S. Klassen (eds) Walls of the Prince: Egyptian Interactions with

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Monique D. Vincent: Chapter 3. Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity Southwest Asia in Antiquity: Essays in Honour of John S. Holladay, Jr.: 212–233. Leiden: Brill. Schiffer, M.B. 1987. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press. Schloen, J. D. 2001. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Schwartz, G.M. and S.E. Falconer 1994. Rural approaches to social complexity, in G.M. Schwartz and S.E. Falconer (eds) Archaeological Views from the Countryside: Village Communities in Early Complex Societies: 1–9. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press. Smith, R.H. and T. Potts 1992. The Iron Age, in A.W. McNicoll, P.C. Edwards, J. Hanbury-Tenison, J.B. Hennessy, T.F. Potts, R.H. Smith, A. Walmsley and P. Watson (eds) Pella in Jordan 2: The Second Interim Report of the Joint University of Sydney and College of Wooster Excavations at Pella 1982–1985: 83–102. Sydney: MEDITARCH. Spence, K. 2015. Ancient Egyptian houses and households: Architecture, artifacts, conceptualization, and interpretation, in M. Müller (ed.) Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches (Oriental Institute Seminars 10): 83–99. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Stager, L.E. 1985. The archaeology of the family in ancient Israel. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260: 1–35. Strange, J. 1997. Tall al-Fukhar 1990–1991: A preliminary report. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 6: 399–406. Strange, J. 2015. Tall al-Fukhar: Result from Excavations in 1990–93 and 2002, Volume 1: Text of Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Schmitt, R. 2008. Ashdod and the material remains of domestic cults in the Philistine coastal plain, in J. Bodel and S. M. Olyan (eds) Household and Family Religion in Antiquity: 159–170. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Schmitt, R. 2014. A typology of Iron Age cult practices, in A. Rainer, B.A. Nakhai, S.M. Olyan, and R. Schmitt (eds) Family and Household Religion: Toward a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies: 265–286. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Tubb, J.N., P.G. Dorrell, and F.J. Cobbing 1996. Interim report on the eighth (1995) season of excavations at Tell es-Sa’idiyeh. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 128: 16–40. van der Kooij, G. 2001. The vicissitudes of life at Dayr Alla during the first millennium BC, seen in a wider

context. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 7: 295– 303. van der Steen, E.J. 2008. Tell Deir ’Alla: The newcomers, in Sacred and Sweet: Studies on the Material Culture of Tell Deir ‘Alla and Tell Abu Sarbut: 69–91. Leuven: Peeters. Vieweger, D. 2011. The transition from the Bronze and Iron Age in Northern Palestine. Archaeological and archaeometric investigations on Tall Zira’a. Ägypten und Levante/Egypt and the Levant 21: 305–317. Vieweger, D. and J. Häser 2007. Tall Zira’a: Five thousand years of Palestinian history on a single-settlement mound. Near Eastern Archaeology 70: 147–167. Vieweger, D. and J. Häser 2010. Das “Gadara Region Project” der Tell Zera’a in den jahren 2007 bis 2009. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 126: 1–28. Vieweger, D., K. Soennecken, and J. Häser 2014. “Verlieren hat seine zeit, wegwerfen hat seine zeit” wandel und kontinuität im ostjordanland am übergang von der bronze- zur eisenzeit, in J. Katjatko-Reeb, S. Schorch, J. Thon, and B. Ziemer (eds) Nichts Neues unter der Sonne? Zeitvorstellungen im Alten Testament: Festschrift für Ernst-Joachim Waschke zum 65. Geburtstag (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 450): 329– 350. Berlin: De Gruyter. Vincent, M.D. and K. Nick 2019. A Note on the Material Described as “Tuff ” in the ʿUmayri Records, in L.G. Herr, D.R. Clark, L.T. Geraty and M.D. Vincent (eds) Madaba Plains Project 8: The 2002 Season at Tall al-ʿUmayri and Subsequent Studies: 309. Riverside (CA): La Sierra University/Center for Near Eastern Archaeology and Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Watson, P.J. 1979. Archaeological Ethnography in Western Iran. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 57. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press. Webster, D., N. Gonlin, and P. Sheets 1997. Copan and Cerén: Two perspectives on ancient Mesoamerican households. Ancient Mesoamerica 8: 43–61. Wilk, R.R. and W.L. Rathje 1982. Household archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist 25: 617–639. Wilson, C. 1906. Peasant life in the Holy Land. London: J. Murray. Yaeger, J. 2000. The social construction of communities in the Classic Maya countryside: Strategies of affiliation in Western Belize, in M.A. Canuto and J. Yaeger (eds) The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective: 123–142. London: Routledge. Yaeger, J. and M.A. Canuto 2000. Introducing an archaeology of communities, in M.A. Canuto and J. Yaeger (eds) The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective: 1–15. London: Routledge. Zevit, Z. 2001. The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum.

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Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu: Evidence from the Outer Town at Ayanis Paul Zimansky The unglamourous and generally neglected study of houses and households has much to contribute to our understanding of how the imperium of Urartu (Figure 1) was organized and functioned. With most of the other evidence coming to us from archaeological research or cuneiform records focused on the kingdom’s military establishments, command structure, and elites residing in fortresses, there has been a tendency to see this society as tightly organized from the top down. This is not without some justification. Many aspects of material culture such as pottery styles, sculpture, and public architecture came into existence with the state, and disappeared with it. The architecture of houses and households, however, does not seem to show the same kind of uniformity as other aspects of the Urartian state assemblage, and offers the basis for a closer look at the lower strata of society and their relationship to central control. In this regard, residential buildings hold one of the more essential keys to the kingdom. This chapter concerns itself specifically with residential buildings at the site of Ayanis in the waning days of Urartu’s existence. It begins with a brief overview of Urartian settlement as a whole, and the reasons for suspecting that there should be some degree of central planning for residences. Next it examines four quite different residential structures in the Ayanis outer town, a location where, if anywhere, the dictates of the regime would be expected to have considerable force. We briefly compare these data with what is known of Urartian housing from other sites, before concluding that the basic characteristic in domestic architecture was variety, in which some places conformed to a common plan but most did not, and no single paradigm for the Urartian household prevails.

by which this was done emerges into the full light of history in the early 8th century when royal annals of Urartian kings list tens of thousands of captured men and women who were brought into the realm along with their livestock. Archaeological remains make clear that the state marshaled substantial numbers of these and other groups to create massively fortified strongholds, specialized edifices, and irrigation systems. Control of human resources was indisputably a key ingredient in the creation and maintenance of this empire. In the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, it has often been assumed that settlements and indeed houses were, like so much else in the kingdom, put in place by directives of the state. In earlier days of research on Urartu, the unique site of Zernaki Tepe, on high ground overlooking Erciş and Lake Van, seemed to offer some confirmation of this with its rigid grid of streets and repeating blocks of houses. The Urartian dating of that site, however, has now been effectively refuted (Sevin 1997) and grid plans have not been found elsewhere in Urartu. The idea that settlements might have been initiated in a less regimented way under royal sponsorship is not without support, however. For example, when King Argišti I founded Erebuni, (modern Arin-berd, in Erevan) he claimed to have settled 6600 warriors from the lands of Hatti and Ṣupani there (Salvini 2008: A 08-1 r 15–22).1 This does indeed sound like something that would involve planning, but the claim is unique in royal inscriptions, and was perhaps mentioned precisely because it was not typical. Urartu was clearly not an urban civilization of the kind that we see in Mesopotamia, Syria, or western Anatolia. Its most prominent sites were fortresses, most of which do not appear to have been associated with substantial

A kingdom created by command? The case for imposed norms in Urartian housing rests on circumstantial evidence. Urartian kings began appearing in Assyrian records decades before any datable archaeological evidence that we can associate with an Urartian kingdom. This is in no way surprising, as eastern Anatolia was at the time, and to a certain extent has historically remained, a thinly populated cultural backwater. In order to build the infrastructure of the state, people had to be imported. The process No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 42–57

Citations of Urartian texts are given according to text number and, if appropriate, lines, in the definitive publication of Urartian texts (Salvini 2008). These texts have now largely been made available electronically with English translations through the Corpus of Urartian Texts (eCUT) Project, a sub-project of the Munich Openaccess Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI). That site specifies the citation for this particular text as http://oracc.org/ecut/Q007002/. One can easily navigate eCUT with the Salvini references since they follow the same system of enumeration, with the first number referring to the chronological position of the king (in this case Argišti I), the number of the text following the hyphen (here his first text), and position of the lines in the text (here reverse lines 15–22).

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Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 1. Satellite view of the heartland of Urartu. Sites at which houses have been excavated are marked with squares; other sites identified by triangles. Ancient names are in italics (background Google Earth, ancient names by Paul Zimansky).

numbers of houses or residential buildings (Grekyan 2017).

an ethnographic witness and there is some uncertainty about precisely what part of the kingdom it describes, but it does at least establish some parameters that can hardly be pure invention. The basic pattern that it shows is a kingdom divided into named provincial units, in each of which one or more major fortified centers were identified by name. Surrounding the latter were scores of unidentified and unprotected ‘settlements in the vicinity.’ There is no suggestion that this network

A glimpse of how settlements were distributed across the landscape at the end of the 8th century is provided by the celebrated Letter to the God Assur narrating Sargon’s eighth campaign, which traversed a part of Urartu (Foster 2005: 800–806). This poetic composition obviously does not have much standing as 43

No Place Like Home was in any way uniform or of royal creation, although individual royal building projects are mentioned, specifically at the site of Ulhu. The pattern of major sites with large numbers of satellite settlements has not been recognized archaeologically anywhere in Urartu, and the usual assumption is that the latter were very small, perhaps consisting of temporary structures or individual farmsteads (Zimansky and Stone 2009). In short, the expectation from this text is that settlement in Urartu was dispersed and inconsistently patterned.

foundation. A version of what might be termed Rusa’s ‘standard’ inscription on the facade of the temple records that he captured enemy people from the lands around Urartu, including Hatti, Tabal, Mushki, Etiuni, and Assur (Salvini 2008: A 12–1 vi 10–11). The passage following this list is among the many in this text that are not entirely understood, but it appears these captives were settled at Ayanis. In any event, the slopes outside the citadel walls came to be dotted with buildings, many of which were clearly residential. The period during which Ayanis flourished was apparently quite short since by 640 BC centralized power had disappeared in Urartu. The precise date at which the citadel was destroyed by fire is not known, but no king other than Rusa, son of Argišti, is attested at the site. The outlying buildings had no reason to exist once the citadel had been destroyed, and they appear to have been largely cleaned out when they were abandoned. There is scant evidence of post-Urartian occupation in this area before the medieval period: a brief squatter occupation of some of the buildings outside the fortress, a few painted sherds of the Median era, and jar burials on the Pınarbaşı terrace north of citadel, in one of which a Roman coin dating to Augustus was placed. In short, the Urartian settlement outside the citadel walls was only occupied late in the Urartian period, for around thirty years at most. It came and went with the fortunes of a royal center. Certainly, if there was evidence for any royal planning in settlement, it would probably survive in the archaeological record here.

Opportunities to look deeper into issues of design, pattern, and control in individual houses are surprisingly limited: almost all of the excavated houses in Urartu date to the final phase of the kingdom’s history and are associated with sites built by a single ruler who clearly had an agenda. Rusa, son of Argišti, appears to have been the last Urartian king to initiate any significant construction projects,2 and the centers that he founded–Karmir Blur, Bastam, Ayanis, and Kef Kalesi Adilcevaz–were the largest and most complex Urartian sites ever created, apart from the capital at Van. The sites all lay in territory that had long been controlled by the monarch, so one cannot argue that Rusa was adding new centers as his territory expanded. He was clearly reorganizing the kingdom in fundamental ways. Each of these had a settlement area outside its citadel. Thus, if one wants to study Urartian houses, these late, royally founded centers are almost the only places to find them.3 And if one is specifically searching for houses at a site where royal activity is indisputable and pronounced, there is no better place to look than Ayanis.

While substantial buildings can be identified both north and south of the citadel walls, the only place where houses have been found is on the terraces of a rising slope to the east, designated Güney Tepe (Figures 2 and 3). The residential character of this was first made clear by a magnetic field gradient survey begun in 1997 and limited excavations were undertaken almost every summer between then and 2009. In all, we opened eleven separate soundings to explore different parts of the outer town, nine of which were on Güney Tepe. Not all of the buildings in this part of the outer town proved to be residences, but most of them were.

Ayanis and the archaeology of the outer town The timbers for the buildings around the temple on the citadel at Ayanis, ancient Rusahinili Eidurukai, were cut around 773 BC (Newton and Kuniholm 2007: 195) and inscriptions at the site make clear that this was a new This is not undisputed. Rusa, son of Argišti, long regarded as Rusa II, appeared to fit neatly into the chain of 8th and 7th century Urartian rulers each linked to his predecessors by patronymics: Sarduri I, Išpuini, Minua, Argišti I, Sarduri II, Rusa I, Argišti II, and Rusa II. Another Rusa, this one the son of Erimena, does not fit into this chain because Erimena does not appear to have ruled. He was therefore put at the end of the sequence, around the middle of 7th century. This conventional view was upset by epigraphic discoveries of Mirjo Salvini, which established that Rusa son of Erimena was the author of the long known Keşiş Göl inscription in which he claims to have founded Rusahinili (Toprakkale) (Salvini 2008: A14-1 42–43). Since Rusa, son of Argišti, was also active at Toprakkale, most scholars have concluded that Rusa, son of Erimena, ruled before him. Salvini himself, however, has argued against this, positing a second founding of the site. For his views, see Salvini 2007 and for an intersting consideration of the consequences of redating of Rusa son of Erimena, see Roaf 2012. The controversy is of minor relevance to the current the discussion of Urartian houses, although seeing Rusa son of Argišti as the last king who did any building restricts the amount of time that the Ayanis settlement could have survived as a viable community. 3  The exceptional case of Argištihinili, which was not one of Rusa’s new creations, will be discussed below. 2 

A few general comments on the archaeology of Güney Tepe are in order before we turn to the discussion of the four houses we have selected to treat in detail. At the beginning of the work, there were few indications that there was once a settlement here. No architectural traces were visible, apart from a few concentrations of stone rubble that supported terraces. The latter were not well defined, but in places marked off modern fields on which thin crops of wheat are cultivated every other year. These are not irrigated, although at the time we were excavating, a pumping station on Güney Tepe supplied water to the village of Aǧartı. Most of the terrain was left uncultivated and the upper parts of the slope were denuded of topsoil altogether (Figure 3). 44

Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 2. Güney Tepe seen from the Ayanis citadel, facing eastward. Locations of Buildings 1, 3, 15 and 14 are marked. Building 6 had been backfilled at the time this image was taken (© Paul Zimansky).

Figure 3. Ayanis citadel from the summit of Güney Tepe, facing west (© Paul Zimansky).

45

No Place Like Home Potsherds were very thin on the ground, and altogether absent in some of the areas where we later discovered architecture.

House forms and households on Güney Tepe We will discuss four specific houses here, chosen in part because they illustrate the variety of forms a residence might take, and because they were almost completely excavated. In the outer town project, buildings were numbered in the order that they were discovered, but in this discussion of Güney Tepe houses will be introduced by the order of their proximity to the citadel. Distance from the center might be presumed to be significant to the controlling hand of the state, but as we shall see, there is no simple correlation.

The lower parts of the walls of the buildings here were composed of stones, generally rough and without mortar or visible plastering. When fully preserved, these stone foundations were usually under a meter in height, but they were often truncated by the modern field surface. The upper parts of the building would presumably have been made of mudbrick, as is the custom today, but in no case does this survive. Some of the stone foundations were constructed in a manner that is familiar in public buildings on the citadel and at other Urartian sites. The faces of the walls are relatively even, as the flatter surfaces of the stones are placed outward. The interior of the wall is composed of smaller stones, closely packed together. Other foundation walls show no such regularity. In any case, the lower wall stones seem to have been responsible for preventing most of the soil on the slope from eroding completely. The modern terrace walls appear to have been established by dilapidated structures of the Urartians.

Building 6 This structure was identified in the magnetometry as part of a line of relatively uniform shapes, following a terrace a little more than 200 m from the base of the citadel (Figure 4). The rather linear arrangement was reflected in a similar series of rooms on the same contour line–a repeating plan. This suggested to us that it might be a barracks of some sort, although excavation eventually cast doubt on this thesis. Indeed, even the linear alignment may be an illusion created by the erosion of the terrace.

The houses had level floors, although rooms within buildings might be stepped to accommodate the slope. The underlying rock on Güney Tepe is very soft and easy to carve–sometimes as we excavated it was not entirely clear where the Urartian construction ended and the bedrock began. In preparing the sloping ground for a building here it was customary for the Urartians to carve away a level area on the uphill side, and heap up soil on the lower side to create a platform. Small finds, including bone and pottery, were sparse within the buildings, which gave us the impression that the inhabitants cleaned their houses, taking everything of value with them when they left. Outside the buildings, however, sherds and bones were much more abundant. In our initial explorations, when we were trying to establish the general character of buildings in different parts of the outer town by digging small squares, we used the magnetometry to site our excavation trenches in such a way that they included both interior and exterior space. Later we shifted our strategy and tried to expose whole buildings, with less reliance on the idea that the material from outside reflected the living habits of the people on the inside. The soils here appear to have had a high pH value (i.e., basicity) and thus preserved bones well at the expense of plants. Despite our efforts with flotation, we were never able to recover any seeds. Aside from what we can glean from such artifacts as grinding stones and pots suggestive of cheese-making, the evaluation of dietary habits in various areas is heavily dependent on studying the consumption of meat (Stone 2012: 97).

Figure 4. Magnetometry of the area of Building 6. The area excavated is enclosed by a dotted line. Note the similar building plan immediately to the northeast. For scale and orientation see Figure 5 (© Paul Zimansky).

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Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 5. Plan of Building 6 (© Paul Zimansky).

The structure was constructed on ground that had been leveled, with the northeastern wall cut into a step on bedrock, and the southwestern side supported by an earthen platform. Much of the latter had fallen away, so that the southwestern side of the building is not defined (Figure 5). We suspect that most of a row of rooms is lost and that the dimensions of the ground plan were 23 m by roughly 15 m. The floors of Building 6 lay at an elevation of approximately 1852 m above sea level, about 20 m above the modern base of the citadel on the side facing it, and about 15 m below the level of the citadel’s current summit.

this building appear to have been constructed with skill and solidity according to a plan, probably created by experienced architects. This is also true for most of the interior walls, although one sees less professional wall construction dividing a room in the southern part of the building. Benches of a less uniform construction were presumably added later, as were a few wall fragments outside the southeast corner of the building (Figure 6). A striking feature of this building is that two rooms, almost identical in size, had floors covered with pebbles. Areas paved with flagstones are common in Urartian buildings and presumed to be animal stables on the basis of ethnographic evidence, but these small pebble pavements are something quite different. We do not know what their significance was, but their arrangement here contributes to the suggestion of repeating units.

The outer walls had buttresses at the corners and at regular intervals of about 6 m. In Urartu, buttresses of this kind are normally associated with public buildings, although a few private houses here and at Argishtihinili also have them. The perimeter walls of 47

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Figure 6. Southeast corner of Building 6, with secondary walls added to primary plan. See Figure 5 for scale and orientation (© Paul Zimansky).

Although the building itself had apparently been cleaned out when it ceased to be occupied, and living debris from the interior was sparse, pottery and bones were plentiful in the areas we excavated outside its walls. It is on this basis that we assume this was a residential structure of some sort, although it is not a type of house seen in excavations at other Urartian sites. There were no storage vessels in it, nor traces of hearths or other cooking facilities. If these deficiencies are real, rather than due to imperfect preservation of the southwestern side of the building, we must posit a rather peculiar group of residents for Building 6. Proximity to the citadel, and the orientation toward it, offer the possibility that the people who lived here were dependent upon on the central institutions. In short, this may be a place where individuals, not families, slept and had their other needs taken care of by the citadel authorities.

stone. The footprint of the building is a rectangle of 20.5 × 16.5 m, thus covering an area of 338 m2. It appears to have been planned as a single, free-standing structure, and the construction in the preserved sections is of the highest quality, comparable to what is seen in public buildings and on the citadel. Most of the walls were grounded on bedrock, which does not appear to have been leveled before construction. The floors were level and made of packed earth, but each room had its own level, with steps at the doorways to connecting rooms. Most of the circulation pattern can be made out, as several doorways and thresholds are preserved. The house itself is comparable in size and layout to some of the more elegant houses at Argishtihinili, and we may take it as paradigmatic of the Urartian free-standing house (Zimansky 2018). The domestic character of this building is not in doubt, but it is clearly designed for a different kind of residential group than Building 6. A single entrance in the center of the facade on the northwest side controlled access to the entire building. Very few artifacts were found. There was no evidence of destruction, so inferring the use of most rooms is impossible. Two tandirs, both near doorways, and several grinding stones, speak for the preparation of food in the building. The large room in the eastern corner was partially paved with flagstones, and a trough made of stones bordered this paved area.

Building 1 Building 1 lies on the terrace immediately above the one on which Building 6 was found. It was built on slightly sloping terrain, with the floor elevations at the highest point at 1865 m above sea level, or about 15 m above the floors of Building 6. The plan (Figure 7) was quite clear, although some of the walls in the southern part, the downhill side, had eroded to a single course of 48

Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 7. Plan of Operation 1, which included, from north to south, Buildings 1, 3 and 15 (© Paul Zimansky).

Modern houses in Aǧartı use such arrangements for quartering livestock, and in this case the large size of the space suggests the animals were bovids. In short, the unified plan, single entrance, and single area for livestock strongly suggest that Building 1 was occupied by a single household, although the size and quality of the structure indicates it may have been a large one.

The alley on the southeast side of the building was full of bones and pottery. Since some of the walls of Building 3 on the opposite side of the alleyway were built on top of this debris we assume it was associated primarily with Building 1. Here we found two artifacts which would argue for the elite character of the residence: a finely worked stamp seal and a bulla with a partially 49

No Place Like Home preserved proper name (Çilingiroǧlu and Salvini 2001: 292), the only object inscribed with cuneiform that we found in the outer town. These suggest, at a minimum, the proximity of elites. Building 3 A more striking contrast to Building 1 than the chaotic structure next to it is hard to imagine (Figures 7 and 8). Whereas the former was regularly constructed with good workmanship and seems to have been home to a single household, Building 3 apparently grew through agglomeration over time, with various units being added and modified. The wall construction technique was generally slapdash, and quite varied. We were able to define 22 separate rooms here, but some of these were probably created by dividing and modifying spaces that were originally laid out differently. Most of the walls are poorly preserved and some have collapsed entirely into piles of small stones without clear edges. The foundations of the buildings on either side of Building 3 are generally well preserved, so lack of care in the original construction in this building, rather than post-Urartian degradation, is clearly responsible for their dilapidated state. When we first began excavating this building, we discovered that the walls on its northwestern side were built on top of rubble in the alleyway that separated it from Building 1, which was based on bedrock in this area. We also had the corner of the very wellconstructed Building 15, southeast of Building 3, also based on bedrock. This suggested to us that settlement in this area was planned to the extent that architects first laid out Buildings 1 and 15, with their walls having roughly the same orientation. Subsequently Building 3 grew up in the space between them, the product of a much less disciplined and probably episodic creation. We reached these conclusions before we had excavated much of Building 3 and had exposed only a few meters of the western corner of Building 15. Now that more of the structures have been investigated, the picture is a little less clear. Much of Building 3 was built on prepared bedrock, and indeed some of its rooms were indeed cut into it. Only the walls immediately next to the alleyway opposite Building 1 were constructed on top of the sherds and bones noted above, and these may be later additions, so the priority of Building 1 over the original core of Building 3 is not firmly established. Furthermore, it has become clear that Building 15 is not a residential structure of the same kind as Building 1 and has a slightly different orientation, so the presumed pattern of elite houses built first, and more plebeian ones filling in the gaps is not validated, although it remains a possibility.4

Figure 8. Composite boom photos of Operation 1. The images were taken years after parts of Buildings 1 and 3 were excavated, and some walls have been reconstituted (© Paul Zimansky).

Preservation of Building 3 was generally poor, with stone foundations surviving only to a few courses. It is impossible to make out the circulation pattern since visible doorways and thresholds were few and not well preserved. There are grounds for believing that several family units resided here. In the first place, there were three rooms paved with flagstones, which are places where livestock was kept. Second, there were tandirs in at least six different rooms and artifacts associated with cheese-making in several locations. The area marked out by the perimeter of the structure as a approximately 560 m2 on two terraces. We were only permitted to excavate a small part of it, but that showed a very peculiar building. Two rooms had their floors on the bedrock, and beside them was a chamber, cut 3 m deep into a crevice in the bedrock and lined with stones. The upper walls were well constructed with even faces and thicker than those of Building 1. The small, regularly laid out rooms in the eastern part, visible in the magnetometry, suggest storage. In short, if this building is residential at all, it is unlike any other house in Urartu.

Building 15 is the largest coherent structure we have been able to identify on Güney Tepe in the magnetrometry, with an area of

4 

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Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 9. Plan of Building 14 (© Paul Zimansky).

whole, around 350 m2, is quite large for a single house, and no artifacts found here suggest any kind of luxury. Above all, the great variety of construction techniques in evidence here are striking. None of the walls are of the same quality as those in Building 1 or Building 6 and many consist simply of pebbles. We have one instance of a curved wall, something of a rarity in Urartu. The inhabitants of this house also dug into the bedrock, sometimes quite deeply. Three deep pits appear to have been for storage. The whole row of rooms on the northeast side of Building 3 was carved out of the bedrock, with a solid raised ‘wall’ left standing to divide these chambers.

characteristics of both the more formally planned and the more chaotic residential buildings. It was located high on Güney Tepe, approximately 575 m from the citadel gate as the crow flies and a good deal farther if one takes the terrain into consideration. In this place, the slope is quite steep, and the building’s floors were leveled at different elevations. The highest floors, on the northeast side, were 5 m above the lowest ones, which were on the southwest side. Although the plan is roughly a grid shape and does not appear to have grown through agglutination in the way that Building 3 did, the great variety of ways in which walls were built does suggest that many different hands went into creating this structure.

Building 14

It is also difficult to make out the extent of the building. There was more soil covering the ruins here than on the other structures we discussed, and the magnetometry

This structure (Figures 9 and 10) offered yet another type of housing in the outer town, sharing some of the 51

No Place Like Home

Figure 10. Building 14 from southwest. Note the variety of construction techniques in walls and carved bedrock (© Paul Zimansky).

exceptional conditions here suggest that the house may have been destroyed in an earthquake, rather than peacefully abandoned, as the rest of the outer town seems to have been.

was less clear. We identified what we believed to be a rectangular plan with corners at the compass points. Since excavating this by the east-west/north-south grid squares of the site plan would have wasted our limited resources uncovering irrelevant space, we adjusted our trench layout to align with the walls as well as the grid. As we gradually uncovered this core rectangle, it became clear that there were additional walls outside of it that were not visible in the magnetometry, particularly on the northwestern side. When we closed the excavations in this area it was not clear whether these walls were simply terraces beside the building, an enclosed interior space on an extended building, or both. There were few artifacts found on this northwestern side, which for most of the settlement is quite typical as the rooms of all the houses we dug were generally cleared out. But Building 14 was an exception otherwise, since we did find quite a few interesting and valuable objects in the central rooms: a pair of linked silver earrings, an alabaster bowl, a glass jar, an iron sword, an iron shovel blade, and a finely carved prismatic seal or pendant. In one room sherds of a pithos were found marked with hieroglyphics giving liquid capacity standard Urartian units—a unique appearance of this script within an outer town structure (Zimansky 2019: 564–569). The

The western corner of our excavations also held a surprise: a pit dug into the bedrock inside a narrow room contained the burial of an adolescent, wearing a bronze belt, an ivory pendant, and more than two dozen earrings. Intramural burials are rare in Urartu, but there can be no doubt that this individual was intimately associated with the house and the burial site was part of its architecture. If the ground plan gives the appearance of a single structure, the construction techniques of the walls do not (Figure 10). One technique in particular is somewhat puzzling (Figure 11). A wall on the northwestern side of the building had a base of very large stones, on top of which smaller ones were placed. Above this was roughly 30 cm of clean, hard packed clay–not mudbrick. On top of the clay was another course of stones. We did not observe this in any of the other buildings at Ayanis, but Prof. Stephan Kroll informs me that it would explain something he encountered in excavating houses at 52

Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 11. Wall in Building 14 with packed clay layer separating lower and upper stone courses (© Paul Zimansky).

Bastam. As one dug down in a relatively horizontal site, stone walls would appear, disappear, and reappear. We were fortunate enough to find this in section as we cleared the room at Ayanis.

Urartian houses elsewhere There has been some investigation of outer town houses at Karmir Blur (Figure 12) and Bastam (Figure 13), which were both major centers founded by Rusa son of Argišti, and thus contemporary with Ayanis. It is noteworthy that most of the domestic structures at these sites do not look very much like the Ayanis houses.

How many households did this structure contain? If one goes by the standard suggested by the other units, that one paved area equals one household, then the answer here is one. What little we can glean of the circulation pattern supports this, although there is not much to go on. Only one entrance from the exterior was found, a shallow doorway on the southwestern side near the southern corner of the building.

Two strikingly different areas were excavated in the outer town at Karmir Blur: one was of a ramshackle group of structures aligned along a single street (Martirosjan 1961: 109); the other was a huge structure 53

No Place Like Home

Figure 12. Houses at Karmir Blur (after Martirosjan 1964: Figures 94 and 98).

The antithesis of this apparent lack of planning is presented by the other major building in the Karmir Blur outer town, which Martirosjan described as a large building in the southwestern quarter. This was apparently excavated after the manuscript of Martirosjan’s book on the city of Karmir Blur (1961) was completed, so only the architectural plans that he put into a later general work on Bronze and Iron Age Armenia are available for study (Martirosjan 1964: 260-264). The edifice also shows up clearly in satellite photos. At 62 m × 33 m it is indisputably vast and each of the four parallel units into which it is divided would have an area of 480 m2. These would be very large houses indeed, if in fact they were residential. The case for planning on a large scale is indisputable. One can almost see the fun the architect was having by making each of the subdivisions mirror the proportions of the building plan as a whole.

with multiple identical units laid out in a row, each with its own entrance (Martirosjan 1964: 262). In the former, one building dubbed the ‘house of the noble Urartian’ is quite large, with one of its walls running straight and unbroken by doorways for 48 m along a street. On three sides, the footprint of this building is a rectangle, so it may have started out with a formal plan, but if so, it was never fully executed. Within this rectangle, rooms have irregular shapes, and some their walls are even curved. The circulation pattern is unclear at the western end of the building; on the eastern side where doorways were defined, it would appear there were two separate residential units. The other houses, both across the street from the large building, and to the west of it, are even less regular in their ground plans. Photographs taken at the time of excavation show that relatively large stones were used for the base of the walls (Piotrovsky n.d.; 114), but their layout is chaotic. Many walls do not meet at right angles and most room plans are trapezoidal. Multiple residential units share party walls. All of the buildings in this group do seem to be aligned along the same street, however.

At Bastam the excavated settlement area lies on relatively flat, low, ground at the northwestern foot of the imposing citadel. There has been considerable 54

Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu

Figure 13. Houses at Bastam (after Kleiss 1988: Abb. 2 and 11).

founded about a century before Ayanis by Argišti I, the same king who settled soldiers from Hatti and Ṣupani in Erebuni. Argištihinili, however, continued to be inhabited for the rest of Urartu’s history, so the houses, which are built in a saddle between two castles on higher ground, may well date to the 7th century.5 Several of these show parallels to some of the houses found at Ayanis (Zimansky 2018: 622–625) (Figure 14).

erosion here, and the stones of walls of many unexcavated buildings, some houses and some not, can be easily made out. The housing that was excavated here is clear enough in its general form (Figure 13), but made puzzling by repeated re-buildings and modifications. It is hard to say how many residences there were in the approximately 30 m × 33 m exposure, but clearly more than one. Party walls and multiple entrances to both interior and exterior spaces were the rule. Yet there was only one large paved area of the type that we associate with residential units at Ayanis. The excavator, Wolfram Kleiss, has posited that rooms were attached and modified in three phases (Kleiss 1988: 19–23). Generally, this looks very much like Building 14 at Ayanis, without the added complications of a steep slope.

No place like home in Urartu For all the uncertainties and ambiguities, the houses described above are sufficient to establish that there is no single paradigm for the Urartian house. At Ayanis, Two storehouse dedications of Rusa son of Erimena (Salvini 2008: A13-5, A13-6) found at the site and a fragmentary duplicate of the standard foundation inscription of Rusa son of Argišti (Salvini 2008: A12-3) said to be from there, indicate that building continued at Argištihinili for a century.

5 

The only other site at which a significant number of houses has been excavated is Argištihinili, which was 55

No Place Like Home

Figure 14. Selected houses at Argištihinili (after Martiosjan 1974: Figures 11, 41 and 46).

in a comparatively tight chronological frame, we see quite varied relationships between buildings and households: uniformity of plan contrasting with chaotic agglutination, and the work of professional architects next door to buildings constructed by people who paid scant attention to norms. Over the years we excavated in the outer town at Ayanis we came to feel that no two houses were alike. One might have to qualify that belief if structures with repeating units, like Ayanis Building 6 and the massive complex at Karmir Blur are to be taken as multiple houses rather than single buildings. Looking beyond Ayanis, one can see that there is also great variation in domestic architecture in outer towns at the sites founded by Rusa, son of Argishti. The houses at Karmir Blur are different from what was excavated at Bastam, and at neither site are they very much like the Ayanis houses.

iterations are seen at Argištihinili. There are other such houses on Güney Tepe, two of which we excavated in part. Certainly the coherent plans, consistent building techniques, and careful construction of these might well be invoked to argue that they were the concept of a house that Urartian architects had in mind for the elite. It would be difficult to make the case that such houses were the norm, however, or that the majority of the inhabitants of the Ayanis outer town lived in such structures. Ramshackle agglomerations of rooms, which multiple families built and modified frequently, using whatever construction techniques they fancied in each wall, probably housed a much larger portion of the population. Another significant body probably lived in barracks-like conditions, working in the service of the state, although proof of this remains elusive at Ayanis. An organizing hand does not appear to have established the layout of the Ayanis outer town. There is no surrounding wall or clear pattern of streets. While in some cases neighboring buildings seem to have similar

Perhaps the closest approach to a conceptual model is to be found in the free-standing, rectangular plan of Ayanis Building 1, for which larger but not very different 56

Paul Zimansky: Chapter 4. Houses and Households in Urartu orientations, as do Buildings 1 and 3, for example; in other parts of the outer town they do not, appearing to have been constructed without regard for one another. Yet this does not mean that the state was absent in the outer town. The construction of walls in Buildings 1 and 6 is every bit as meticulous as in the public buildings on the citadel and in its environs. The inhabitants of all of these houses were using standard Urartian pottery in forms found in the citadel. The close proximity of houses of the rich and poor hints that the latter moved into the interstices in the settlement after the former had staked out their land.

Martirosjan, A. 1974. Argištichinili (Archeologičeskie Pamjatniki Armenii 8). Erevan: Akademija Nauk Armjanskoj SSR. Newton, M. and P. Kuniholm. 2007. A revised dendrochronological date for the Fortress of Rusa II at Ayanis: Rusahinili Eidurukai, in A. Çilingiroǧlu and A. Sagona (eds) Anatolian Iron Ages 6: Proceedings of the Sixth Anatolian Iron Ages Colloquium Held at Eskişehir, 16–20 August 2004: 195–206. Leuven: Peeters. Piotrovsky, B.B. (Compiler). n.d. Karmir Blur. Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers. Roaf, M. 2012. Could Rusa son of Erimena have been king of Urartu during Sargon’s eighth campaign?, in S. Kroll, C. Gruber, U. Hellwag, M. Roaf and P. Zimansky (eds) Biainili-Urartu: The Proceedings of the Symposium held in Munich 12–14 October 2007 (Acta Iranica 51): 187–216. Leuven: Peeters. Salvini, M. 2007. Argišti, Rusa, Erimena, Rusa und die Löwenschwänze: Ein urartäische Palastgeschichte des VII. Jh. v. Chr. ARAMAZD: Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies 2: 146–162. Salvini, M. 2008. Corpus dei Testi Urartei. 3 Vols. Roma: CNR- Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente. Sevin, V. 1997. Van/Zernaki Tepe: On the Urartian grid plan once again. Anatolica 23: 173–180. Stone, E. 2012. Social differentiation within Urartian settlements, in S. Kroll, C. Gruber, U. Hellwag, M. Roaf and P. Zimansky (eds) Biainili-Urartu: The Proceedings of the Symposium held in Munich 12–14 October 2007 (Acta Iranica 51): 89–99. Leuven: Peeters. Zimansky, P. 2018. The free-standing Urartian house, in A. Batmaz, G. Bedianashvili, A. Michaelewicz and A. Robinson (eds) Context and Connection: Studies on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of Antonio Sagona: 617–628. Leuven: Peeters. Zimansky, P. 2019. Illiterate Urartians: writing and the Ayanis Ourter Town, in P.S. Avetisyan, R. Dan, and Y. Gerkyan (eds), Over the Mountains af Far Away: Studies in Near Eastern history and Arcaheology Presented to Mirjo Salvini on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday: 560– 570. Oxford: Archaeopress. Zimansky, P. and E. Stone. 2009. ‘Settlements in the Vicinity’(ālāni ša limēti) of an Urartian Fortress, in H. Sağlamtimur et al. (eds) Altan Çilingiroğlu’na Amarğan: Yukarı Denizin Kıyısında: Urartu Krallığı’na Adanmiı bir Hayat - Studies in Honour of Altan Çilingiroğlu: A Life Dedicated to Urartu on the Shores of the Upper Sea: 633– 640. Istanbul: Arkeoloje ve Sanat Yayınları.

In reviewing this evidence, we cannot overstress how limited an overview of houses and households it offers. What we have to work with are a small number of ground plans from only the last phase of Urartu’s existence. Their residents were a tiny fraction of the thousands of people who created and maintained the royal centers beside which these buildings were constructed. There is certainly no justification for regarding them as typical of the Urartian population as a whole. Urartians must have lived somewhere, but very few would have regarded any of these particular houses as home.

References Cited Çilingiroğlu, A. and M. Salvini 2001. Ayanis I: Ten Years’ Excavations at Rusahinili Eiduru-kai. Documental Asiana VI. Rome: Istituto per gli Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici. Foster, B. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 3rd ed. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. Grekyan, Y.H. 2017. The settlement size and population estimation of the Urartian cities, in P. S. Avetisyan and Y.H. Grekyan (eds) Bridging Times and Spaces: Papers in Ancient Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Armenian Studies Honouring Gregory E. Areshian on the Occasion of his SixtyFifth Birthday: 103–132. Oxford: Archaeopress. Kleiss, W. 1988. Bastam II: Ausgrabungen in den urartäischen Anlagen 1977–1978. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Martirosjan, A. 1961. Gorod Tejšebaini. Erevan: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk Armjanskoi SSR. Martirosjan, A. 1964. Armenija v èpochy bronzy i rannego železa. Erevan: Izdael’stvo Akademii Nauk Armjanskoj SSR

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Chapter 5. Living at the Gate: Identification of Military Housing at Neo-Assyrian Tušhan (Ziyaret Tepe) Timothy Matney, Tina L. Greenfield, Kemalettin Köroǧlu, John MacGinnis, Britt Hartenberger, and Melissa Rosenzweig

Excavations at the Neo-Assyrian provincial city of Tušhan (modern Ziyaret Tepe) on the northern frontier of the empire have provided ample evidence for the presence of a strong military force at the site.1 Additionally, a wealth of texts written from and about Tušhan make clear its strategic and administrative value from the early 9th through to the late 7th century BC. Ziyaret Tepe is located on the right bank of the Tigris River in the Diyarbakır province of southeastern Turkey, near the confluence of the Tigris and a major tributary, the Batman Su, approximately 13 km downstream from the modern city of Bismil. Eighteen archaeological field seasons were undertaken here by an international team between 1997 and 2014 (Matney et al. 2017, 2020). This chapter focuses primarily on Operation K, where excavations in 2005 and 2013 uncovered an area of 175  m2 of domestic architecture abutting the interior of the city’s southern fortification wall immediately adjacent to a city gate (Operation Q). Based on the location of the Operation K architectural complex and on the observation that the building does not conform to a typical Mesopotamian courtyard house plan, our initial field interpretation was that these rooms may have served as part of a military barracks. This chapter re-examines this initial interpretation of the architecture in Operation K by evaluating it against a model of predicted archaeological correlates based on data from both texts and excavations of contemporary Iron Age military architecture. We add depth to this analysis through a detailed examination of the small finds and ceramics found in Operation K, together with the results of faunal and botanical studies which were not available during the initial evaluation. Our interest in distinguishing a military from a ‘civilian’ household in this specific Neo–Assyrian context leads to a broader consideration of the difficulties of mapping textual references onto excavated data. 1  The following abbreviations are used in this article: AHw = Akkadisches Handwörterbuch; CAD = Chicago Assyrian Dictionary; SAA = State Archives of Assyria.

No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 58–77

Assyrian barracks: previous assessments of evidence Architectural Considerations To begin, it is useful to review what is already known about Assyrian barracks archaeologically. There can be no doubt that all the key cities of the empire must have had a permanent garrison and therefore barracks. This is not to deny that on the occasions when the army was mustered in Kalhu en masse, the bulk must have been quartered in their tents (e.g., in Kalhu). In the case of the great cities of the imperial heartland, we can assume that these were either in or next to the arsenals (ēkal māšarti, ‘Inspection Palace’) that were, for obvious reasons, situated alongside the city walls. Excavated examples include Fort Shalmaneser at Nimrud, Palace F at Khorsabad, and Nebi Yunus at Nineveh, while the location of the arsenal in Assur itself has not yet been discovered. In all these cases, it may be that the arsenal complexes were built over the terraced remains of older tells. It can accordingly be proposed that in the case of Arbail the arsenal complex may have been located at the northeastern corner of the walls enclosing the lower city: CORONA imagery of modern Erbil, ancient Arbail, shows the existence of a sizeable mound at this location (Nováček et al. 2013: 23, 26). Sadly, this mound has now been obliterated by the expansion of the modern city. Although the installations at Khorsabad and Nebi Yunus have only been investigated to a limited degree, Fort Shalmaneser in Nimrud has been extensively explored. Whether or not barracks rooms were among the architecture exposed is an interesting question. The excavator, David Oates, certainly thought so, with specific reference to the ‘barracks–like regularity’ (Oates 1959: 99) of the western and northern sides of the Southeast courtyard of the complex. In Oates’s words, ‘the living quarters opening off the courtyard consisted in the main of long barrack rooms, each with its small paved bathroom at one end, arranged three along the west side of the courtyard (SE 4–9) and three along the north side to the east of the gate-chamber

Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate

Figure 1. Plan of Fort Shalmaneser, Nimrud (after Oates 1959).

(SE 14–19)’ (Oates 1959:197)2 (Figure 1). These spaces were substantial but not huge—the main room in each unit measured approximately 13 m × 3 m. Their interpretation as barracks is plausible, but it is not the only possibility; it is also possible, for example, that these suites served as ad hoc offices for high ranking officers—provincial governors coming to Kalhu at the head of the allocations of soldiers that they were ordered to contribute for the annual campaigns, would be another obvious candidate. The material recovered from these rooms is important (Oates 1959: 110–114; Curtis 2013: 11). On the floor of SE 5, clay foundation figurines were found, together with two miniature bronze symbols, an iron arrowhead, and a bronze pendant. SE 7 produced a bronze button and an iron arrowhead. From SE 8, identified by Oates as both a barracks and a guardroom, came a range of artifacts;

such as, iron-armor scales, arrowheads, two sickles, and a knife—as well as a fibula and button made of bronze. The most important finds in SE 14–15 were a cache of tablets (CTN 3 46–64), all personal legal documents— silver loans, land and slave sales, and a marriage record (Dalley and Postgate 1984b: 102–124); SE 14 also contained a bronze fibula. SE 16 contained a dagger, a spearhead, and a sickle, all of iron, as well as a buckle and plaque made of bronze. SE 18 was notable for a mass of pottery described by Oates as follows, ‘a large collection of pot-stands, small jars, bowls and istikans lay in a heap on a layer of rubbish at the west end, as if hurled from a falling cupboard’ (Oates 1959: 111). One should add to this list SE 10, in the northwest corner of the courtyard, very close to the gate through to the Northeast courtyard, which could well have served as a room for guards assigned to duty at the gate: this room yielded iron arrowheads, armor scales of iron and bronze, a bronze weight, an iron knife, and a hoe.

See also Oates 1962: 1, 1963: 7; followed by Mallowan 1966: vol. II: 422 and Curtis 2013: 11. Oates also wrote (1961: 2) ‘Of these (courtyards) NE and SE, adjoining the city wall, were large courtyards surrounded by barracks and official residences,’ however the plan of the rooms around the Northeast courtyard does not exhibit the same regularity, or the same bathroom facilities attached to every room as in the ranges along the western and northern sides of the Southeast courtyard.

2 

While this may not represent the complete inventory of the artifactual record, a few remarks may be made: (1) for several of these rooms there is no artifactual 59

No Place Like Home

Figure 2. Plan of architecture from Usu Aska (© Darband-i Rania Archaeological Project).

certainly does not relate to rank-and-file soldiery; more likely it reflects the use of this suite as an office by a literate official.

data whatsoever; (2) where we do have information on the artifacts recovered, there are numerous differences between rooms; (3) some of these artifacts clearly reflect the military occupation of the building; (4) others are personal items; (5) the archive was part of the private property of an individual evidently of some means; and (6) the pottery points to communal food consumption.

The weapons and armor could reflect a function as either storerooms or barracks, as could the knives; the presence of the foundation figurines makes better sense in the former capacity. There are, furthermore, points that could be taken to argue against these rooms having been used as barracks. For one thing, it seems unlikely that the plumbing of the small bathrooms could have coped with a protracted use by companies of soldiers. Also, the absence of fire installations (hearths and tannurs, for both cooking and keeping warm) might argue against a use as barracks, at least in the winter. While Oates’ excavation of Fort Shalmaneser was carried out before the time when the collection of archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and microdebris data would become part of standard archaeological procedure, these data-types might well have cast light on the interpretive matter at hand; however, any future re-examination of these rooms would be able to make use of these techniques.

The picture painted by these artifacts has multiple layers. The barracks function is supported by small items from clothing such as buttons, buckles, fibulae, and pendants. These are personal items which could very well have belonged to soldiers quartered in these room; the small weight probably also belongs in this category. In this context, the agricultural tools—the sickles and hoe—are interesting, as they highlight the fact that the soldiers were also farmers. This is certainly true with respect to the annual levies, which indicate they were indeed farmers first and foremost, working the land through the greater part of the year and serving on the campaigns in the summer; perhaps this dual employment even extended to the men of the standing army. On the other hand, the personal archive 60

Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate Overall, then, these rooms off the Southeast courtyard may well have been used as barracks, but this was not their sole function. This cannot be surprising—over the course of the 250-year history of Fort Shalmaneser, the use of spaces is bound to have changed and evolved. But if these rooms did function as barracks, what were the arrangements for feeding the soldiers? Were they served food prepared in central kitchens? Did they cook for themselves? If the latter, were there hearths and tannurs immediately outside in the main space of the courtyard? That question, at any rate should be relatively easy to answer when fieldwork can resume at Nimrud, as such features should be easily detectable in a magnetometry survey. Maybe the most likely explanation is that the rooms were indeed barracks, but that they should be understood as accommodation for the use of the guards on duty around the complex, rather than as the permanent quarters for sections of the standing army. We can offer one further reflection. Fort Shalmaneser was set within a huge precinct separated from the rest of the lower town by a substantial wall: while the greater part of this area was evidently used for military exercises and parades—something borne out by the very thin scatter of surface material (Oates and Oates 2001: 148; Oates 1962: 22 n.28)—there is an area in the northeast corner of this precinct where the topography suggests the presence of further architecture—this would be a natural location for barracks. Certainly the idea is worth an investigation one day.

once, in a Neo-Assyrian period text, curiously enough from Tušhan, though not referring to the city itself. This is in the well-known letter SAA 19 60 (ND 2666), sent to Sargon by Duri-Aššur, governor of Tušhan (Luukko 2012: 64–66; cf. also Parker 1997, 2001: 137– 148; Saggs 2001: 215–218). The governor reports on the progress of the construction of a fort on the Tigris, including a statement that the roofing of the bīt napṭarti had been completed. The translation of ‘barracks’ for bīt napṭarti is taken from the term bīt napṭari, the known occurrences of which are almost entirely from the Old Babylonian period (CAD N/1 325). Even among these, while a translation as barracks makes sense in some contexts, there are others where this is clearly not the meaning. Admittedly the translation of barracks fits the context of SAA 19 60 well. The second term to consider is bīt maṣṣarti. Our starting point here is the fact that the noun maṣṣartu, which means ‘guard’ can also have the meaning ‘garrison’ (CAD M I: 335–6). In SAA 5 203, for example, the governor of Mazamua reports that wine has been set aside for the garrison (ma-ṣar-te) of an unspecified location (SAA 5 147). In SAA 5 289, a letter to Sargon from the Treasurer, the writer refers to the taking of grain from the grain tax in order to pay out provisions to commanders for the bread rations of the garrisons (EN.NUN = maṣṣartu) under their control (SAA 5 202; this letter is also of interest for its implication that soldiers cultivating fields did not retain grain from their harvests to cover their rations). This being the case, the proposal can be made that bīt maṣṣarti, which might be thought to refer to a guard room, should actually be translated ‘barracks’ (CAD [M I: 340–1] translates bīt maṣṣarti as ‘prison,’ and there are indeed instances where a bīt maṣṣarti served in this capacity; we see no objection to such detentions taking place in a barracks). Nevertheless, this term is also rare. It occurs, for example, in SAA 16 100, a letter from the time of Esarhaddon which reports on an earthquake that hit Assur and contains the information that ‘one house inside the city barracks (É-ma-ṣar-te ša URU) and one house outside it have collapsed,’ (Luukko and Van Buylaere 2002: 93).

Another possible insight into military accommodation is provided by the site of Usu Aska, an Assyrian fort located in a pass in the Zagros mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan (MacGinnis et al. forthcoming). The interior architecture, which the excavations are beginning to uncover, presents a set-up very different from that at Nimrud. While the area exposed to date is restricted, the impression is a jumble of domestic-like architecture with rooms arranged around small courtyards inside of the fortification walls (Figure 2). While room functions have not yet been assigned (and here the environmental evidence will play a role), the numerous tannurs suggest that the occupants did cook their own food. The small finds recovered would appear to neatly reflect the lives of the soldiers of the garrison. The most frequent items are knives, arrowheads, nails, needles, fibulae, seals, and beads. A polished stone dish, a cowrie shell and fragments of objects made of Egyptian blue speak to personal luxury items. A sickle blade, once again, points to the soldiers being involved in agricultural activities.

In summary, our knowledge of Assyrian barracks to date is limited on both the archaeological and the textual front. Regarding the provinces, while every provincial capital must have had a garrison and barracks, up until now, apart from the proposed complex at Ziyaret Tepe, no physical evidence of such barracks has ever been found. We are therefore very far from being able to make a comparison between different sites, but it can be expected that when absorbing new territories into the provincial network the Assyrians will, at least initially, have taken over the pre-existing infrastructure of annexed capitals before deciding how to Assyrianize or replace it (J. Reade, per. communication). We can

Epigraphic Considerations The evidence of the texts is even more scant—it is not even clear that we know the Assyrian word for ‘barracks,’ though there are one or two terms to consider. The first of these, bīt napṭarti, is attested just 61

No Place Like Home nevertheless make some predictions regarding what may help us to recognize barracks in the archaeological record. On the architectural side, the defining feature may be, paradoxically, that there is nothing exceptional about the individual rooms—they are rectangular spaces whose chief distinctive feature is that they are laid out in the sort of ordered regularity characteristic of military culture. In terms of material, the artifactual repertoire may be expected to run across five categories of small finds: (i) clothing accessories; such as, buttons, buckles, fibulae, pendants, and beads; (ii) other personal possessions; such as, knives, needles, seals, and weights; (iii) personal crockery, i.e. medium or fine ware plates, bowls and cups; (iv) small luxury items; such as, shells and objects made of Egyptian blue; and (v) agricultural tools; such as, sickles and hoes. Towards a Model for Identifying an Assyrian Barracks

archaeologically to indicate the presence of a barracks. We distinguish between two types of barracks, based largely on scale and the presence of significant numbers of soldiers. The main Assyrian army would have typically used tents for impermanent campsites during campaigns and during movement across the landscape. Permanent barracks for full-time units of the army would only have been constructed in the imperial capitals and major provincial centers. This is Model A. The model assumes that rations were provided as cooked food prepared centrally, an implication of which is that the barracks rooms would not require ovens, significant food storage capacity, grinding stones and other utensils for food preparation. The ceramic repertoire should present a profile of a relatively small proportion of storage jars, with a correspondingly greater proportion of serving and individual eating vessels.

Based on the above considerations, Table 1 provides an outline of the expectations for what we might find

On the other hand, smaller forts, like Usu Aska, are likely to have been garrisoned by soldiers recruited

Table 1. Model of expected archaeological finds in an Assyrian barracks.

Building function

Inhabitants

Architectural evidence

A Soliders’ barracks within city. Primarily used for sleeping, storage of personal items, and communal activities.

Used by non-local soldiers stationed at the city. These could include the standing army, or annual conscripts.

Location near fortifications (i.e., inspection Palaces). Variation from normal courtyard house plan. Long rooms (13 m x 3 m) with toilet facilities for each room. Regular placement of the rooms around a central space. Absence of fire installations (Fort Shalmaneser).

B

Used by mostly local soldiers on active duty at the fort. These soldiers probably had homes and fields near or in the city, but were housed together during times of military service (e.g., training, preparation for field action, guarding city fortifications).

Location near fortifications. Rooms resemble those of domestic architecture with rooms around small courtyards. Numerous tannurs for cooking (Usu Aska).

Domestic housing used by soliders at smaller cities and forts. Primarily used for sleeping, storage of some personal items, and communal activities.

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Zooarchaeological and Archaeobotanical evidence Assume that prepared (cooked) rations are provided from communal kitchen. The commanders would have received basic rations centrally (meat, grain, and wine or beer) to feed the soldiers (Sargon texts). Possibly higher quality meat available to soldiers.

Assume that rations are provided from a communal stockpile as issues of grain together with additional allocations of meat and occasional other items. Probably a wider range of small local wild animals (e.g., hares). Possible lower quality of meat to soldiers.

Artifactual evidence

Ceramic evidence

Military gear (e.g., weapons and armor). Small clothing items (e.g., buttons, buckles, fibulae, needles). Agricultural tools (sickles, hoes). Figurines (as foundation or apotropaic offerings).

Personal ceramic items: medium or fine ware plates, bowls, and cups. Some open rim storage jars for short-tem use. Cooking and major storage of rations would be centralized (near the kitchens?), hence a lack of large vessels for storage and food preparation.

Military gear (e.g., weapons and armor). Small clothing items (e.g., buttons, buckles, fibulae, needles). Personal items including luxury goods (beads, seals, polished stone dishes, cowrie shell, Egyptian blue). Agricultural tools (sickles).

Personal ceramic items: medium or fine ware plates, bowls, and cups. Also some cooking pottery and storage vessels within the barracks. The ceramic range would have included serving and eating vessels.

Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate to the chances of recovery: it may yet be that archives recording the nuts and bolts of military administration— like the texts from Fort Shalmaneser in Nimrud (Dalley and Postgate: 1984a)—await the enquiring trowel. But on the canvas of official propaganda it seems that the city’s military activities were simply not recorded. Tušhan must, for example, have participated in the endless campaigns in the north conducted by Shalmaneser III, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal. But it is never actually mentioned. It is not unique in this lacuna, it is generally true of the military contributions to campaigns made by individual provinces.

from the immediate hinterland of the installation, who would have lived locally, worked different watches, and only needed temporary quarters for the times when they were on active duty. In this scenario, our Model B, we assume that rations were provided as issues of grain, supplemented by allocations of meat and other foodstuffs.3 If this is the case, we would expect to see domestic features such as ovens and food storage capacity, together with grinding stones and other utensils for food preparation. Both models are appropriately termed ‘barracks,’ although there is insufficient evidence to tie either to the Assyrian terms bīt napṭarti and bīt maṣṣarti discussed above. Of course, at any individual site, it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that soldiers might have been stationed in more than one place. This would be particularly true in larger population centers located along the Assyrian frontiers, where periodic influxes of large number of soldiers occurred during seasonal military campaigns.

This deficit is (very) partially balanced by information in two key sets of data—letters from the royal correspondence and cuneiform tablets excavated at Ziyaret Tepe itself. To start with the royal correspondence—one of the jewels of Assyriology, indeed of the story of archaeology—we have at present approximately thirty letters sent from governors of Tušhan to the Assyrian king. The great majority of these date to the reign of Sargon II, just a few to Tiglathpileser III. Their contents range from political relations with Shubria and Urartu to rounding up deserters, felling trees, cutting stone for Sargon’s palace at DurSharrukin (Khorsabad), and attending to agricultural matters. From time to time military aspects are mentioned in the course of the issues that come up. For example, in one letter, Ašipâ, governor of Tušhan in the reign of Sargon, reports sending out scouts to guard the pass of Abâ (Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990: No. 24). In another, Ša-Aššur-dubbu, another governor from the time of Sargon, reports on the desertion of 10 cavalrymen and 40 soldiers (Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990: No. 35). In one more letter the same governor states that he will dispatch 100 men to throw logs felled in Urartian territory into the river to float downstream to Assyria (Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990: No. 33). Here

The Military Establishment in Texts from Tušhan Before turning to the strictly archaeological correlates, it is important to first discuss Tušhan in historical terms, and to examine the epigraphic evidence found during our excavations, where a modest archive of some three dozen texts and fragments were recovered. Following its re-founding by Ashurnasirpal II in 882 BC, Tušhan was the seat of a provincial capital of the Assyrian empire for a period of 270 years. For the first two centuries it was on the front line, a bastion dominating the landscape and securing the border in this sector of the empire. Following Esarhaddon’s invasion of Shubria in 673 BC and the creation of the two new provinces of Uppumu and Kullimeri north of the Tigris, Tušhan became an internal province. Nevertheless, it must have retained its role as a military bulwark— Uppumu and Kullimeri were too new, too remote, and too exposed to new sources of troubles, such as the incursions of the Phrygians and Cimmerians, to be regarded as dependably stable entities. Throughout its Neo-Assyrian history, therefore, the Tigris River must always have been perceived as the logical line of defence—Assyria’s ‘natural border’—with Tušhan the true center of operations, the military linchpin of Assyria’s northern frontier. The textual evidence for this in action, however, is surprisingly sparse. This is not to suggest that Tušhan was not the scene of bustling military activity—far from it—only that this has not left a huge imprint in the textual record. In part, of course, this could be down

Figure 3. Cuneiform tablet ZTT 8 concerning the entrusting of military equipment – three felt armors, a waist-belt, leggings, felt gown, coat of mail, two wraps and an armlet—to a boatman a (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

3 

For example, in the Neo-Babylonian army soldiers were issued with monthly allocations of salt, cress, and (sesame) oil, MacGinnis 2012: 39-40.

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No Place Like Home we immediately run into the sort of problem that plagues the study of records such as these—were these men soldiers, or other men under Ša-Aššur-dubbu’s command, for example as a result of ilku (state) service? Was there a difference?

This brings us to perhaps the key question—how large was the military establishment at Tušhan? The truth is we simply do not know. The nearest clue we have is a letter reporting back to the king on a review of the troops of the province of Zamua in the Shahrizor, in eastern Iraq (SAA 5 215). Postgate’s analysis (2000) identifies the Qurrean and Itu’ean auxiliaries as spearmen and archers respectively. That text produced the following breakdown:

Cuneiform tablets excavated at Ziyaret Tepe also offer some insights into the military set-up at Tušhan. It must be stressed, though, that this is not the main focus of the archive (which was the administration of grain), and, with one major exception, the data from these texts is either of only rather limited value in understanding the military establishment at the site or tantalizingly fragmentary. In the first class is ZTT 8 (Figure 3), a seemingly straight-forward issue of military garments, though extraordinarily evocative in the witness it bears to the empire’s final act (Parpola 2008: 55–60). In the second is the collection of fragments of a tablet designated ZTT 26 (Parpola 2008: 100–102), the contents of which involve fields, villages, and cohort commanders (rab kiṣirāni). As suggested by Parpola, these fragments are very likely the remains of a census of farms and lands owned by military officials. It is difficult to speculate on the implication of this text any further, other than to say that it demonstrates the presence of the bureaucratic control over agriculture tied to the military. The formatting of this information on clay tablets is interesting, though, as this is just the sort of data for which recording on waxed wooden writing boards was ideal.

chariotry wing

106 (supporting 10 chariots)

cavalry wing

343 (supporting 161 horsemen)

Qurreans auxiliaries (spearmen)

360

Itu’eans auxiliaries (archers)

440

Assyrian infantry

80

ancillaries

101

The ancillaries included grooms, donkey drivers, tailors, cupbearers, bakers, cooks, confectioners, scribes, dispatch riders, and an intelligence officer. The full muster comes to 1,430. In the absence of other data, we guess that the forces at Tušhan were constituted on a similar scale. Some support for at least the order of magnitude of this analysis comes from another letter from Tušhan in which the above-mentioned governor Ašipâ complains about the absence of troops whom he feels should be at his disposal: ‘Of the Itueans in my country, there is a surplus of 500 men who should have kept watch with me. Why did they go to Guzana? Let them release the men to me,’ (Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990: No. 21: 18–20). Clearly the governor felt he should have had control of these 500 men in addition to the forces that he did have. Ašipâ’s full force must, surely, have been at least double this. So, it is a very plausible guess that the standing forces billeted in Tušhan were in the order of 1500 troops. This is, curiously, exactly the number of troops deported by Ashurnasirpal from Amme-ba’li of Bit-Zamani (Grayson 1991: 261, lines 92–96).

The glimpses into military operations which we gain from these texts are, however, limited. We would dearly like to know the strength and composition of the forces garrisoned in the city, as well as the forces stationed elsewhere in the province—the full battle order of the province of Tušhan. Unfortunately, assessing the strength of the military establishment at Tušhan is not easy. In terms of composition, our sources do actually testify to the presence at the site of the three main branches of the Assyrian army, infantry, cavalry and chariotry: infantry and cavalry in the letters above, chariotry in the celebrated letter ZTT 22 in which the official Mannu-ki-libbali responds to a request to supply a unit of chariots (Parpola 2008: 86–95). When this letter was written in 611 BC, the empire had entered freefall collapse—administrative structures had ceased to function, and military command and control was evaporating. For our purposes, however, the letter is a valuable source, as it gives an extensive list of the support staff needed to field such a unit: Aramean and Assyrian scribes, cohort commanders (rab kiṣirāni), officers (bēl piqitāte), ‘third men,’ craftsmen (ummānu), copper smiths, blacksmiths, tool and equipment cleaners, carpenters, bow makers, arrow makers, weavers, and tailors. The size of this unit is not stated, but it was evidently, in theory, a sizeable force.

We should at this point return to an important issue regarding the overall composition of the Assyrian troops—the balance between full-time soldiers and annually recruited conscripts. As stated by Oates, ‘the greater part of the army remained, as it had always been, an annual levy, and it seems unlikely that the available manpower under any system could have furnished standing forces of the necessary size,’ (Oates 2005: 56). This is surely right—but it still leaves us with 64

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Figure 4. Topographic plan of Ziyaret Tepe showing the location of operations across the city’s citadel mound and lower town a (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

of Assyrian material culture such as ceramics, seals, and fibulae (Matney 2010: 141–144). The larger sites of Grê Dimsê and Boztepe could be added to this list; in addition to their own agricultural function, they should probably be thought of as also functioning as intermediate level administrative centers subordinate to Tušhan.

the problem of estimating size of the standing army and what proportion was formed by annual recruits. We are unlikely to be able to give any absolute answers to this question any time soon. But we can at least draw attention to the fact that the system relied heavily on deportees, settled on land in their new locations, where they were organized around farms. The existence of these farms, in the form of small sites peppering the countryside, has been demonstrated again and again in both the core territory and more distant provinces of the Assyrian empire, where surveys have documented up to a tripling in the number of settlements during the Neo-Assyrian period (Parker 2003: 536; Guarducci 2018: 81). For Tušhan this picture is supplemented by data in the texts excavated at the site, which refer to several farmsteads identified by name (Parpola 2008: ZTT Nos. 12, 15, 23). Furthermore, a number of sites excavated in the course of the Ilisu salvage campaign appear to be farmsteads of just this type—notably Kavuşan Tepe, Hakemi Use and Müslümantepe—small settlements of just one or two hectares exhibiting a strong presence

These deportee communities were employed most of the year in growing the food (above all grain) which kept the Assyrian machine going. After the summer harvest, however, portions of their inhabitants were free to take part in campaigns. Again, absolute figures are not achievable. But we can still make some reflections. The number of people deported across the empire over its lifespan has been estimated in the millions (Oded 1979). With regard to Tušhan, we are never likely to have a final number, but we can say that it was in the tens of thousands, something we know for sure from an orthostat of Tiglath-pileser III from Nimrud in which that king talks of transporting 83,000 people from Unqi, 65

No Place Like Home have been to facilitate communication along the inner perimeter.

Hatarikka, and Hamath (all in western Syria) into the province of Tušhan (Tadmor and Yamada 2011: 43, No. 13.11–12). In addition to the deportees, there must also have been residual elements of the indigenous society; whether and how these groups contributed to the military is another unknown. Very germane to our present purposes, we should return to the letter in which Ša-Aššur-dubbu’s reports on the soldiers who had deserted to Shubria. His actual words are ‘10 cavalrymen deserted there; 40 soldiers from [...]-ri took their people with them, pulled out their grinding slabs, and went there,’ (SAA 5 35). This clearly indicates that the soldiers were organized in households with their families. They were also responsible for their own food production, at least at the flour grinding stage. It seems highly probable that these men were settled on farms in the countryside. With regard to the soldiers on duty in the city of Tušhan, we simply do not know whether they too lived in the countryside, coming in on duty as required, or whether they lived in permanent barracks—presumably without families, though we do not know that—inside the city walls.

Architecture and Features Operation K comprised six rooms and two open spaces (Figure 5) abutting against the city wall, at this point measuring 2.6 m wide, excluding the width of the walls of the dwelling, which adds an additional 50–60 cm. The rooms were all of the same general modest proportions, the largest room (A) measuring 2.0 × 1.5 m, and the smallest one (C) 1.5 × 1.5 m. Rooms A and C contained tannurs (clay ovens). To the north of Rooms A and B was the open Courtyard E partly paved with reused baked bricks and containing a well and a tannur. To the east of Courtyard E, but at least partially demarcated by wall K-122, was a second open space, Courtyard I; it was not clear to the excavators whether this open space was just a continuation of Courtyard E, or a separate adjacent courtyard. Either way, the zone of open space extends over a stretch of at least 18 m, a substantial courtyard area, especially given the size of the adjoining rooms. Two identifiable phases of architecture were found in the exposure (the latter being illustrated in Figure 5), both built along very similar plans. Room C contained three graves (K-077, K-117 and K-119), one each aligned along the eastern, southern, and western walls. A similar placement of burials is also seen in the Operation Q gate (Matney et al. 2009: 62–63, 2011: 92). As noted in the introduction, based both on the location of the building and the observation that it does not conform to a typical Mesopotamian courtyard house plan, our initial field interpretation of Operation K was that it represented the remains of a barracks.

Operation K: evidence of a possible Assyrian barracks from Ziyaret Tepe As noted above, Ziyaret Tepe was an urban center. The site comprises a high citadel mound of approximately 3 ha and a 29 ha lower town surrounding the citadel on its western, southern, and eastern sides. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the entire city was encircled by a massive fortification wall with regular towers and a number of monumental gates. The city’s fortifications were excavated in four areas of the site: Operation D (2000), Operation Q (2007–2010), Operation K (2005, 2013), and Operation Y (2013) (Figure 4).

Small Finds and Pottery

Operation D was a brief exploration of the city’s defensive wall on the eastern edge of the lower town. Operation Q, excavated between 2007 and 2010, revealed the broad foundations of the city’s external defensive wall with towers, a moat, and a heavily fortified gate at the southern edge of the lower town, near the southwestern corner of the site. Subsurface geophysical survey showed the location of another gate in the eastern fortification walls (Matney et al. 2005: 40–42). Likewise, the location of a northern gate, immediately west of the high mound, is strongly suggested by the topography of the site; this area was unavailable for investigation owing to the presence of a modern cemetery. Excavations in Operation K uncovered an area of 175 m2 of domestic architecture abutting the interior of the city’s southern fortification wall and immediately adjacent to the city gate in Operation Q. Finally, in Operation Y excavations revealed a stretch of the city wall where it made a jink in the western side, exposing a clearway on the inside whose purpose must

Within the broad range of the 22 excavation areas at Ziyaret Tepe, Operation K has a somewhat diverse range of small finds (Figure 6). These include domestic items such as a basalt handstone (the upper, mobile stone in a set of heavy basalt grinding emplacements used to process grain and other foods), a stone weight, and a basalt bowl. Metal finds include iron pins, bronze rings, and iron nail fragments. Several unperforated ceramic discs and beads round out the finds from primary contexts (not including burials). One significant set of finds was 22 baked clay tokens. Elsewhere in the lower town, a significant number of tokens (over 300) was found only in the western building in Operation G/R, where the administrative nature of the complex made it clear that the tokens were being used in a bureaucratic capacity (MacGinnis et al. 2014; Matney et al. 2020: 100– 105; Monroe 2016). In the case of Operation K, however, where the building is smaller, less well built, and nonadministrative in nature, it cannot be excluded that 66

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Figure 5. Plan of Operation K architecture at Ziyaret Tepe a (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

the tokens were being used as gaming pieces. It is noteworthy that no cuneiform tablets were found in Operation K. As mentioned above, three graves were found in Operation K associated with the latest phase of Neo-Assyrian architecture. The grave goods included beads, a fragment of a bronze fibula, and pottery fragments. The inventories of burials elsewhere in the lower town were more elaborate. For example, the six graves in Operation Q contained a variety of fine ware ceramic vessels including juglets, bowls, and beakers, as well as a flower pot, a form rarely seen at Ziyaret Tepe. Other items from the Operation Q burials include both a complete and an incomplete bronze fibula, an astragalus bone (likely used as a die), and a steatite cylinder seal with an incised scene showing two figures either side of a sacred tree (Matney et al. 2011: 93, fig. 17).

It is important to note that there were no finds of armor or military weapons directly associated with the primary archaeological contexts within the Operation K building. Given that the building was abandoned and largely cleaned out before the last inhabitants left, this is hardly surprising. Likewise, from nearby Operation Q, one iron arrowhead was found in a primary floor context (Q-250 ZT 27638) and two fragments of blades were found in the building collapse (Q-002), one made of iron and the other a copper or copper-alloy. It is also possible that weapons were not stored in the barracks but were held centrally within Tušhan. The pottery recovered from Operation K included a range of forms and wares. Compared to other buildings in the lower town at Ziyaret Tepe, Operation K contains 67

No Place Like Home

Figure 6. Plan showing small finds across Operation K a (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

in the Lower Town, it differs from Operation K in having fewer cooking pots, as well as fewer individual eating vessels, proportionally, suggesting less cooking took place there. Figure 7 shows the proportion of pottery functional types in K and Q. Lastly, Operation K did have some higher quality eating vessels: about 5% of the total ceramic assemblage from Operation K comprised fine wares, a higher proportion than seen elsewhere in the lower town.

the same general proportions of various functional pottery types but differs in having proportionally more cooking/preparation dishes than elsewhere. Given the multiple tannurs in Operation K, it is likely that cooking was a major function of at least Room A, if not also the courtyard space outside. Storage vessels in the form of pithoi are also present, and a calculation of the minimum number of vessels indicates that there were at least ten pithoi represented in the rooms and courtyards. Operation K contains a range of everyday forms such as bowls, plates and drinking cups, but does not have the more specialized forms; such as, chalices, ribbed-rim bowls, potstands, or glazed Assyrian pottery. Since we think that the gate in Operation Q was also occupied by soldiers, it is useful to compare the pottery of the two installations. While Operation Q also lacked the same specialized forms that are common in wealthier houses

A Military Diet A previous study of the various animal and plant resources available to the Neo-Assyrian inhabitants of Tušhan concluded: ‘Similarities in the distribution of plant and animal remains across contexts point to the homogenizing effects of a standardized, redistributive 68

Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate that there were significant differences between the activities related to the production and consumption of food carried out in such temporary camps, as seen in the reliefs, and those taking place in permanent military installations (gates, barracks, etc.). Broadly speaking, existing research into diet in other barracks contexts and via cuneiform texts suggests that Assyrian soldiers were issued barley and meat rations (Deszö 2016; Gross 2015). For example, we know that as a rule Assyrian soldiers in camp received a basic ration of two–three liters of barley per day, enriched by a variety of supplementary foods such as honey, fruit, and nuts (Fales and Rigo 2014). We also know from the reliefs that meat from sheep, goat, and cattle were provided to the soldiers. Differences in the distribution of species, cuts of meat, and types of butchery marks might be expected if meat were distributed according to rank (Fales and Rigo 2014). Translating these broad statements regarding the provisioning of soldiers at temporary military camps to the situation of soldiers living at Tušhan, however, is complicated. In part this is because analyses suggest that grain and meat was distributed via a centralized state authority within Ziyaret Tepe (Greenfield 2014; Rosenzweig 2014). While the types of food consumed were undoubtedly indicative of status, questions arise when trying to determine a uniquely military diet. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conjecture that identifying consumption patterns should be able to help with the determination of building function.

Figure 7. Proportions of functional pottery groups in K and Q, by minimum number of vessels a (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

economy; while depositional variations reveal resource inequities and alternative economic strategies among officials and subjects of the empire,’ (Greenfield and Rosenzweig 2016: 305). Those conclusions were based primarily upon the study of the spatial distribution of animal and plant remains mapped across many of the buildings at Tušhan, including a palace (Operation A/N), an imperial administrative building (Operation G/R), a number of residences ranging from elite (Operation G/R, Operation U), to commoner (Operations M, Operation K), and a gate (Operation Q). Thus, our general understanding of the range of dietary options for the inhabitants of the city is founded in the analysis of extensive zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical datasets.

In the following sections, we turn our attention to the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from Operation K. As a comparative dataset, we focus on Operation Q as it represents definitive military context at Tušhan. It is acknowledged that we should expect a difference between a gate (Operation Q) which is presumably non-residential and used by military personnel (guards), and Operation K, which appears to have a residential function. That said, we will also reference the broader pan-Tušhan pattern of animal and plant consumption as a point of comparison when needed. Zooarchaeological Remains

Of course, it would be possible to also find clues to the food consumed by Assyrian soldiers in their encampments through an examination of Neo-Assyrian material culture beyond the city wall of Tušhan, although such an undertaking goes well beyond the scope of this chapter. It is worth mentioning, however, that some interesting insights are offered by scenes depicting the production, procurement and processing of food—including sheep being brought in for sacrifice—in the sculpted reliefs of the palaces of the imperial heartland (Fales and Rigo 2014). We expect

Turning to the zooarchaeological remains, the general animal-based diet of the inhabitants at Tušhan can be considered diverse, with a similar mixture of domestic and wild animals within the residences and other buildings across the site. While the generalized pattern of meat disposal (and presumably consumption) of wild and domestic species is broadly similar across the site, there is a clear and heavy reliance on domesticated pig and herded animals (cattle, sheep, goat) to meet their primary subsistence needs. This pattern of exploitation 69

No Place Like Home

Figure 8. Domestic species frequencies compared between K and Q a (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

of domestic taxa was prominent in the Upper Tigris region for millennia, and the lack of significant change in the husbandry and species exploitation strategies over this timeframe is not surprising (Bar-Oz 2004; Berthon 2011; Gilbert 2002; Greenfield-Jongsma and Greenfield 2014; Hesse 1995; Wapnish and Hesse 1991; Wattenmaker 1998; Wilken 2000; Zeder 1988, 1991, 1998, 2003). The overall patterns of animal bone disposal of wild species, though not always the patterns of consumption, vary between buildings at Ziyaret Tepe, and this observation provides a clear indication that not all wild species were accessible for everyone. Access to the diverse range of wild taxa appears to depend on one’s status and on the opportunity to hunt for wild animals in and around the environs of Tušhan. In short, the domesticates in an urban imperial center with a strong redistributive animal economy show little variation across buildings, while the use of wild animal species appears to be a more sensitive marker in discriminating between elite/commoner and residential/specialized contexts (Greenfield and Matney forthcoming).

Q, without reference to the other buildings and NeoAssyrian contexts at Ziyaret Tepe. As in the comparison with the other residences, when the domestic animals are compared between the two buildings there is very little difference in the frequency percentages of domestic species (Figure 8). Domestic cattle (Bos taurus) has a larger percentage frequency in Operation Q than in Operation K; however, what stands out most in these data is the similarity between the frequencies for sheep (Ovis aries), goat (Capra hircus), and domestic pig (Sus scrofa dom.). In summary, the use of domestic species is not a useful indicator for discriminating between ordinary residential buildings and those used by the military. Differential patterns of distribution and consumption do appear, however, when comparing the wild species at Ziyaret Tepe: at this moment real divergences appear in Operations K and Q (Figure 9). The first clear pattern that emerges from this comparison is that the inhabitants of Operation K had a much lower quality diet than evidenced in the remains from Operation Q (Greenfield and Matney forthcoming). Wild species are assigned a status value placed upon their ubiquity in the zooarchaeological record at Ziyaret Tepe, their meat yield, and the distance and energy required to travel to find or hunt them and bring them back to site.

The first step in our examination of dietary distribution and consumption patterns within military contexts at Ziyaret Tepe was to identify species diversity within the excavated residential buildings across Ziyaret Tepe, and to compare the site-wide patterns to the localized patterns in the remains uncovered from the gate in Operation Q, whose military function is clear, and Operation K. The overall pattern that we found showed that the distribution and frequency of domestic species is fairly uniform across the site as a whole, including in Operations K and Q. Simple bone counts (NISP) of domesticates provided no indication of any unique signature in animal consumption in Operation K and Q. Our second step compared the distribution of domesticates directly between Operations K and

In terms of the diet in Operation K: ‘In looking at those species that we consider to be low-status food sources, such as reptiles (eg., tortoise) and Lepus sp. (hare), we see that they form a very high percentage of the animal remains in K, where hares are the dominant food source at 33% and where reptiles are also present. The observation that over 42% of the animal species in K are from the lowest status category is in stark contrast with all the other buildings across the site, including Operation Q with only an 11% frequency for these two 70

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Figure 9. Wild animal frequencies compared between K and Qa (© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project).

taxa combined’ (Greenfield and Matney forthcoming). The residents of Operation K supplemented their diet to a great extent with animals of lower quality, caloric value, and status. This disparity between Operation K and Q in terms of lower status meat sources was most striking.

K and Operation Q. The basic foodstuff that made up the bulk of the meat portion of the diets in these two operations was the same, comprising the standard range of domesticates. In terms of the supplementary, wild foods available to the residents in these areas, Operation Q enjoyed a mixture of predominantly nonelite animal meats, with some elite elements (red deer and wild boar). The residents of Operation K, on the other hand, were limited to a diet of non-elite elements, with standard rations frequently supplemented by rabbits and the occasional small deer.

Taxa considered to be of medium desired status [i.e., Capreolus capreolus (small deer) and Gazella gazella (small bovid)] are present in high frequencies in most of the residences and in Operation Q, suggesting a similar exploitation strategy for all these areas. Operation K also had significant percentages of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus, 14.3%) and gazelle (Gazella gazella, 19.1%), as well as a species not found in Operation Q, fallow deer (Dama dama mesopotamica, 9.5%). The ubiquity of these moderately sized animals suggests they were hunted for their meat (and not as sport). Finally, in terms of access to high status animal meat, there is a striking difference between Operation K and Operation Q. Residents in Operation Q had lower proportions of this category of meat than the other residences at Tušhan; however, two high status animals were found in Operations Q: red deer (Cervus Elaphus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa fer.). Many wild exotics such as lion (Panthera leo), wild goat (Capra Ibex), wild cattle (Bos primigenius), camel (Camelus sp.), and ten bird species were not found in Operation Q, but were found elsewhere on site in residential contexts. Operation K was notable in lacking all these high-status species, including those found in Operation Q, making it the poorest quality assemblage of wild animal bones on the site.

These results are somewhat surprising given our hypothesis that Operations K and Q were both primarily military in function. We expected to find that they would be more similar to each other in terms of diet, and less similar as a group to the NeoAssyrian residential buildings at Tušhan. Overall at the site, distributions and frequencies of wild species are quite varied and suggest that, unlike the situation with the domesticates, there is no standardized pattern of distribution, consumption, or disposal for the wild species. Hence, we conclude that the wild animal sources are not part of the imperial redistribution system which provided the bulk of the military diet. Archaeobotanical Remains Archaeobotanical analysis from Operation K brings to bear the data from 15 soil samples totaling 684 liters of soil. By location, there are six samples from Room A, one from Room B, one from Room C, one from Room D, one from Courtyard E, one from Room F, one from Room G, two from Room H and one from Courtyard I. By context type, there are eight suprafloor samples, three

While the NISP within each of these buildings is low, there are clear differences in the patterns of consumption between the inhabitants of Operation 71

Table 2. Catalogue of species recovered from Operation K and absolute counts.

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Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate fire installation (hearth or tannur) samples, and four pit samples. A catalogue of all the species recovered and their absolute counts is provided in Table 2. Because the central research question for this study focuses on the functional use of the structures in Operation K, the archaeobotanical data were examined with an eye toward detecting any discernible patterns of plant use in the intramural spaces of the excavated area. Absolute counts were obtained for the basic categories of plant profile composition—cereals, chaff, pulses, fruits, nuts, and wild plants—in order to ascertain any broad signatures of plant use. Ratios of cultigens to wild plants, as well as cereals to chaff, were also calculated, to look for additional measures of domesticated plant use and crop processing, respectively.

Although the one floor sample from Room C only recovered 415 plant items, the density of plant remains from this space is actually much higher than that observed from Rooms A and B. Room C produced 18.9 plant items per liter of soil, while Room A produced 7.53 and Room B produced 10.47. Among the identified plant remains in Room C, 46% were wild plants and 32% were items of chaff, a very different profile from that obtained from the samples in Rooms A and B. There are 0.29 cereal grains to every item of chaff, and 0.22 cultivated seeds to every wild plant seed. Grains of barley are conspicuously absent. Instead, Room C contained low counts of einkorn and unspecified cereals, common vetch and unspecified pulses, grape and nut. Consequently, measures of edible plant storage and consumption are very weak in Room C. Instead, crop processing may have been a more regular activity in this space.

In Room A, there are 1.68 cultivated seeds to every wild plant seed, suggesting that the storage and consumption of plant foods took place in this space. Edible plants found in this area include barley, emmer, einkorn, wheat, rye, chickpea, grass pea, field pea, lentil, broad bean, common vetch, hackberry, fig, and grape. In addition, there are several species of edible wild plants that may be indicative of home gardening or local foraging: wild garlic, chamomile, wild carrot, wild mint, purslane, and fenugreek. Cereals are the most prolific plant domesticates in Room A, with barley the predominate grain. If the fragments and pedicles of grape are removed from the absolute count, then pulses are the penultimate crop in Room A, with the greatest representation from lentil. The cultivated legumes are followed by seeds of grape and fig, and small counts of hackberry and an unidentifiable nutshell. Items of cereal chaff make up 14% of the overall assemblage in Room A. While 40 items of chaff come from the tannur in Room A (where it may be the remains of dung fuel), the preponderance of the chaff, 94 items, comes from the floors of Room A, where it is more likely to be evidence of indoor crop processing. There are 3.3 cereal grains to every item of chaff, a ratio that suggests that this was not a location of intense crop processing activity.

In Courtyard I north of Room C, one would expect that if any plant activity was taking place, it would be crop processing. The 231 plant items recovered from this space are dominated by wild plant seeds, 58% of the identified assemblage, followed by chaff remains at 21%. This could indeed be the profile of a crop processing area. The imprint of food consumption was slight, with only 14 seeds of edible plants recovered. These plants included barley, possibly broomcorn millet, and grape. In sum, Courtyard I may have been a location for crop processing, but assuredly was not a space for regular food storage or consumption activities. In Room D, indeterminate cereal and barley grains make up 33% of the assemblage. Seeds of wild plants represent another 32% of the plant profile, and 22% of the assemblage comes from cereal chaff, all of which derives from different species of wheat. Five indeterminate large legume seeds and seven items of grape and nut shell each account for less than 1% of Room D’s identified plant remains. Altogether, there are 1.42 cultivated plant seeds for every wild plant seed, and 1.52 cereal grains per item of chaff. From this limited assemblage, Room D appears to have been a location for crop processing, plant food storage, and consumption.

The single archaeobotanical sample from the floor of Room B produced half as many cereal grains as Room A. Still, Room B contained barley (again, the primary grain), emmer, einkorn and an unspecified wheat, lentil, field pea, bitter vetch, common vetch, safflower, fig, grape and unidentifiable nut shell. The ratio of cultivated to wild plants drops significantly in Room B to 0.42, possibly signifying less plant storage and consumption activity in this space. The proportion of cereal chaff in Room B is higher than that in Room A, 18% of the overall assemblage. In addition, there are 1.9 cereal grains to every item of chaff. Compared to Room A, then, Room B appears to be a site of greater crop processing activity, and, relative to Room A, less plant consumption.

Although the plant profile for Courtyard E derives from a single soil sample, from a pit, it nonetheless closely resembles the assemblages from Rooms A and B that were primarily comprised of suprafloor samples. In Courtyard E, cereal grains constitute 44% of the assemblage, including barley, wheat, millet, and rye. Cereals are followed by wild plants, which represent 34% of the identified plant remains. Thirteen percent of the plant items from Courtyard E are barley and wheat chaff. A wide variety of fruit, nut, and oil taxa are present (safflower, fig, grape, and unidentifiable 73

No Place Like Home nut), forming 6% of the assemblage. Finally, 4% of the collection comes from pulses, among which lentil and bitter vetch were identifiable. There are 1.57 cultivated plant seeds for every wild plant seed, and 3.47 cereal grains to every item of chaff. The evidence suggests, then, that the occupants of Courtyard E engaged in plant food storage and consumption, with some crop processing taking place as well.

or prepared foods. Instead, there is evidence that they engaged in a certain amount of crop processing and cooking. Rather than elucidating a unique profile of barracks-specific plant use, the data from Operation K suggests more normative, domestic plant use activity. While the pattern in Operation K resembled that of a domestic residence from an archaeobotanical perspective, the situation in Operation Q was quite different, providing support for our interpretation that the gate area was not residential, but rather a working place where guards would have taken shifts before returning to a barracks to sleep. Thirty-one soil samples from Operation Q were analyzed by Rosenzweig (2016) and they show a considerably different pattern both from the archaeobotanical remains of the Operation K barracks, as well as from all other domestic residences excavated at Ziyaret Tepe. The overall composition of the Operation Q archaeobotanical samples showed cereals to represent 31% of all taxa, while weedy taxa, non-cultigens, comprised 61% (Rosenzweig 2016). Rosenzweig interpreted these samples to consist largely of the debris from dung fuel, probably for fires. That dung remains were found broadly suggested to Rosenzweig that dung fuel waste was spread from indoor fires onto the surrounding floors during regular sweeping. The plant remains generally were a composite of the remains of forage and fodder for grazing livestock. Of the grains and chaff, barley remains are predominant by a ratio of 2.5:1, which Rosenzweig interprets as the result of barley’s use as livestock fodder, demonstrating the imperial dependence upon animal husbandry, although barley was also listed as the grain used as soldier’s rations as well. The weedy taxa further provided evidence for pastoral practices, as many plant species found in Operation Q were available from late spring to early fall (Rosenzweig 2016: 323). In short, the archaeobotanical remains from the gate tell us much more about the animals passing through, and the use of their by-products as fuel, than they do about the diets of human left to guard the southern entrance to Tušhan’s lower town.

The tannur in Room F was dense in plant material: 117.7 plant items per liter of soil. In this installation, 64% of the plant material is wild plant seeds, followed by 17% chaff. Given the context, the preponderance of wild plants and chaff would be a signal of the burning of dung as fuel. Among the domesticated crops represented in the tannur are barley, einkorn and free-threshed wheat, lentil, field pea, fig, grape and unidentifiable nut. As a space outfitted with a tannur which contained the remains of edible plants, Room F was, minimally, an area of food production. The plant remains from the pit in Room G are more ambiguous. Presuming that the pit held plant remains discarded after use, then the ratio of 0.76 cultivated plant seeds to wild plant seeds does not suggest that Room G was a location for regular plant food storage or consumption. There are also 1.53 cereal grains to every item of cereal chaff, giving no strong indication that Room G was a site of crop processing activity either. With a total of only 195 plant items from this context, the functionality of Room G as it relates to plant use remains obscure. In Room H, two soil samples were collected from two different pit features, together containing 251 plant items. Like the pit in Room G, these pits are believed to have held discarded refuse, including plant remains, and therefore constitute indirect evidence of plant use in the room. There are only 0.32 cultivated plant seeds to every wild plant seed, a very low measure for plant food storage or consumption activity in a room. Chaff remains are also limited, with just nine items making up 11% of the identified plant assemblage. There are 2.11 cereal grains to every item of chaff. Based on the pit samples, then, Room G does not contain strong evidence for crop processing either.

Assessing the fit between model and data This chapter has re-examined the field interpretation of the buildings in Operation K as barracks. That interpretation seemed logical given the position of Tušhan as a regional capital and military center on the northern frontier of the Neo-Assyrian empire, and the location of Operation K near a major city gate. By reviewing cuneiform texts and the excavations of other military architecture from this period, we were able to distinguish two possible versions of barracks ‘on the ground’ within the Assyrian empire, which we could then compare with our findings. Of course, we realized from the outset that such models are vast oversimplifications of the myriad arrangements that

The rooms sampled for plant remains in Operation K therefore suggest plant food storage and consumption in Rooms A, B, D, and Courtyard E. There are signals of crop processing in Rooms A, B, C, D, and Courtyards E and I. None of the rooms analyzed demonstrate a unique reliance on barley, presumed to be the staple ration of billeted soldiers. In fact, garden edibles show up throughout the rooms of Operation K, suggesting that residents took the time to grow their own supplemental plant foods. There is also no evidence that the occupants of Operation K received pre-cooked 74

Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate existed across the empire. Here our models serve as heuristic devices allowing us to test data against hypotheses drawn from other datasets. The data available from the excavations at Ziyaret Tepe, now completed, include small finds, ceramics, and faunal and botanical datasets that can be combined for a fresh evaluation of our initial, preliminary conclusions with regard to the area. Table 1 (above) detailed two models of barracks, using Fort Shalmaneser and Usu Aska as examples, and set out parameters of two models in terms of architecture and building function, the origin of the soldiers, and the predicted archaeological assemblage in terms of small finds, ceramics, and ecofacts. Above we have compared these data sets between Operation K, our presumed barracks, and Operation Q, the city gate; below we examine the results from our analyses and their fit with the two models.

confirm that food preparation, and particularly cooking, did indeed take place at the location. The pithoi found also fit this model. The evidence of the ceramics is further supported by the presence of the grinding stones, and the tannurs in Rooms A and C and in Courtyard E. The small finds from Operation K, iron pins, bronze rings, terracotta discs, beads and tokens, the latter perhaps used as gaming pieces, are consistent with an occupational interpretation, although not diagnostic of either model. In the examination of the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical evidence from Operation K, we documented the quality and variety of the foods consumed in these rooms. In both models, rations are provided, but in Model A these consist of cooked rations, while in Model B we envisage a daily allowance of grain, allocations of meat (cooked or otherwise) and other occasional additional components. In both cases the diet could be supplemented by soldiers taking the opportunity to grow their own vegetables and exploit local wildlife resources. The wild fauna from Operation K is quite diverse, and shows a high proportion of lower-status fauna such as hares and reptiles. This suggests that the resident soldiers enriched their diet with low quality animals from the surrounding landscape. Supplementing their diet in this way was a characteristic aspect of life at the gate. Archaeobotanical evidence indicates crop processing in multiple rooms and plant food storage and consumption in others. The rooms in Operation K are not defined by overwhelming proportions of barley, as may be expected from straight rations, but rather contain a predominance of garden plants, suggesting that the residents also grew some of their own food, which they then processed and cooked. Both the animal and plant evidence for a military diet more closely resemble the expectations for Model B.

In Model A, we suggested that the buildings were primarily for sleeping, storage of personal items, and communal activities. We expected some variation from the standard house plan such as long narrow, uniform rooms, a lack of ovens for cooking and pithoi for large-scale food storage, and the presence of artifacts including military gear, clothing items, and even agricultural tools. Operation K met some of these expectations: firstly, the location of the buildings adjacent to the city wall and nearby the city gate; and secondly, the general plan of rooms arranged around a central courtyard. The differences, however, from our predicted Model A and Operation K are more numerous. Operation K has two tannurs in each of its two phases, in addition to hearths, the former for cooking and the latter for heat in the winter. Our initial interpretation assumed that the soldiers were housed in Operation K and provided with rations cooked elsewhere, but both the ceramic and the environmental evidence indicates food production and processing at the location; nor would we expect to find grinding stones or large storage vessels in the Model A scenario. Overall, then, Operation K does not fit well with the expectations of Model A.

Conclusions Overall, our findings support the idea that Operation K was, in fact, a barracks. More precisely, we suggest that it mostly likely served to house local soldiers in a quasidomestic setting: where they slept, ate, and performed other communal activities together when on active duty in Tušhan. Such a barracks block could also be used more intensively in times of war, or when larger military operations were being conducted in the area. Even more specifically, with its small rooms flanking a large open space and its position near a city gate, it is quite plausible that Operation K was a facility for the use of the guards stationed at the gate. Of course, this was not on the scale of the great arsenals at Fort Shalmaneser and the other imperial capitals, where the barracks sections were just one element of huge complexes built around truly vast courtyards. Rather, it was a much more limited building for the very specific purpose of serving the needs of the soldiers stationed at

An alternative, Model B, posits that the barracks were used as quarters for the use of soldiers who were periodically called up for service but usually lived elsewhere, presumably in the general vicinity of Tušhan. This scenario hypothesizes that the soldiers may have been issued with rations in the form of grain, meat allocations, and occasional other items, but not cooked meals. In this case we would expect to find ovens, cooking pots, grinding stones, and other utensils for food preparation. In terms of ceramics, we would expect to find a range of preparation and serving dishes, and some large storage jars, sufficient to see the men through their period of duty. In terms of the ceramics actually recovered from Operation K, the proportions of cooking wares and serving and preparation forms 75

No Place Like Home the gate. The comparison with Usu Aska is interesting, for while both are military installations on the frontier, Ziyaret Tepe was a regional urban center, whereas Usu Aska was an isolated fort commanding a strategic mountain pass. In formulating these insights into the daily life of soldiers in distant parts of the empire, we are adding new layers to the ever-emerging picture of the Assyrian military machine.

the Analysis of Zooarchaeological Remains. PhD Thesis, Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Greenfield, T.L. and T.C. Matney. Forthcoming. Stews, ewes, and social cues: Commoner diets at NeoAssyrian Tušhan, in L. Recht and C. Tsouparopoulou (eds) Fierce Lions and Fat Tailed Sheep: Animal Encounters in the Ancient Near East. Cambridge: UK: MacDonald Institute Monographs. Greenfield-Jongsma, T.L. and H.J. Greenfield. 2014. Bronze and Iron Age subsistence changes in the Upper Tigris: Zooarchaeology of Operation E at Ziyaret Tepe, southeastern Turkey in B. De Cupere, V. Linseele, and S. Hamilton-Dyer (eds) Archaeozoology of the Near East X. Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on the Archaeozoology of South-western Asia and Adjacent Areas. Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement Series 44: 121–144. Leuven: Peeters Publishing. Gross, M. 2015. Food and drink for the palace: the management of foodstuffs in Neo-Assyrian times and beyond. State Archive of Assyria Bulletin 21: 21–45. Guarducci, G. 2018. Empire of conflict, empire of compromise, in C.W. Tyson and V.R. Herrmann (eds) Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period: 65–96. Louisville: University Press of Colorado. Hesse, B. 1995. Animal husbandry and human diet in the ancient Near East, in J.M. Sasson (ed.) Civilizations of the Ancient Near East: 197–232. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Lanfranchi, G. B. and S. Parpola (eds). 1990. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Luukko, M. 2012. The Correspondence of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud. Helsinki: The NeoAssyrian Text Corpus Project. Luukko, M. and G. Van Buylaere. 2002. The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon. State Archives of Assyria 16. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Macginnis, J., M.W. Monroe, D. Wicke, and T.C. Matney. 2014. Artifacts of cognition: the use of clay tokens in a Neo-Assyrian provincial administration. Cambridge Journal of Archaeology 24: 289–306. Macginnis, J., K.R. Rasheed, B.B. Ismail, A. Dusting, D. Kertai,T.L. Greenfield, G. Hazell, T.C. Matney and A.J. Heda. Forthcoming. Excavations of an Assyrian fort at Usu Aska in Iraqi Kurdistan, in T. Dezsö (ed.) Proceedings of the Colloquium on the Archaeology of the Rania Plain held at Budapest, February 9th 2020. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University. Mallowan, M.E.L. 1966. Nimrud and its Remains. London: The University Press. Matney, T.C. 2010. Material culture and identity: Assyrians, Aramaeans, and the indigenous peoples of Iron Age southeastern Anatolia, in S.R. Steadman and J.C. Ross (eds) Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East: 129–147. Sheffield: Equinox.

References Cited Bar-Oz, G. 2004. Epipalaeolithic Subsistence Strategies in the Levant: A Zooarchaeological Perspective. Boston, MA: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc. Berthon, R. 2011. Animal Exploitation in the Upper Tigris River Valley (Turkey) between the 3rd and the 1st Millennia, Kiel, Germany, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Ur- und Frühgeschichte Institüt, Christian-Albrechts University. Curtis, J. E. 2013. An Examination of Late Assyrian Metal Work with Special Reference to Nimrud. With an Appendix on Scientific Analysis by Matthew J. Ponting. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Dalley, S. and J.N. Postgate. 1984a. The Tablets From Fort Shalmaneser. London: British School Of Archaeology in Iraq. Dalley, S. and J.N. Postgate. 1984b. Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud: The Tablets from Fort Shalmaneser III. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Deszö, T. 2016. The Assyrian Army. II: Recruitment and Logistics. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd Press. Fales, F.M. and M. Rigo. 2014. Everyday life and food practices in Assyrian military encampments, in L. Milano and F. Bertoldi (eds) Paleonutrition and Food Practices in the Ancient Near East: Towards a Multuidisciplinary Approach, Proceedings of the International Meeting Methods and Perspectives Applied to the Study of Food Practices in the Ancient Near East Venezia, June 15th–17th, 2006: 413–437. Padova: SARGON. Gilbert, A. S. 2002. The native fauna of the ancient Near East, in B.J. Collins (ed.) A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East: 1–75. Leiden: Brill. Grayson, A. K. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, I (1114–859 BC). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Greenfield, T. and M. Rosenzweig. 2016. Assyrian provincial life: A comparison of botanical and faunal remains from Tušhan (Ziyaret Tepe), southeastern Turkey, in R.A. Stucky, O. Kaelin, and H. Mathys (eds) Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 9–13 June 2014: 305–321. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Greenfield, T. L. 2014. Feeding Empires: The Political Economy of a Neo Assyrian Provincial Capital through 76

Timothy Matney et al.: Chapter 5. Living at the Gate Matney, T.C., T.L. Greenfield, B. Hartenberger, C. Jalbrzikowski, K. Köroğlu, J. Macginnis, A. Marsh, W. Monroe, M. Rosenzweig, K. Sauer, and D. Wicke. 2011. Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe, Diyarbakır Province, 2009–2010 Seasons. Anatolica 37: 67–114. Matney, T.C., T.L. Greenfield, B. Hartenberger, A. Keskin, K. Köroğlu, J. Macginnis, W. Monroe, T. Vorderstrasse, and D. Wicke. 2009. Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe 2007–2008. Anatolica 35: 37–84. Matney, T.C., J. Macginnis, D. Wicke, and K. Köroğlu. 2017. Ziyaret Tepe: Exploring the Anatolian Frontier of the Assyrian Empire,. Edinburgh: Cornucopia Press. Matney, T.C., J. Macginnis, D. Wicke, and K. Köroğlu. 2020. Eighteen years on the frontiers of Assyria: the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project, in K. Gavagnin and R. Palermo (eds) Imperial Connections: Interactions and Expansion from Assyria to the Roman Period: Proceedings of the 5th “Broadening Horizons” Conference, (Udine 5–8 June 2017) : 85–118. Trieste: EUT. Matney, T.C. and L. Rainville, with contributions by T. Demko, S. K., K. Köroğlu, H. Mcdonald, J. Macginnis, K. Nicoll, S. Parpola, M. Reimann, M. Roaf, P. Schmidt and J. Szuchman 2005. Archaeological investigations at Ziyaret Tepe, 2003–2004. Anatolica 31: 19–68. Monroe, M.W. 2016. Tokens and Tablets: Administrative practice on the edge of the empire – the evidence from Ziyaret Tepe (Tušhan), in J. MacGinnis, D. Wicke, and T.L. Greenfield (eds) The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire: 41–48. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute Monographs. Nováček, K., N.A. Amin and M. Melčák. 2013. A medieval city within Assyrian walls: the continuity of the town of Arbīl in northern Mesopotamia. Iraq 74: 1–42. Oates, D. 1959. Fort Shalmaneser: an interim report. Iraq 21: 98–129. Oates, D. 1961. The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalhu), 1960. Iraq 23: 1–14. Oates, D. 1962. The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalhu), 1961. Iraq 24: 1–25. Oates, D. 1963. The Excavations at Nimrum (Kalhu), 1962. Iraq 25: 6-37. Oates, D. 2005. Studies in the Ancient History of Northern Iraq, London, British Institute for the Study of Iraq. Oates, J. and D. Oates. 2001. Nimrud, An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed, London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Oded, B. 1979. Mass Deportations and Deportees in the NeoAssyrian Empire. Weisbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag Parker, B. J. 1997. Garrisoning the empire: aspects of the construction and maintenance of forts on the Assyrian frontier. Iraq 59: 77–87.

Parker, B. J. 2001. Mechanics of Empire: The Northern Frontier of Assyria as a Case Study in Imperial Dynamics. Helsinki: The NeoAssyrian Text Corpus Project. Parker, B. J. 2003. Archaeological manifestations of empire: Assyria’s imprint on southeastern Anatolia. American Journal of Archaeology 107: 525–557. Parpola, S. 2008. Cuneiform Texts from Ziyaret Tepe (Tuşhan), 2002–2003. State Archive of Assyria Bulletin XVII: 1–113. Postgate, J.N. 2000. The Assyrian Army at Zamua. Iraq 62: 89-108. Rosenzweig, M. 2014. Imperial Environments: The Politics of Agricultural Practice at Ziyaret Tepe, Turkey in the First Millennium BCE. PhD Thesis, Chicago: University of Chicago. Rosenzweig, M. 2016. Cultivating subjects in the NeoAssyrian empire. Journal of Social Archaeology 16: 307–334. Saggs, H.W.F. 2001. The Nimrud Letter, 1952. London: England, British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Tadmor, H.C.M. and S. Yamada. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (727–722 BC), Kings of Assyria. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Wapnish, P. and B. Hesse. 1991. Faunal remains from Tel Dan: perspectives on animal production at a village, urban and ritual center. ArchéoZoologia 4: 9–86. Wattenmaker, P. 1998. Household and State in Upper Mesopotamia: Specialized Economy and the Social Uses of Goods in an Early Complex Society. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press. Wilken, B. 2000. Faunal remains from Tell Afis (Syria), in M. Mashkour, A. Choyke, H. Buitenhuis, and F. Poplin (eds) Archaeozoology of the Near East IV B: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on the Archaeozoology of Southwestern Asia and Adjacent Areas: 5–14. Groningen: The Netherlands: ARC. Zeder, M.A. 1988. Understanding urban process through the study of specialized subsistence economy in the Near East. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 7: 1–56. Zeder, M.A. 1991. Feeding cities: specialized animal economy in the Ancient Near East, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Zeder, M.A. 1998. Regional patterns of animal exploitation in the Khabur Basin, 7000 to 1500 B.C., in P. Anreiter, L. Bartosiewicz, E. Jerem, E. and W. Meid (eds) Man and the Animal World: Studies in Archaeozoology, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Palaeolinguistics in Memoriam Sándor Bökönyi, Series Major Vol. 8: 569–582. Budapest: Archaeolingua. Zeder, M.A. 2003. Food provisioning in urban societies: a view from northern Mesopotamia, in M. Smith (ed.) The Social Construction of Ancient Cities: 156–183. Washington: Smithsonian Press.

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Chapter 6. Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective Laura Battini Never before, as in this last year, has the house truly become a multi-semantic space. The current pandemic has accustomed us to living in our residences in different forms: as a living space, social space, school space, workspace, medical space … paraphrasing a recent article (Wiersma 2020), today we are a housecentric society like the societies of the ancient Near East were. Even in ancient Mesopotamia, the house is a complex and multi-semantic space1 and moreover subject to physical, functional and symbolic changes.2 Addressing all the values of the house in an article would be impossible or at best superficial. The present contribution therefore limits itself to considering the Neo-Babylonian houses of Ur in social terms, which— as suggested by Meskell—can be intended as ‘a broad range of approaches dealing with the social’ (2001: 9). Few studies have been devoted to the Mesopotamian house as a social space (Baker 2010, 2014, 2015; Brusasco 1999–2000; Stone 2015). For the rest of the ancient Near East, however, this aspect has been more frequently developed, especially in recent years (Müller 2015; Parker and Foster 2012; Steadman 2015; Yasur-Landau et al. 2011), with a predominantly ethnic aim: in areas culturally subject to foreign powers, studies try to define local practices and their relationships with the ‘imposed’ practices to understand the exchanges, emulations, and refusals of the foreign power (for ex. Brody 2015; Stein 1999; cf. in this volume Damm). For Mesopotamia, less than a half dozen people have been interested in the social aspect of houses, most of them with profound uncertainties of method and therefore of results.3 The theory of social accessibility has Household archaeology is an invaluable means to approach the life of ancient people, their use of space, their everyday behaviors, their economic practices, as well as the composition of the household (see Brody 2009, 2011, 2015; Gillespie 2007; Parker and Foster 2012; Routledge 2013; Steadman 2005; Tringham 2012; Yasur-Landau et al. 2011). Huge progress has thus been achieved, especially in the archaeology of the Levant. In Mesopotamia the archeology of the house is still underdeveloped probably due to the complexity of the urban context in which the houses were excavated. The first international conference on the subject (Veenhof 1996) brought a new understanding to the exchanges between assyriologists and archaeologists. 2  On the analogy of buildings as biological bodies, with a birth, a floruit and a death, see Margueron (1986, 1996). 3  I have already written an article (Battini 2010) on some of the theories derived from other disciplines and applied acritically to 1 

No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 78–91

been uncritically applied to Syrian and Mesopotamian houses and the results are unsurprisingly irrelevant and even deceptive (cf. Battini 2010). Other studies took into consideration archaeological and textual data but still in an uncritical way, with misleading results.4 The work of every historian is to interpret the sources, not to superimpose them with modern pseudo theories to arrive at aberrations (cf. Battini 2010), and incorporate and interpret different sources whenever possible. For a social analysis of houses, for example, the interpretation must be based on textual, cadastral, architectural, and archaeological analysis: only through a multi-faceted approach can one get closer to the reconstruction of the past in a more founded way. Of course, the archaeological data are often fragmentary, incomplete, misinterpreted, or of ambiguous interpretation (cf. Margueron 1986, 1991, 1996, 2012). Textual data are subject to different interpretations, and already the transcription from an ancient language to a modern translation leads to inevitable imprecisions (cf. Villard 2006, especially for houses). But a study that starts from a good hermeneutic analysis of the data currently available,5 without adhering to more or less recent fashions, is the only way to advance research, and in the present case to understand one of the many aspects of the house. If the house has accompanied humans for ten millennia, it is because it has become not a singlular, but rather a multiple, space. Considering the social aspects of Neo-Babylonian houses means understanding how the house was inhabited, how it was used, and how it fit into the urban context. My analysis is strongly influenced by current works published by university sociologists on contemporary houses (e.g., Cavailhès 2005; Chagas Cavalcani 2018; Clifford 1976; Damon 2017; DietrichRagon and Jacobs 2015; Magri 1993, 2006; Maleas 2018; Tugault 1968). Their questions and methods seem to me Mesopotamian houses. To the references cited in that article can be added Stone 2015 and Baker 2010, 2015. 4  I am referring especially to Stone (1987, 1996, 2015) and Baker (2010, 2014, 2015). I have already explained my reservations about Stone’s arguments and method (Battini 2010 and 2014). 5  I mean models of interpretation deduced from archaeological and historical disciplines themselves (architectural and volumetric analyses, context and quantity of installations/objects, circulation system, philological analyses, topographic studies) and the inductive reasoning method (cf. Battini 2010).

Laura Battini: Chapter 6. Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective to open up new and original perspectives on ancient houses. The choice of Neo-Babylonian houses depends on the relative wealth of archaeological data and on the possibility—which is not so frequent—to compare within the same city the Neo-Babylonian data with those from the Old-Babylonian period, which I have already studied in depth.

Ur houses as internal social space In comparison with the Old Babylonian period, few NeoBabylonian houses at Ur are known in their full extent, but there are a sufficient number to attempt an analysis which has some meaning. Seven houses were found at Ur:6 four completetly excavated, with most of the rooms exhibiting internal connexions (Houses 1, 2, 5 and 7); and three partially excavated, known primarily at the level of their foundations (Houses 3, 4 and 6).7 They are all large, the smallest one of the fully conserved houses has a surface area of 414 m2, the largest 1656 m2. They are located in the area labled NH, which is immediately west of the neighborhood AH (Figure 1).8

Methodology The method used in this study is historical, therefore inductive, and the only one that guarantees to start from the remains of the past in order to get to an understanding of them, without starting from hypotheses to prove their existence in the past. The analyses of contemporary sociologists provide suggestions for framing and interpreting the data of the past (Cavailhès 2005; Chagas Cavalcani 2018; Clifford 1976; Damon 2017; Dietrich-Ragon and Jacobs 2015; Magri 1993, 2006; Maleas 2018; Tugault 1968).

Size of the House In comparison with the Old Babylonian period, when the average size of houses at Ur is 140 m2 (Battini 1999: 161–163, 349–351, 396–399), Neo-Babylonian houses are truly impressive: the smallest one (House 5)9 is the size of the biggest one at Ur in the Old Babylonian period. Major size implies an abundance of rooms and complexity of their organization. Neo-Babylonian Ur testifies to a directly proportional relationship between size and number of rooms (Table 1, Figure 2): of the fully conserved houses, the biggest one (House 1, 1656 m2)10 has the greatest number of rooms (40), the smallest one (House 5, 414 m2) has the smallest number of rooms (14).

The current field of sociology, however, is much richer than the archaeological field because sociologists can study human interactions within society as they occur today: therefore they can study social actors, actions, facts, identities, cultures, norms, values, classes, and networks through investigating and analyzing living peoples. For the houses of the past, not all these elements can be taken into account, because the data are insufficient, and what remains is only a part of the house, its objects, and furniture. So what can be deduced from ancient houses in social terms?

Is the building’s size related to social status? And can it provide information on family composition? In studies of the ancient Near East these questions are often antithetical. Because if it is interpreted that the size of a house structure increases with its number of inhabitants,11 then size will have nothing

Since the house is inhabited by a group of people, it is in itself a social space. But being precisely in an urban context, it has links with other social individuals. In fact, the house already presents itself in the urban context in a form of opposition (Magri 1993, 2006); the external domestic walls represent the individual as opposed to the collective: if the city is open to everyone—albeit in probably socialized and gendered forms—the house is the place where only certain people can enter. Therefore the house, born as a physical partition of social space, is transformed into a social contrast of private vs. public. Each house accomplishes this differently from the other (Magri 2006): these differences can be taken as a basis for explaining social differences, in the perception of the house (Damon 2017), in its practices (Damon 2017; Magri 2006; Tugault 1968), as well as in the values it carries (Cavailhès 2005; Clifford 1976).

The final excavation reports (Woolley 1962: 44–48) were published some thirty years after the cessation of excavations. Two new analyses on the Neo-Babylonian houses of Ur were made in the 90’s, therefore there still some thirty years after Woolley: Castel 1992 (: 35, 38–39, 45, 58, 72–73, 88–89, 92, 94) and Miglus 1999 (: 179–205, 311–312). 7  House 3 could have a series of rooms to the west of the present limit and therefore have an area of about 1000 m2. 8  There is only a topographical map of where the NH excavation area is located (Woolley 1931: pl.46) and it was presented in a very preliminary report of excavations (an article in Antiquary Journal). This plan was then added to by Moorey in Woolley’s book Ur of the Chaldees (page 182), published in 1982, with many useful additions. The general layout of area NH on this plan is not the same as that represented in the plan of individual houses. It is possible that Woolley unearthed more than seven houses, but did not consider it necessary to publish them all, as he did for the Old Babylonian houses, when only three of the twelve to fifteen domestic areas excavated were published (cf. Battini 1999: 3–5). 9  And one can not exclude that originally it was much larger, since the excavations stopped at a section of the neighborhood. 10  Castell (1992: 38) reports a surface area of 1220 m2 and Miglus (1999: 341) a surface area of 1490 m2. But repeated calculations based on the plan always give 1656 m2. 11  Lastly Al-Ibadi 2019: 229 and for previous references see Battini 2014. This idea arises from anthropologists and the method can be useful for periods without texts. According to Narroll (1962: 6 

But even inside its confines, the house is inhabited by social individuals of different ages, sexes, and social status. How did these individuals experience these differences? This chapter will first deal with the house as an internal social space and then observe its external interactions with the urban context. 79

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Figure 1. Topographical map of Ur with corrected plan of the temenos and area NH (after Battini 1999: fig.6)

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Laura Battini: Chapter 6. Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective Table 1. Size and number of rooms in descending order (by Laura Battini) House

Number of rooms Dimensions

1

40

7

33

(34/40.7 m x 45.3/33.3 m) + (18/ 13.3 m x 12 m)

43.3/39 m x 36.7 m

Ratio

Surface

1/1.3

1656 m2 (1468+188 m2)

1.1

1510 m2

2

29 + 1

33.3 m x 32.5 m

1

1082 m2

3

19

33 m x 14.3/15.7 m

2.2

maybe partly excavated, 495 m2

5 6 4

9 or 14 11 7?

-3 houses with 30–40 rooms -3 houses with 19–11 rooms -1 house with 7 rooms

31 m x 14.7/12 m

2.3

40.7 m x 13.3 m

3.1

19 m x 16.6 m

-4 houses as wide as long (ratio 1-1.3) -3 houses twice (or more) as long as they are wide (2.2-3.1)

to say about the economic status of the household. Most archaeologists generally think that a house was inhabited by an extended family, a non-nuclear one,12 sometimes even with various pater familias living in the same building. Therefore an extended family could afford little effort to support the construction costs which are necessarily more important for larger houses. I have already demonstrated (Battini 1999: 385– 392 and esp. 2014: 3–26) that the few ‘demographic’ texts indicate the presence of nuclear families at least in the Mesopotamian cities of historical times. And that the price related to a house structure depends on the quantity and quality of materials used as well as the time and wages of the builders of the house (Battini 1999: 393–401, 2019: 111–124).

1.1

414 m2

PART OF THE HOUSE= 541 m2 PART OF THE HOUSE= 315 m2

-3 houses more than 1000 m2 (42.85%) -1 house 400 m2 (14.3%) -3 partially excavated houses (42.85%)

understandable: these houses are 200 m south of the southern entrance to the Neo-Babylonian temenos. The dimensions are in between common Neo-Babylonian houses (280 m2)13 and small palaces. The average surface area of common Neo-Babylonian houses is twice that of the Old Babylonian period and in fact much lower than that of contemporary Ur houses. Thus, it is possible that these domestic structures housed families of high priests, or even the elite of the city. It is worth mentioning that only Babylon, the capital of the empire, and Ur have houses so large that they exceed 1000 m2 in the Neo-Babylonian period. Stability of Construction The stability of architectural construction is an important mark of deep-seated human codes of behavior (Davidson 2009; Steadman 2005; Steadman et al. 2019). While the Neo-Babylonian houses are larger in size than Old Babylonian ones, they remain built on the Old Babylonian model14 (Figure 3): that included a reception space,15 which opened onto the courtyard (tarbaṣu, Baker 2015: 377; Watai 2015: 360) that occupied an important part of the house; an entrance space (nērebu, CAD N: 175b); spaces dedicated to internal production (bīt nuḫatimmu, CAD N: 316a), storage (bīt qātē, Watay 2015: 361); or commercial exchanges.16

So, the size of the house is related to the social and economic status of the household (for contemporary times see: Cavailhès 2005; Damon 2017; Tugault 1968; for ancient times see: Battini 1999; Warbarton 2009). This is supported, moreover, by the presence of tablets in more than half of the Ur houses (four out of seven, 57.1%). In this case, although they were built from the same basic materials—mudbrick or baked brick—the houses showed disparity also in the complexity of their layout and the proportion of unfired bricks or bricks used for walls and furniture (cf. Battini 1999 for the Old Babylonian period). Even the urban location of this domestic neighborhood becomes more clearly

13  I calculated this average based on houses from Nippur, Babylon, Ur, Uruk, and Isin presented in table 27, p.341 of Miglus 1999, without taking into account the 8 houses, 5 of Babylon and 3 of Ur, which are 1000 m2 or more. 14  The differences highlighted by Woolley (1962: 44) between Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian houses are not decisive: the addition of one or two rooms to the reception complex does not mean the suppression of the courtyard/reception room module. Even the supposed removal of the kitchen from the courtyard cannot be affirmed based on a single house (House 1). 15  It is difficult to determine whether it was bīt iltāni (as proposed by Baker 2015: 377), bīt šūti, bīt amurri or bīt šadî. Because they only mean respectively: ‘northern part,’ ‘southern part,’ ‘western part,’ and ‘eastern part’ (Watay 2015: 360). 16  Perhaps it can be identified with the bīt kāri, but according to Watay 2015: 362 it was a space connected to slaves.

587–589) 10 m2 is the minimum living space for one person. For the Near East 7–10 m2 are often considered the minimum living space (e.g. Pfälzner 2001: 28, and 1996: 117–127). But just if one considers a large contemporary city, including suburbs, it is clear that square meters do not equate to the number of inhabitants in an urban context. So Naroll’s method is not useful for historical periods; it is also invalidated because of the way a living space is historically, biologically, and socially conditioned (cf. Cassellberry 1974: 117–122). And when there are texts, it is confimred that there was no average living space per inhabitant in Mesopotamian houses (cf. Battini 2014). 12  Specifically for Ur in Neo-Babylonian period, see the recent article of Al-Ibadi (2019: 225–241) who comes to conclusions that are more than unsatisfactory because they are not proven and are even antihistorical. For prior references see Battini 2014 and 2010.

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Figure 2. Neo-Babylonian houses at Ur (after Woolley 1962: pl.71)

All seven houses found at Ur appear to be of the courtyard type. Since the Old Babylonian period, this type of house is much larger than both linear houses and tripartite ones. This is the most suitable design type to be used for exceptionally large houses. Beyond technical and construction reasons for the use of the courtyard house at Ur, there is also a symbolic one: this model is in fact socially suitable for an urban population that imitates the royal palace,17 and which therefore has important social pretensions.

archaeologists are stuck in two irreconcilable positions: rejection of a 3D reconstruction, or systematic reconstruction of at least one floor.18 This is not the place to enter into a discussion of this diatribe that hugely complicates the understanding of the past. I am convinced, however, that architectural space is, and is experienced as, a three-dimensional space (De Fusco 1967; Zevi 1956, 1997): archaeological excavations, on the other hand, typically bring to light a two-dimensional plan, which do not speak clearly to us, since we are used to experiencing living spaces three-dimensionally. So, it is helpful to produce threedimensional reconstructions,19 whether or not they include second floors. On the other hand, historical research follows a similar need for reconstructions:

Gender/Age/Status Space? In the absence of a complete house, with all its upper floors, an analysis of the gendered use of space turns out to be highly hypothetical (Hendon 2006; Kent 1990), because even the mere presence of a second floor practically doubles the available space. Now,

Woolley (1962: 44), on the contrary, attributed the widening of the ground floor and the loss of the second floor, without any architectural analysis,only guided by his prejudice: ‘The Larsa house is two storeys, the Neo-Babylonian house is but one storey high and makes up for its loss of height by its ampler ground area.’ 19  The importance of reconstructions has been underlined by Margueron in all his work, but especially: 1986, 1991, 1996, 1997, 2004, and 2012. See also Battini 1999, Callot 1983, 1985, 1994, 2011; Callot and Aurenche 1990. 18 

17  Cf. Battini (1999; Battini and Calvet 2003: 131–141). Woolley also recognized a close link between these houses and Belti-šalṭi-nannar’s palace: ‘In their general scheme the private buildings agree closely with that of the palace of Belti-šalṭi-nannar,’ (Woolley 1962: 45). Moreover, the houses have another feature in common with the palace: an external facade made up of saw-toothed walls.

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Figure 3. Reception system in the Neo-Babylonian houses at Ur (© Laura Battini)

floor.22 The relationship between habitable spaces and the walls that contain them show that the latter were able to withstand the height of a floor (cf. Margueron 1982, 1986, 1996). On the other hand, the mass of rubble fallen inside the houses makes it possible to restore the original height of the walls to at least 7 m. Finally, the presence of stairs/or rooms which, due to their size, their position inside the house, and the organization of their entrances can be identified with stair box, are further indications of the presence of a second story.23

historians try to return the missing passages of a partially corrupted text on the basis of remaining clues; or archaeologists try to find the initial shape of a broken vase, often based on mere sherds. Architecture must follow similar procedures, which only allows knowledge to advance. As for the Neo-Babylonian houses at Ur, multiple clues lead to the reconstruction of at least one upper floor, thus confirming the statements of contemporary texts and of Herodotus.20 The external walls are very thick; and, according to earthen architecture specialists (Guillaud and Houben 1989; Minke 201321), an earth wall can support a height that is 10 times that of the thickness. Thus, a 60 cm wall can support a height of 6 m, which is largely sufficient for a nice height for each

And yet, even if the upper floor existed, today we have difficulties understanding either the first floor, or the upper one. Because very few objects and furniture 22  I take 60 cm as an example because this measure has always been considered below the width neccesary to support an upper floor (cf. Stone 1987, 1996). 23  The idea that the existence of stairs does not demonstrate their use to go up to a second floor but rather to the terrace is specious and preconceived: neither hypothesis (going up to a second floor or going up to a terrace) is contradictory (Callot 1983, 1994; Margueron 1982, 1996, 2004). But when, in addition to the staircase, multiple technical elements described above are added, especially a ratio between the surface of the walls and the living area greater than 1, the existence of a second floor is strongly suggested.

20  For the contemporary texts see Watay 2015: 358 and 360–361. For the Neo-Assyrian period see Villard 2006: 521–528. And for the Old Babylonian period see Battini 1999: passim and particularly 230, 371– 384. 21  Guillaud and Houben 1989 is a book produced by CRATerre, the International Center for Earthen Construction (= Centre international de la construction en terre), which since 1979 has been working to dignify earth as an ecological and sustainable building material.

83

No Place Like Home Table 2. Furniture and objects found in the houses Table 2. Furniture and objects found in the houses (by Laura Battini) House

1

Furniture/objects in the room

ns. 4, 9, 15 and 23= drain; n.21= pot drain; 9 out of 40 rooms, n.28= fire place, clay pot-stands 22.5%, half of and rests of a copper balance; which drains 31= raised bench; n.32= big jar; n.22 and 23= tablets.

2 3

%

0% Tablets without precise location

4

0% Bitumen

1 out of 14 (7.1%)

7

n.15= tablets

1 out of 33 (3%)

ns. 2 and 8= tablets

Objects of the burials

24: n.23= infant burial (in a clay coffin) + 23 other burials without precise location

1) Semi-precious stone (steatite, carnelian, jasper, lapis lazuli) or frite beads; copper bangles, bracelets and pins; bronze fibula 2) eye amulets, scarab, steatite stamp seal, Pazuzu heads =7 burials with copper/bronze, 9 with beads, 4 with seal/ scarab/ amulet.

More than 3 burials Carnelian, jaspe, calcite, granit, copper without precise and frite beads; ivory pot in the shape of location1 a lotus.

% unknown

5 6

Burials

several

Silver earrings, finger rings, fibula and khol stick Carnelian, agate, amethyst, steatite, frite, silver beads

2 out of 11 (18.2%)

Drain, bitumen, cooking, bench. Tablets in 4 houses (57.1%) Graves in at least 3 houses (42.85%). 22.5%–18.2%= 2 houses; 0%=2 houses; 7.1%–3%= houses; % Semi-precious stones, metals (silver, copper) unknown= 1 house Amulets, fibula, jewels

1 

The graves 15, 18 and 19 were connected with the building, as well as a number of plundered or unimportant graves’ (Woolley 1962: 47).

The only element that is deduced from the NeoBabylonian houses of Ur without any doubt is the distinction between the dead and the living. The tombs found in great number under floors turns this into the liminal separation between human space and the space of the dead. Children are particularly predominant in House 1 (54.2%, 13 burials out of 24), which may explain the presence of numerous amulets.25 The objects found with the dead (Table 2) prove the wealth of the inhabitants, not only by type (adornments, seals/ amulets) but also by material (lapis lazuli, steatite, carnelian, agate, amethyst, silver, copper, etc.).

have been found in situ, or have been detailed in the excavations’ reports (Table 2, Figure 4). Not withstanding the fact that it is presented without any valid reason, Woolley suggested a gendered division of the space for House 1 (1962: 47) between the smallest courtyard (n.34) and the biggest one (n.2). The first courtyard and adjacent rooms (ns.33, 35–40 and 13) would form the part reserved for women, while the the rest of the house would be used essentially by men. No objects, texts, or architectural layout analysis supports this assumption.24 In the absence of data, one can try to analyze the circulation system to see if there are spaces reserved and isolated from others. But certain peculiarities of the circulation system of the houses of Ur are the result of the purchase/sale of parts of other houses (see the session entitled Socio-Economic Dynamics). The circulation system that remains, therefore, is not the original one and cannot give information on the gendered use of internal space, nor on the existence of distinctions by age or social class (masters/slaves).

Economic Activities Artifact distribution and fixed furniture allow for analysis of household activities (Hendon 2004; LaMotta and Schiffer 1999; cf. in this volume: Greenfield et al. and Shafer-Elliott et al.). Despite limited data from NeoBabylonian houses at Ur, some economic activities are apparent, essentially linked to the family (cf. Table 2). In none of the houses were there any signs of the 25  It is also a general 1st millennium trend compared to the 2nd millennium BC. As Braun Holzinger had already (1999) noted and other scholars have confirmed, the 1st mill. ushers in an increase in protections for buildings as well as for humans.

In reality, rooms ns.33–40 and 13 form an already very large central courtyard house (243 m2) and—as I show in the following paragraph— it was added to the rest of House 1 at some point. 24 

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Figure 4. Rooms with objects/furniture (© Laura Battini)

longer a social space lato sensu. But since it is contiguous to socially accessible urban space, it presents ‘liminal’ spaces that are more or less accessible according to certain rules.

presence of workshops. It may be the case that the workshops were in the outskirts of the city and not inside the largest and most economically important houses. Cooking activities are, however, attested (room 28 of House 1; Figure 4), as well as trading and business affairs (tablets, cylinder seals: rooms 22 and 23 of House 1; burials). Although scarce, these artifacts show that even the largest houses continued to produce necessary meals, to store food products in storage rooms not far from the kitchen (rooms 31 and 32 in House 1, close to the kitchen n.28), and to keep records of commercial activities. No place of consumption, however, is identifiable.26

Accessibility It is unreasonable to generalize the positioning of entrance systems when they are known in only two houses (Houses 1 and 5). But, as in the Old-Babylonian period, the access system is situated in such a way that whoever enters the Neo-Babylonian house for the first time can immediately identify the location of the reception complex. This opens, in fact, onto the courtyard thanks to a door located in the middle of one of its walls, like in the old Babylonian houses. In Houses 1 and 5, this complex was opposite the entrance room27 (room 3 and room 13 in House 1; room 9 in House 5). But in House 2 the reception suite was probably on a bent axis with the entrance (Figures 3–4).

Ur houses in the urban social context The house is certainly a source of opposition in the sense that within an urban space it carves out a space that is no longer socially accessible to everyone, so it is no 26  Probably an important portion of the objects found during the excavations, especially the ceramics, were not noted by Woolley (1962: 44-48, where he repeated several times that the rooms had no particular objects). This unfortunately does not allow us to formulate nuanced hypotheses on room use.

27  I prefer to use the term ‘entrance room’ because lobby or entrance hall are more culturally marked and can be misleading.

85

No Place Like Home The reception room is on the south (House 1, 2, 5 and 7), or west side (House 1). So it is not always identifiable with the bīt iltāni (as proposed by Baker 2015: 377), but can be, at least at Ur, the bīt amurri or even the bīt šūti, or the bīt šadî. Is this interchangeability only lexical or also semantic? And why did it appear? In the Old-Babylonian period the lexical vocabulary of the reception system is steady. The Neo-Babylonian textual documentation records no interest in the function of the rooms: for example, the terms which refer to the functions of rooms, such as bathroom or living room, never appear in economic documents (Watay 2015: 363).

smaller houses. The circulation system is of great help in defining the original phase of these houses. House 1 is clearly formed by the union of two houses, one built around courtyard n.2 and the other around courtyard n.34. In fact, the circulation system is centripetal in these zones: it is concentrated on the courtyard, which commands and distributes access to all the other rooms, some of which are more public and others more domestic. But if you look carefully, the circulation system becomes completely linear throughout the west wing of the house (rooms ns.16–32). This type of circulation, which obliges you to pass continuously in all the rooms that are between the one you are in and the one you want to go to, is that of linear houses, not courtyard houses. Thus, in the final phase, House 1 was an amalgamation of two courtyard houses and two linear houses. In the final phase, House 5 is the reunification of two courtyard houses. The other houses are also the result of the union of several houses, both courtyard and linear types; but being some fully, others partially, known from their foundations, it is not possible to identify exactly the different original houses.

Shared Walls Some of the houses in the NH area of Ur are built against each other, so as to divide the middle walls. According to some archaeologists (Chesson 2003; Kolb and Snead 1997; cf. in this volume Vincent), houses sharing exterior walls were inhabited by members of a kinship group, because these walls required collective cooperation during construction. But in urban houses, therefore from historical periods, walls are made by an itinnu (a kind of project leader), who even in the code of Hammurabi (§ 228-232: translation for ex. Finet 1983: 116–117) is responsible for construction and any related defect. So there is not necessarily kinship between families who lived in adjoining houses, since shared walls were likely built by specialists –masons and project leader. But, just like today, party walls necessitated the cooperation of, and communication between, the owners of neighboring houses, as well as the sharing the repair work, to ensure the stability of the construction. We must be careful not to overinterpret old data in social terms, and not to force inferences.

Thirdly, upon careful observation of urban plots, contiguous and parallel lines appear, intersected most of the time at right angles by other lines. Making the background white (Figure 5) you can better perceive these lines, which suggest the original parcelling of the land that is difficult to consider as trivial. Figure 5 shows in fact a very regular layout of the 22 household units that are apparent. But you can go even further and plot larger units than those shown in Figure 5, as in Figure 6 where nine plots can be distinguished. Figures 5 and 6 are not meant to be an exactly accurate picture of the ancient situation—there could be some errors, but hopefully minimal— at least as a hypothetical reconstruction they are fairly faithful. They are above all a proof of the original existence of much more numerous, smaller household units that are recognizable and grounded in the layout of their walls and in their circulation systems.

Socio-Economic Dynamics The plan of the NH quarter published by Woolley in the final report represents only the final phase of the history of the houses. Several clues demonstrate this. First, the shape of the neighborhood represented in the final reports (Woolley 1962: pl. 71) does not correspond at all to the shape of the area as represented in the preliminary report of 1931; the 1931 plan represents a much larger area than that published in the final report. Moreover, among the outlines of the houses represented in the 1931 plan, none is comparable with the outlines of the houses represented in the final report. It is therefore possible that Woolley has indicated in the plan of the preliminary report a more extended excavation area of which, today, only the perimeter remains.

Even when the layout of the houses seems irregular, as in the case of Ur in the Old-Babylonian (Battini 1999: 231, 353, fig 216–218, 361–369) and in the NeoBabylonian period, in reality the study of the plots reveals an original regularity. The tormented history of the alternating economic fortunes of the various phases of each house has gradually been concealed. These complexities were further muddled by the excavation, recording, and reporting techniques used in preliminary and final publications. Economic changes also have a social and symbolic value (Clifford 1976; Damon 2017; Davidson 2009; Magri 2008; Maleas 2018; Steadman 2015; Westgate 2007): wealth is shown because, to be appreciated, it must be the

Secondly, a careful observation of the largest houses shows that they were formed by the union of several 86

Laura Battini: Chapter 6. Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective

Figure 5. Original urban plots prior both to the final plan of the Neo-Babylonian houses and to intermediary urban plots (© Laura Battini)

subject of envy/praise of others. The houses of Ur show a social pretense which was reinforced by the evident economic success of certain families who extended their homes to incorporate those of their neighbors.

cursed me in the assembly. My house…, the mob has defamed me. When my acquaintance sees me, he passes by on the other side. My family treats me as an alien’ (vs. 79–92, Lambert 1967: 34–35).

When the house is missing: persons without houses

Conclusions

The loss of home, yesterday as today, completely transforms social ties: people partially or completely lose previous social relationships (Dietrich-Ragon and Jacobs 2015: 215–240; cf. even the opposite, that of people who pass from the favelas to the city: Chagas Cavalcani 2018). Ludlul bel nemeqi knew a form of severe social exclusion, even if not of a homelesness. In tablet I the principal character is rejected by all his acquaintance: ‘To many relations I am a recluse. If I walk the street, ears are pricked; if I enter the palace, eyes blink, my city frowns on me as an enemy; indeed my land is savage and hostile. My friend has become foe, my companion has become a wretch and a devil. In his savagery my comrade denounces me, constantly my associates furbish their weapons. My intimate friend has brought my life into danger; my slave has publicly

The excavations of Neo-Babylonian levels at Ur have brought to light houses of great size and a certain wealth. Their proximity to the temenos suggests families of priests or traders working with the priests. Their size and their similarity with the palace of Belti-šalṭinannar testify to social pretensions, supported by the high economic status of the families. Analyses of the urban plots, however, show that the largest houses were not built as such in their earliest phases, only achieving their maximum size at the end of their life. A long history of divisions, purchases, and sales has completely transformed them. The society that can be glimpsed through these changes was economically dynamic, socially permeable, and symbolically pretentious, but was still strongly stressed by children’s death and fear of the future. 87

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Figure 6. Intermadiary urban plots prior to the final plan of the Neo-Babylonian houses (© Laura Battini)

Societies (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches (OIS 10): 371–407. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Battini, L. 1999. L’espace domestique en Mésopotamie de la III dynastie d’Ur à l’époque paléo-babylonienne (BAR S 767). Oxford: Archaeopress. Battini, L. 2010. Des méthodes pour une maison: analyse des théories archéologiques appliquées à l’architecture du Proche-Orient ancien. Syria 87: 3–19. Battini, L. 2014. Famille élargie ou famille nucléaire? Problèmes de démographie antique, in L. Marti (ed.) La famille dans le Proche-Orient ancien: réalités, symbolismes, et images. Proceedings of the 55th Rencontre Assyriologique. Proceedings of the 55 RAI, Paris 6–9 juillet 2009: 3–26. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Battini, L. 2019. De la difficulté à établir les prix des maisons: méthodes, marchés, prix, valeur réelle, valeurs vénales et incohérences variées dans la ville de Larsa paléobabylonienne, in P. Abrahami and L. Battini (eds) ‘Ina dmarri u qan ṭuppi. Par la bêche et le stylet!’. Cultures et sociétés syro-mésopotamiennes. Mélanges offerts à Olivier Rouault (Archaeopress

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No Place Like Home Magri, S. 2006. La maison individuelle comme objet d’analyse sociologique. Annuaire de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales 2006-03-01: 641–642. Magri, S. 2008. Le pavillon stigmatisé. Grands ensembles et maisons individuelles dans la sociologie des années 1950 à 1970. L’Année sociologique (1940/1948–) 58(1) La ville, catégorie de l’action: 171–202. Maleas, I. 2018. Social housing in a suburban context: A bearer of peri-urban diversity? Urbani Izziv 29(1): 73–82. Margueron, J.-C. 1982. Recherches sur les palais mésopotamiens de l’Âge du Bronze. Paris: Paul Geuthner. Margueron, J.-C. 1986. Quelques principes methodologiques pour une approche analythique de l’architecture de l’Orient antique. Contributi e Materiali di Archeologia Orientale I: 261–285. Roma: Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche dell’antichità. Margueron, J.-C. 1991. Sanctuaires sémitiques, in J. Briendand and E. Cothenet (eds) Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible: col. 1104–1258. Paris: Letouzey and Ané. Margueron, J.-C. 1996. La maison orientale, in K.R. Veenhof (ed.) House and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia: 17–38. Leiden: NINO. Margueron, J.-C. 1997. Notes d’archéologie et d’architectures orientales: 9. Une maison anatolienne abandonnée. Etude architecturale et archéologique. Syria 74: 15–32. Margueron, J.-C. 2004. Mari, métropole de l’Euphrate. Paris: Picard. Margueron, J.-C. 2012. NAAO 16–De la strate a la ‘couche architecturale’: réexamen de la stratigraphie de Tuttub/Khafadjé. I–L’architecture civile. Syria 89: 59–84. Meskell, L. 2001. Editorial statement. Journal of Social Archaeology 1: 5–12. Miglus, P. 1999. Städtische Wohnarchitektur in Babylonien und Assyrien (Baghdader Forschungen 22). Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. Minke, G. 2013. Building with earth. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag Müller, M. (ed.) 2015. Household Studies in Complex Societies (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches (OIS 10). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Naroll, R. 1962. Floor area and settlement population. American Antiquity 27(4): 587–589. Parker, B.J. and C.P. Foster (eds) 2012. New Perspectives on Household Archaeology. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Pfälzner, P. 1996. Activity and social organisation of third millennium B.C. households, in K.R. Veenhof (ed.) House and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia (RAI 40): 117–127. Leiden: NINO. Pfälzner, P. 2001. Haus Und Haushalt. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. Routledge, B. 2013. Household archaeology in the Levant. Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research 370: 207–219.

Steadman, S.R. 2005. Reliquaries on the landscape: Mounds as matrices of human cognition, in S. Pollock and R. Bernbeck (eds) Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives: 286–307. Oxford: Blackwell. Steadman, S.R. 2015. Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space. London: Routledge Press. Steadman, S.R. et al. 2019. Stability and change at Çadır Höyük in central Anatolia: A case of Late Chalcolithic globalisation? Anatolian Studies 69: 21–57. Stein, G.J. 1999. Material culture and social identity: The evidence for a 4th millennium BC Mesopotamian Uruk colony at Hacinebi, Turkey. Paléorient 25(1): 11–22. Stone, E. 1987. Nippur Neighborhoods (SAOC 44). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stone, E. 1996. Houses, households and neighbourhoods in the Old Babylonian period: The role of extended families, in K.R. Veenhof (ed.) Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia (RAI 40): 229–235. Leiden: NINO. Stone, E. 2015. Social conditions in the Ancient Near East: Houses and households in perspective, in M. Müller (ed.) Household Studies in Complex Societies (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches (OIS 10): 437–446. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tringham, R. 2012. Households through a digital lens, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 81–120. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Tugault, Y. 1968. Deux études sociologiques sur l’habitation individuelle. Population (French Edition) 23(1): 9–28. Veenhof, K.R. (ed.) 1996. Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia (XLe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale). Leyden: NINO. Villard, P. 2006. Les descriptions des maisons néoassyriennes, in P. Butterlin, M. Lebeau, J.-Y. Monchambert, J.-L. Monteneros Fenellos, and B. Muller (eds) Les espaces syro-mésopotamiens. Dimensions de l’expérience humaine au Proche-Orient ancien. Volume d’hommages offert à Jean-Claude Margueron: 521–528. Turnhout: Brepols. Warburton, D.A. 2009. Economics, anthropological models and the Ancient Near East. Anthropology of the Middle East 4(1): 65–90. Watay, Y. 2015. Les maisons urbaines du Ier millénaire en Babylonie d’après la documentation textuelle. Cahiers des thèmes transversaux d’ArScAn XII: 357– 366. Westgate, R. 2007. The Greek house and the ideology of citizenship. World Archaeology 39(2): 229–245. Wiersma, C.W. 2020. House (centric) societies on the prehistoric Greek mainland. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 39(2): 141–158. Woolley, C.L. 1931. Excavations at Ur, 1930–31. Antiquary Journal XI: 343–381. 90

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Yasur-Landau, A., J.R. Ebeling, and L. Mazow (eds) 2011. Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond. Leiden: Brill. Zevi, B. 1956. Imparare a conoscere l’architettura. Torino: Einaudi. Zevi, B. 1997. Leggere, scrivere, parlare architettura. Venezia: Marsilio Editore.

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Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire: Domestic Foodways and Cultural Practice at 12th Century BC Beth-Shean Jacob C. Damm Over the past two decades, identity has become a central concern of Near Eastern archaeology (see van Soldt 2005; Steadman and Ross 2010 and bibliography therein), though its study in the southern Levant has suffered from a problem of scale. While there have been bright spots exploring the subtleties of identity expression at a regional level (e.g., Yasur-Landau 2010) and domestic level (e.g., Gadot 2011), humans often fade from the picture in favor of sweeping, sitelevel metrics; such as, the proportion of ceramics from one cultural tradition versus those of another. The archaeology of household-level practices is much more sensitive for understanding cultural identity in multiethnic communities; however, as is demonstrated by classic studies such as the excavations at California’s Fort Ross (Lightfoot et al. 1998). Simultaneously, foodways analyses have been proposed as a productive lens into daily practice, offering insight into both the deepest aspects of the habitus as well as more malleable, conspicuous components of identity (Atalay and Hastorf 2006; Hastorf 2017; Twiss 2019). This study combines these two approaches in order to understand the nature of identity negotiation during a culturally sensitive period of southern Levantine history— the turbulent, final decades of Egyptian imperial domination in the first half of the 12th century BC. To this end, a foodways-based approach is applied to investigate several domestic units at Beth-Shean, an important node in the Egyptian command and control network based in the southern Levant. Due to the quality of published data for these dwellings, it is possible to examine household-level identities as individuals responded to the disintegration of the sociopolitical reality of the Egyptian empire in the region. Household foodways: a lens into cultural practice To date, domestic archaeology of the Late Bronze Age southern Levant has been interested mostly in materialistic research questions following the paradigm set by Wilk and Rathje’s (1982) classic study (e.g., Panitz-Cohen 2011; Shai et al. 2011). This work differs in that the overall approach is grounded in practice theory, wherein the household, its contents, and the activities conducted therein are instrumental to the daily creation and recreation of various identities No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 92–110

for the household’s inhabitants. Human activity constitutes the household, and yet, household activities also contribute to the constitution of the individual (Carballo 2011: 134; Nash 2009: 206–207; Steadman 2015: 167–168). Foodways comprise not just diet, but also all practices, rules, and meanings that govern the process of food from its harvest through its consumption and even disposal (Anderson 1971), with the ubiquity of foodways evidence within the archaeological record marking it as especially well-suited for practice-based approaches to identity at the household level. Foodways have been referred to as ‘the ultimate habitus practice’ (Atalay and Hastorf 2006: 283), and yet they also possess public-facing elements, such as dining sets, that are eminently adaptable to signaling group affiliation and status. This has made foodways an especially powerful tool for examining cultural contact in colonial and imperial situations (e.g., Dietler 2010), examining how both the foreign and familiar were drawn upon as agents responded to their social needs. Though this study focuses on cultural contact, I will not be examining ethnicity. Ethnicity is a subset of identity and it cannot be assumed that it is the first principle structuring the material record (Díaz-Andreu et al. 2005; Twiss 2019: 130–38). Furthermore, ethnicity— like all other identities—should be understood as overdetermined, which Voss defines as being ‘too complex to be explained with a mechanistic, causeand-effect model,’ but instead must be ‘conceptualized as an effect produced by a potentially infinite number of other contributing and interacting phenomena’ (2008: 5). It is, at its heart, a taxonomy wherein the individual assigns themselves or is assigned to things of likeness and separated from things which are different (Brubaker et al. 2004), and the attempt to identify static ethnic groups in the archaeological record assumes that we in fact understand the structures behind those taxonomies. It is for this reason why many studies treat ethnicity as unknowable in lieu of textual records (e.g., Brody 2015; Emberling 1997, 2014), and furthermore, why there is no attempt here to delineate ethnic groups at Beth-Shean. Instead, the intent is to examine how foodways reflect the fluid act of identification. If identity is stative,

Jacob C. Damm: Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire Cultural contact in the Late Egypt’s New Kingdom empire

identification is discursive, contextual, and very much in flux. Following Voss, identification at the individual level involves the self-reflexive positioning of oneself in a relationship of similarity with another, with practices of identification being meant to ‘call attention to perceived similarities and, in doing so, achieve an erasure or elision of other kinds of variability’ (2008: 14). In this sense, foodways offer a constellation of practices and material objects that can be drawn upon, vacillating between discursive and non-discursive depending on context (Roddick and Hastorf 2010: 159). From an archaeological standpoint, rather than attempting to associate objects and practices in a one-to-one relationship with ethnicities, this method attempts to ‘trace the webs of social discourse and material practices that participated in the emergence and consolidation’ of diverse identities (Voss 2008: 5).

Bronze

Age:

The Late Bronze Age in the southern Levant (c. 16th– 12th centuries BC) has long captured the imagination of scholarship for its trade networks, cosmopolitanism, international correspondence, imperial expansion, and other features that dramatically expanded the scale and scope of cultural interaction.1 Central to this discussion has been the Egyptian New Kingdom’s empire. Beginning in the reign of Thutmose III (c. 1479– 1425 BC),2 the Levant was the northeastern quadrant of a contiguous, directly occupied or vassal-controlled territory that also included portions of modern-day Libya to the west and Sudan to the south (Morris 2018). This placed the southern Levant—modern-day Israel, Palestine, the Gaza Strip, and western Jordan—in an unusual geopolitical position. While the northern Levant constituted a borderland where enterprising local agents could actively play Egypt against its imperial rivals to the north (Morris 2010), southern Levantine polities were more firmly ensconced under the umbrella of Egyptian rule. This does not mean that Egyptian control was absolute. Even important Egyptian centers such as the garrison harbor at Jaffa were not immune to the occasional outburst of local violence (Burke et al. 2017). Recognizing the strategic importance of the region as a landbridge to their aspirations further abroad, Egypt invested heavily in its stability beginning in the 19th and 20th dynasties (13th– 12th centuries BC) by installing imperial infrastructure that included monumental architecture, garrisons, and logistical waystations (Morris 2005). For the peoples of the southern Levant, therefore, imperial control was a quotidian reality, with local actors negotiating its presence along a trajectory ranging from cooperation, to indifference, to overt resistance.

The linkage between repetitive, mundane practices and identity is well-established through several distinct—but related—bodies of practice theory, such as Bourdieu’s habitus (1977), Giddens’ structuration (1984), Connerton’s incorporating practices (1989), Leroi-Gourhan’s chaîne opératoire (1993), and Ingold’s taskscapes (2000); however, the precise role of objects merits further discussion. Of principal concern here is the concept of materiality, specifically with respect to how the material characteristics of objects structure their use and mediate social actions around them (Steel 2013). Meskell articulated the existence of a ‘material habitus,’ a material world that is both constructed by us and constructs us (2005: 3). This can have a profound effect on the act of identification, best articulated through the concept of ambience, already utilized in a study of Egyptian Beth-Shean by Hulin (2013). She notes how objects can ‘converse’ or ‘gang up on one another’ to produce a collective, experiential reality for the individual that cohabits their space. While conspicuously dissonant objects can be present and disrupt that ambience, their inclusion must be the product of ‘a conscious act of will’ (2013: 354). Furthermore, it is not just the ambient sensoriality of the objects that is of relevance. Drawing on Mauss’ ‘techniques of the body’ (1973), dissonance can also result from objects whose material characteristics force the user into unfamiliar motions and/or bodily comportment, with this variety of dissonance perhaps requiring even more willpower to overcome. At a site like Beth-Shean, wherein the foodways of Egypt and the Levant were variably drawn upon by the garrison community, it is possible to detect both the allowance for, and the creative negotiation of, these types of dissonance. As will be shown below, however, the instability of Egypt’s empire in the 12th century BC was a constraining influence on the possibilities available for identification.

After more than a century of intensive study into the sociopolitical and economic ramifications of Egypt’s empire, cultural interaction between Egyptians and Levantine peoples only became an explicit object of inquiry in the 1990s with the publication of high-quality datasets from Egyptian garrison sites. As more was published, it became clear that the preponderance of locally-manufactured Egyptian-style ceramics—mostly coarsely made plainwares—indicated the presence of some quantity of Egyptians at a few key sites, namely Aphek, Ashkelon, Beth-Shean, Deir el-Balaḥ, Jaffa, Tel Mor, Tell el-ʽAjjul, Tell es-Saʽidiyeh, and Tel Seraʽ (see The vague chronology used here is intentional, but follows Sharon’s framework (2013) by recognizing the ambiguity for both for the start of the Late Bronze Age I and the division between the Late Bronze Age IIB and Iron Age I. For the latter, this has resulted in several terms for the 12th century BC, including the Late Bronze Age III, Iron Age IA, and Transitional (Late) Bronze and Iron Ages (TBI) (Martin 2011: 18–20). 2  All pharaonic reign lengths are adapted from Shaw (2000). 1 

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No Place Like Home especially Burke et al. 2017; Fantalkin 2015; Killebrew 2005; Martin 2011; Oren 2019; and Pierce 2013; but see already Weinstein 1981: 21–22).3 This merits clarification given that it is perilously close to the dreaded pots equal people fallacy (Kramer 1977), though the assumption can be made with confidence for several reasons. First, the industrial-scale manufacture of Egyptian ceramics at numerous sites throughout the southern Levant never comprised the imitation of Egyptian forms, but rather their wholesale replication in perfect accordance with the manufacturing traditions of New Kingdom Egypt. This included embodied cultural logics such as coil width, surface treatment, and even the methods used to remove the vessel from the wheel. Even if after some point Levantine individuals made these forms, it would have been possible only through the sort of face-to-face socialized learning that characterizes apprenticeship (Martin 2011: 91–122).

The site of Beth-Shean Overlooking a strategic junction of the Jezreel and Jordan valleys and located along the southern bank of the Naḥal Ḥarod, Beth-Shean (Tell el-Ḥuṣn) has seen near-continuous occupation since the Neolithic (Mazar 1993). With the excavations by the University of Pennsylvania’s University Museum (hereafter UME, 1921–1933), the site became central to our understanding of the Late Bronze Age Egyptian presence in the southern Levant. Their excavations produced an unparalleled array of evidence for the Egyptian occupation, including royal inscriptions, locallyproduced pharoanic statuary, evidence for syncretic Egypto-Levantine religious practices, monumental Egyptian-style architecture, a hereditary office of local Egyptian officials, Egyptian morturary practices, and innumerable small finds from both Egyptian and indigenous cultural traditions—a veritable treasure trove that took decades to publish. And yet, in addition to these objects that showcase elite and imperial cultures, evidence for quotidian practices from both cultural traditions also abounded in the form of more mundane daily life objects; such as, the preponderance of locally-manufactured Egyptian ceramics (Fitzgerald 1930; James 1966; James and McGovern 1993; Oren 1973; Rowe 1930; Rowe and Fitzgerald 1940). These finds were clarified by two subsequent expeditions, both on behalf of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem—that of Yigael Yadin and Shulamit Geva (hereafter YG) in 1983, and the much larger expedition led by Amihai Mazar (hereafter HU) from 1989–1996 (Mazar 2006; Mazar and Mullins 2007; Panitz-Cohen and Mazar 2009a; Yadin and Geva 1986). These latter two expeditions are of the greatest interest here as their work exposed a series of insulae from a domestic quarter dating to the final years of the Egyptian garrison’s presence at the site.

As for whether the consumption of these forms should be associated with the presence of Egyptians in the region, it is useful to recall Yasur-Landau’s use of ‘deep change’ to identify ancient migrations, referring to sudden archaeological manifestation of a broad array of alien practices and material forms at a site (2011: 14–16). In the case of the local manufacture of Egyptian ceramics in the Late Bronze Age southern Levant, the earliest attested garrisons in the Late Bronze Age IB already produced a separate body of culinary and serving wares independently of what was available locally, and furthermore used them in ways that were conspicuously different from local use patterns (e.g., Pierce 2013). This pattern continued throughout the remainder of the Late Bronze Age at most garrison sites, with an overwhelming majority of locallymanufactured Egyptian ceramics corresponding with a clearly detectable, simultaneous expression of Egyptian and Levantine modes of doing (Damm 2021). Consequently, while we must acknowledge that pots do not equal people, the replication of complex, mundane behaviors, culinary practices, and an array of functional types despite perfectly reasonable local alternatives certainly does. Consequently, the presence of Egyptians in the region is now widely accepted and the question has shifted to the nature of cultural contact between Egyptians and local peoples, how they negotiated their identities in the contact zone, and the long-term cultural consequences of nearly 350 years of coexistence. Recent discussions have noted that these questions can only be answered by shifting inquiry to more culturally sensitive arenas of practice (Streit 2019), which is the explicit objective of this study.

Area S Comprising the entirety of YG’s excavation area and corresponding with HU’s Area S, and hereafter Area S, these contexts were selected for this study for several reasons. First, they possess detailed stratigraphic reports that include extensive documentation of all installations related to foodways. Furthermore, the HU excavations produced multiple specialist reports presenting valuable foodways data with corresponding spatial contextualization—including two quantitatively rigorous studies of Levantine and Egyptian ceramics (Martin 2009; Panitz-Cohen 2009). Martin’s work on Egyptian ceramics is especially useful due to his presentation of figures based on weighted totals of every single diagnostic sherd—what he refers to as the ‘1/100 method’ (2009: 470–471). In effect, the reader can gain a sense of assemblages based on every single sherd rather than attempting to extrapolate based on what is present in a report’s plates. Unfortunately, the

The usage of the term ‘Egyptian-style’ follows the convention within Levantine archaeology of forms that are purely Egyptian in their stylistic, morphological, and technological characteristics, yet were manufactured locally at Levantine sites (see Martin 2011).

3 

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Jacob C. Damm: Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire Table 1. Stratigraphy of Area S (after Mazar 2009: 12, Table 1.2) UME Excavations

Level VI

YG Excavations

HU Excavations

Absolute Chronology

Stratum S-3a

Level 4

Stratum S-3b

n/a

12th c. BC

Stratum S-4

YG excavations only published select forms with no indication of the criteria for exclusion. Still, their results augment a robust dataset providing unprecedented insights into foodways at Beth-Shean.

also composed of three units (SD/SE/SF) but is slightly more complex, either comprising one large house or two separate buildings—SD/SE and SF (see Figure 1; Panitz Cohen and Mazar 2009b: 102–109). After the destruction of Stratum S-4, tentatively assigned to an earthquake, the insulae were rebuilt on a similar plan with some walls being reused. In Stratum S-3, the northeastern insula was composed of three units (SG/SH/SJ), still readily divisible into two domestic structures—buildings SG/SH and SJ. The southeastern insula was divided into two units (SM/SN) and again presents a more complex situation since they were connected in Substratum S-3b but by S-3a the connection was blocked (see Figure 2). Stratum S-3 ends in a fiery destruction attested across the entire area that produced a rich assemblage. It represents the last phase of the Egyptian occupation, after which the local production of Egyptian-style ceramics ceases (PanitzCohen and Mazar 2009b: 129–162).

Given the quality of Area S’s stratigraphic report (Panitz-Cohen and Mazar 2009b), I will refer readers there rather than repeating that material here. Instead, some summary statements will be made regarding the domestic contexts prior to discussing relevant foodways finds. Using the HU stratigraphic terminology (see Table 1), this study focuses on the 12th century BC strata S-4 and S-3 due to their larger exposure. The subdivision of Stratum S-3 into S-3b and S-3a will be discussed where appropriate given that it was only detected in some structures. The discussion will be further confined to structural units from Area S with the most complete plans—the northeastern and southeastern insulae (see Figures 1–2). These insulae—divided by an east-west street in all phases—are composed of a series of discrete units identifiable as houses through a broad constellation of evidence pointing towards their domestic character: food preparation areas/accoutrement, cooking installations/accoutrement, food storage installations/ vessels, and a broad functional spectrum of ceramic forms. While certainly modest in comparison to other contemporary structures on the tell, the houses in Area S contained an array of prestige goods that includes a quantity of objects produced from precious metals (Mazar 2009: 20). Even with the requisite nod to Schiffer and the desire to avoid propagating a ‘Pompeii premise’ (1985), our anxieties can be assuaged by the presence of highly immobile indicators of wealth— notably three silver hoards discovered underneath the floors of Stratum S-4’s Building SD (Thompson 2009). As such, there seems to be no reason to doubt the original interpretation that these homes belonged to garrison elites (Mazar 2009: 18–20).

The main criteria for demonstrating cultural interaction in Area S thus far has been the proportion of locally-manufactured Egyptian-style to Levantine ceramics, available only collectively for Stratum S-4 but separated by domestic unit for Stratum S-3 (see Tables 2-3). While in both phases most sherds come from the Egyptian tradition, Martin notes that despite a relatively even distribution in Stratum S-4, by Stratum S-3 it is possible to delineate domestic units that are of greater Egyptian or Levantine character by applying these proportions spatially (see Table 3). He proposes that the northeastern insula’s Building SJ is predominantly Levantine in character during general Stratum S-3, but the southeastern insula’s Building SM/SN is more Egyptian throughout substrata S-3b and S-3a. In contrast, the northeastern insula’s Building SG/SH has slightly more Egyptian ceramics in Stratum S-3b, with that proportion flipping in Stratum S-3a. Martin therefore cautiously interprets this to mean that by Stratum S-3a, the northeastern insula can be considered more Levantine in character and the southeastern more Egyptian (2009: 459). If we turn our attention to a more nuanced examination of the foodways evidence, however, a different interpretation is possible.

In Stratum S-4, the northeastern insula comprises three distinct units (SA/SB/SC), cautiously divided by the excavators into two houses, buildings SA/SC and SB, with the plan for the latter being partially disturbed by later activity and erosion. The southeastern insula is 95

No Place Like Home

Figure 1. Schematic plan of Stratum S-4 (Courtesy of the Beth-Shean Excavations, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

In the following section, foodways are discussed across several categories: food preparation, diet, and ceramics. Specifically, each will be addressed with respect to whether there is discernible evidence that any household adhered to a particularly Egyptian or Levantine mode of doing—or whether such a distinction can be made.

examples follow the traditional Levantine pattern of a lower grindstone resting flat on the floor. They contrast this with the normative pattern from New Kingdom Egypt, wherein the grindstones are placed on an elevated platform, concluding that like many other culinary technologies at Beth-Shean, the practice of grinding grain is performed in the Levantine fashion (Leibowitz 2008; Yahalom-Mack and Panitz-Cohen 2009: 733).

Food Preparation

Cooking Installations

Food preparation installations, especially grinding installations, are widely attested at the site in all phases. In their analysis, the excavators rightly note that their

There has been little systematic work on cooking installations in either region, and therefore declarations of what might constitute normative practices must

Foodways at 12th century Beth-Shean

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Figure 2. Schematic plan of Stratum S-3 (Courtesy of the Beth-Shean Excavations, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

be made cautiously. In New Kingdom Egypt, domestic cooking installations vary between two forms, box and cylindrical ovens, both formed of clay walls, sometimes several layers thick, and often surrounded by brick (Koltsida 2007: 113). In the Levant, limited synthetic study reveals a relatively stable pattern of cylindrical clay ovens with an open top, often augmented with an external layer of broken potsherds or clay (Zukerman 2014). Consequently, there is little published information that would differentiate between a

cylindrical oven from either tradition. Given that this is the only type attested in Area S, little more can be said. The suggestion by the HU excavators that Building SJ’s oven in Stratum S-3 might be Egyptian in inspiration due to the presence of a flue vent therefore bears consideration (Oven 98709; Panitz-Cohen and Mazar 2009b: 144, Photo 4.64; citing parallels from Badawy 1968). Since the publication of the Beth-Shean example, however, two well-preserved ovens with flue vents along the floor were published from the Middle Bronze 97

No Place Like Home Table 2. Proportion of Ceramics from the Egyptian and Levantine Traditions by Raw Sherd Count (after Martin 2009: 471, Table 6.15). Stratum

% Egyptian

No. Egyptian Sherds

% Levantine

No. Levantine Sherds

S-3

68%

1,201

32%

554

S-4

62%

410

38%

249

Age IIB/C levels at Tell Jemmeh in the northwestern Negev (Zukerman 2014: 645). Consequently, there is no reason to maintain that this feature constitutes Egyptian influence on domestic practice. If anything, it makes it clear that more systematic work must be done before such claims can be made with confidence.

In New Kingdom Egypt, the only cultivated wheat variety was hulled emmer (T. dicoccum), a situation that prevailed until the agricultural reforms of the Ptolemies (Berlin et al. 2003; Cappers 2016). In contrast, while hulled emmer was initially the main wheat crop in the southern Levant, by the Middle Bronze Age it becomes progressively rarer in favor of free-threshing wheats such as durum (Triticum durum) and T. parvicoccum (Zohary et al. 2012: 46–47). To date, hulled emmer is only clearly attested as a cultivated crop at the Late Bronze Age southern Levantine sites of Tell eṣ-Ṣafi and Tel Miqne (Frumin et al. 2019); its rarity stands in stark contrast to New Kingdom Egypt. The utilization of a free-threshing variety of wheat at Beth-Shean therefore has several implications. First, the chaîne opératoire required to bring hulled emmer from field to table is substantially different from that of free-threshing species (Nesbitt and Samuel 1996), meaning that the habitus of gaining one’s daily bread differed depending on the variety of wheat selected. This is further exacerbated by the fact that freethreshing and hulled varieties perform differently from a culinary standpoint due to differences in protein composition (De Santis et al. 2017; Wieser 2000). Finally, there is the simple difference in the sensory experience of the final product (Kissing Kucek et al. 2017), which has been cited as a reason for the Egyptian resistance to foreign wheat varieties under the Ptolemies (Berlin et al. 2003). When considered in tandem with the grinding installations and ovens excavated in Area S, there is no evidence that the chaîne opératoire for the production of a staple like bread followed anything other than Levantine patterns. Consequently, for the Egyptian residents at Beth-Shean, the cornerstone of their diet would have been incongruous in some capacity, a reality that was negotiated as non-essential to their day-to-day identification.

Diet: Botanical and Faunal Remains Several contexts from Area S were subject to archaeobotanical analysis, though it is crucial to note that all were the product of chance encounters with dense macrobotanical deposits rather than systematic sampling of all excavated contexts. We can say little about plant-based dietary components at 12th century BC Beth-Shean, therefore, outside of these few singlespecies caches from Stratum S-3a. It is impossible to make an interpretation about practice or diet based on the absence of taxa since the sample must be regarded as incomplete, though some conclusions can be drawn based on presence (following Guedes and Spengler 2014). The two caches from the area of interest are from bins in Building SG/SH. The bin from Unit SG (HU Locus 88844) contained a relatively pure deposit of 6400 flax seeds (Linum usitatissimum), and the one from Unit SH (HU Locus 88882) is a relatively pure deposit containing 4100 grains of two-rowed barley (Hordeum distichum).4 A notable contaminant in the barley is a grain of the freethreshing species Triticum parvicoccum, which is known from caches elsewhere at the site and is the only clear, intentionally-cultivated variety of wheat from Late Bronze and Iron Age Beth-Shean (see Kislev et al. 2009: Tables 17.1, 17.3 for areas S and N; see Simchoni et al. 2007 for Area R). Neither flax nor barley are particularly diagnostic from a cultural perspective, since both are well attested staples in Egypt and the Levant (de Vartavan 1987; Kislev et al. 2009). That T. parvicoccum is the only intentionally cultivated wheat at Beth-Shean, however, is noteworthy given there are clear preferences in Egypt and the Levant for specific varieties of wheat.

Though Area S’s main zooarchaeological study remains unpublished (Mazar 2012: XIV), the report on fish bones merits consideration. At Beth-Shean, 73% of recovered fish bone dates to the 12th century BC, with the overall

The simplified Latin binomial system—while imperfect (Hillman 2001)—is used here.

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Jacob C. Damm: Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire assemblage being dominated by Mediterranean and Nilotic species. As noted by Lernau (2009), despite non-ideal collection procedures it can be assumed this represents an increase in the consumption of nonlocal fish during the period of 19th/20th Dynasty rule. For Area S, this includes dense deposits of multiple Nilotic and Mediterranean species in Stratum S-4’s buildings SD/SE and SB, as well as Stratum S-3a’s Building SM/SN. These were cautiously interpreted by Lernau as being related to an Egyptian garrison’s maintenance of their familiar foodways. That said, he offers a caveat that should the pattern of intensified fish consumption hold at sites lacking equivalent evidence for Egyptian occupation, then there is no need to associate the increase with Egyptian practices (2009: 776–778). Since the publication of Lernau’s report, more work has been conducted on the subject. The distribution of non-local—and especially Nilotic— species is not restricted to Egyptian garrison sites. Instead, it suggests a robust trade in fish as a luxury item (Routledge 2015; Zohar and Artzy 2019). In short, while the networks that sustained the fish trade might be linked to the Egyptian empire, there is no need to associate the act of fish consumption, even of Nilotic species, with specifically Egyptian foodways.

Culinary Ceramics A great deal has already been made of the near-total absence of anything classifiable as an Egyptian-style cooking pot from Beth-Shean and the Levant in general (e.g., Fantalkin 2015). The consistent inclusion of Levantine cookpots in assemblages rich in Egyptianstyle ceramics suggests that cooking technologies adhered to Levantine practices, argued to signify the cohabitation of Egyptian men with local Levantine women (Fantalkin 2015: 235; Martin 2009: 466; for an equivalent case in New Kingdom Nubia, see Smith 2003: 189–193). Indeed, the only ceramic form at Beth‑Shean that might be associated with the production of a specifically Egyptian foodstuff is the type BB ‘beer jar,’ an Egyptian form that lacks any Levantine parallels.5 They are coarsely manufactured, medium-sized jars, readily identifiable due to their crude and oftentimes perforated bases (Martin 2011: 51–52). Regardless of their exact function, the basal perforation that exists in most examples is crucial to understanding their significance at Beth-Shean. Because of it, there is no need to discuss the cross-cultural consumption of the form as a simple container. Instead, it is a tool for the manufacture of a specific product, with its use signifying participation within an Egyptian arena of practice. While its presence at Beth-Shean can be linked at least initially to the presence of Egyptians at the site, its eventual adoption by locals is certainly plausible. Such an adoption would have only been possible through the types of socialized learning characterized by interpersonal encounters, given the overlapping requirements of a local demand for the form and its associated product, the specialized knowledge for the local manufacture of the form, and finally, the knowledge of how to use the form to produce the desired product. Despite the name, their associated product has not been satisfactorily demonstrated.6 Currently, beer production remains the most plausible hypothesis (Martin 2011: 54–55). Even if incorrect, the form’s coarse manufacture and abundance in domestic contexts points to its quotidian importance.

Ceramics As noted above, ceramics have played a central role in the discussion of identity at Beth-Shean. The manufacture of Egyptian-style ceramics in the Levant has been addressed at length elsewhere (see most recently Oren 2019 and bibliography therein), but a few points specific to Beth-Shean will be reiterated here. First, local industries for the manufacture of Egyptian-style and Levantine forms coexisted throughout the Egyptian occupation, with the Egyptian ceramic industry likely operating at an industrial level and the Levantine industries more at the household level (Panitz-Cohen 2009: 276). Furthermore, despite the long-term co-habitation of potters from both traditions at the site, the lack of hybrid forms suggests that both industries were relatively separate, bounded entities (Martin 2009: 462). Despite the Egyptian ceramic industry at BethShean only producing a limited repertoire of forms in comparison to the variation seen in New Kingdom Egypt (Martin 2011: 265), this does not diminish the extraordinary investment by the Egyptians to maintain familiar foodways abroad. When considered in light of Hodder’s notion of object-based entanglement (2012), the overlapping series of dependencies necessary to transplant ceramic traditions into an alien context indicates that familiar ceramics were a key Egyptian concern. And yet simultaneously, in all areas where Egyptian-style ceramics occur, so too do Levantine forms—there is no such thing as a purely Egyptian or Levantine context (Mazar 2009: 19).

Using Martin’s 1/100 method, they comprise 2.6% of the overall Egyptian-style assemblage in Stratum S-4 and 3% in Stratum S-3, though it is important to note that the Stratum S-3 assemblage is more than five times larger than that of S-4. Despite this disparity, Strata S-4 and S-3 produced almost the same absolute quantity of large, partially restorable examples (Martin 2009: 437, Table 6.1) that can be confidently associated with their findspots. In Stratum S-4 such examples were found in the northeastern insula’s Building SB (Panitz-Cohen All ceramic type designations adhere to the HU ceramic reports (Martin 2009; Panitz-Cohen 2009). The only published chemical analysis involved spot testing for ‘beerstone’ (calcium oxalate), which were negative (Martin and Barako 2007: 165, Note 30). Residue analysis of the analogous ‘flowerpot’ form should offer clarification (Damm forthcoming).

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No Place Like Home 2009: Plate 30:9)7 and the southeastern insula’s buildings SD/SE (Plate 35:2) and SF (Plate 36:17). In Stratum S-3b, such examples are only known in the northeastern insula’s Building SG/SH (Plate 41:17, perforated base), whereas in Stratum S-3a they were found in the northeastern insula’s Building SG/SH (Plate 48:2, perforated base) and the southeastern insula’s Building SM/SN (Plate 59:16 and Yadin and Geva 1986: figs. 35:3). Of these, only two have the perforated base assumed to be central to the form’s role in beer production. Regardless, this remains the only strong evidence for a specifically Egyptian culinary technology in Area S.

excavations of Stratum S-3a’s Building SM/SN—a small bottle unique in the southern Levant (Martin 2011: 150, Yadin and Geva 1986: 66–68, fig. 27:9) and a squat, globular jar that, while attested elsewhere, is the only known example from Beth-Shean (Martin 2011: 63–64, Yadin and Geva 1986: 66–68, fig. 27:10). Regardless, Egyptian-style jars are exceedingly rare in Stratum S-3, forming only 1.4% of the overall Egyptian-style assemblage compared to 16.7% in Stratum S-4 (1/100 method, Martin 2009: 456, fig. 6.6). Given Stratum S-3’s enormous assemblage, the fact that 91% of closed forms are from the Levantine tradition should be regarded as significant (1/100 method, Martin 2009: 457, Table 6.9). Furthermore, the 9% assigned to Egyptian-style closed forms in that phase is skewed by type BB fragments lumped into the overall figure, of which they comprise 68.9% of Egyptian-style closed forms in that phase (1/100 method, Martin 2009: 456, Table 6.7). Therefore, while large Egyptian-style storage jars were never common, by Stratum S-3 they were exceedingly rare.

Large Storage Containers The separate discussion of large storage containers from small- to medium-sized examples is done for the sake of functional considerations, with this section reserved for forms unambiguously used for bulk storage. In general, Egyptian-style forms fulfilling this function are relatively rare in the Levant. Thus, Martin has argued that these forms represent sensitive indicators for the presence of Egyptians (2011: 51). Simply put, there are perfectly reasonable Levantine equivalents and therefore the exertion of effort to create and acquire the Egyptian variant should be regarded as significant. At Beth-Shean, the Egyptian types associated with this function are type TJ76c neckless jars and the larger variation type TJ76b funnel-necked jars. In contrast, the functional equivalents from the Levantine tradition fall across several forms (types SJ, PT, and KR72a). In all phases, large storage forms are predominantly from the Levantine tradition, and in every domestic unit that produced an example of an Egyptian-style large storage form, it is always accompanied by multiple equivalents from the Levantine tradition.

Table Service Here, the term table service refers to forms that would have mostly been used for the serving of food and drink. It is an ambiguous functional category, since several forms could also have been used for food preparation, industrial, and symbolic purposes (Panitz-Cohen 2009: 201). What is meant here are open forms such as bowls and kraters, as well as smaller closed forms like jugs and strainer vessels. This category requires close attention, as it is subject to the greatest asymmetry of proportions between Egyptian-style and Levantine wares at Beth-Shean, almost exclusively owing to the abundance of Egyptian-style bowls. This is due to the extreme quantities of the Egyptian-style type BL70 simple bowls, which comprise 26% of the total ceramic assemblage in Stratum S-4 and 33.4% in Stratum S-3 (1/100 method, Martin 2009: 455, fig. 6.5). Within the Egyptian-style assemblage, bowl types are by far the most dominant type present. In Stratum S-4, 78% of the total Egyptian-style assemblage are bowls, which jumps to 96% in Stratum S-3 (1/100 method, Martin 2009: 455, Table 6.5). Since so much of the assemblage comes from one class of object, it bears greater scrutiny prior to its frequency being used as a culturally significant metric.

Stratum S-4 of the HU excavations produced two restorable examples or substantial fragments of a type TJ76c from Building SA/SC (Panitz-Cohen 2009: Plate 28:1–2). The form is only attested as rim fragments in HU’s Stratum S-3 excavations; however, a complete example was recovered by YG from the Stratum S-3a destruction in Building SG/SH (Yadin and Geva, 1986: 85–86, fig. 35:4). As for the larger type TJ76b jars, two examples are attested in the northeastern insula’s Building SB during Stratum S-4 (Panitz-Cohen 2009: Plate 30:7–8), though they fall on the cusp of the larger storage and smaller serving variants of the form. They only occur as rim and body fragments in Stratum S-3 (Martin 2009: 437, Table 6.1), though relatively large vessel elements are attested in Building SM/SN (Panitz Cohen 2009: Plate 54: 12–14, 16), suggesting that the form might still have been in circulation. To this list might be added two small storage forms from the YG

When considered from the perspective of morphology as it contributes to functionality, there is little appreciable distinction between bowls of the Egyptianstyle and Levantine traditions. The main differences between them are the common—but not exclusive— occurrence in the Levantine tradition of carination, slightly in-turned rims, and footed/ringed bases versus the tendency of Egyptian-style bowls towards plain or slightly everted rims and flat bases (see Figure 3). In short, manipulation of bowls during meals would have

All plate references, unless otherwise noted, refer to Panitz-Cohen (2009).

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Figure 3. Comparison of Levantine and Egyptian-style bowls (drawings by author, after Panitz-Cohen 2009: 202, Figure 5.1; 301, Plate 8).

been nearly identical regardless of which group was used.8 Indeed, one of the most common Egyptian-style forms in the Levant, the type BL70, a simple bowl with plain rim, is only explicitly identifiable as Egyptian with the correspondence of several technological characteristics related to its manufacture. At BethShean, this type is the most common Egyptian-style form and is found in high proportions in Strata S-4 and S-3. Yet, at sites that have not produced a robust Egyptian-style assemblage, such as Late Bronze Age Hazor, the form is regarded as being a perfectly reasonable Levantine type (Martin 2011: 30). Even Egyptian modes of decoration such as red slip or a red band on the rim are fully in keeping with Levantine decorative styles both before and during the Late Bronze Age (Bonfil 2019: 79–81; Martin 2011: 119–120). Consequently, there is little to suggest that Egyptianstyle bowls would have been incongruous to a Levantine consumer. Both their materiality and contributions to ambience would have been utterly unremarkable within a Levantine table service. If anything, their abundance at Beth-Shean likely relates more to the industrial scale of their manufacture and their relatively inoffensive

Figure 4. Example of a decorated Levantine krater recovered from Building SJ (YG Building 2533), note the ibex and sacred tree motif in the top register (drawing by author, after Yadin and Geva 1986: 59, Figure 24).

This is reflected in artistic depictions of their use. Compare, for instance, the use of Egyptian bowls in the banquet scene from the Tomb of Rekhmire (Davies 1943: Plate LXIV) with the feast scene from Megiddo Ivory No. 2 (Loud 1939: Plate 4:2b), where the handling of drinking bowls is identical.

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No Place Like Home nature rather than any sort of Levantine ‘acculturation’ to their use (contra Martin 2009: 466). A potentially more sensitive form to examine is the krater, which apart from being completely alien to the Egyptian ceramic tradition is often decorated with conspicuously Levantine motifs (see Figure 4; PanitzCohen 2009: 201). Even if we just consider the krater a large bowl, then it is interesting to note that it remains diachronically stable in comparison to the diminishing occurrence of the Egyptian-style type BL80 large bowls. In Strata S-4 and S-3, the former occupies 5.0% and 4.7% of the total assemblage respectively, whereas the latter comprises only 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively (Martin 2009: 455, Table 6.5). Furthermore, an example of a type BL80 bowl from a Stratum S-3 street context provides the only fully restorable profile for any phase (Panitz-Cohen 2009: Plate 63:5). This can be contrasted with numerous complete and near-complete kraters attested in both the northeastern and southeastern insulae during both phases. Indeed, only the Stratum S-4 Building SD/SE failed to produce a restorable krater profile—though it did produce several rim fragments (Plate 33: 1–8). If we, therefore, view the form simply with respect to functionality, in both Strata S-4 and S-3 the category of a large open vessel almost exclusively follows the Levantine model. The pattern is even more interesting when we examine decoration. Restorable examples of decorated kraters are completely absent in Stratum S-4 except for a few rim fragments bearing geometric decoration (e.g., Plate 33:1–2). They become slightly more common in Stratum S-3b with a large fragment recovered from Building SG/SH (ibex and tree motif, Plate 40:6) and a complete example from Building SM/SN (geometric decoration, Plate 43:11). By Stratum S-3a, complete or near-complete examples are known from buildings SM/SN (ibex motif, Plate 53:1; alongside many painted rim and body fragments, see Plates 57:1–5, 59:1–7) and SJ (Yadin and Geva 1986: 56– 59, fig. 24). Therefore, it is interesting to note that such a conspicuously Levantine form is found in domestic units regardless of the overall proportion of Egyptianstyle to Levantine ceramics.

Figure 5. Comparison of Levantine and Egyptian-style closed forms for serving liquids (drawings by author, after PanitzCohen 2009: 244, Figure 5.7; 345, Plate 30).

most sensitive indicator of an Egyptian presence (see above). Simply put, the choice between Levantine or Egyptian-style vessels of this class inherently structures the physicality of the meal, with either tradition quite literally altering how the body must move or act. If we return to the concept of ambience, the inclusion of even a single Egyptian-style jar into the table service would have a highly dissonant effect, changing not only the meal’s appearance, but also forcing actors to respond to its existence either by holding it or supporting it with a pot stand throughout the meal.9 It is therefore not surprising that such forms are rare even at sites with high proportions of Egyptian-style ceramics. They are by far most common in Stratum S-4, with the northeastern insula’s Building SB producing two each

Perhaps the most important class of vessel are those related to serving liquids, if only because Egyptian and Levantine traditions are so divergent. In the Egyptian tradition, such forms have round bases and lack both handles and pouring spouts, meaning that the form cannot stand on its own without some form of assistance. In the Levantine tradition, however, they generally possess stable flat or ring bases, handles, and while not always, some sort of pouring spout (see Figure 5). As noted by Panitz-Cohen, the selection of Egyptian-style forms for the table service therefore ‘dictated a certain kind of usage’ (2009: 242), which reiterates Martin’s point that Egyptian-style closed forms are perhaps the

This manner of manipulating these vessels is well attested in Egyptian relief, as is the case in the banquet scene from the Tomb of Rekhmire (Davies 1943: Plate LXIV).

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Jacob C. Damm: Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire Table 3. Proportion of Ceramics from the Egyptian and Levantine Traditions by Raw Sherd Count (after Martin 2009: 460, Table 610) Stratum S-3a S-3b S-3 general

Insula Northeastern

Building

% Egyptian

SG/SH

34%

% Levantine 66%

No. Sherds 242

Southeastern

SM/SN

74%

26%

1,196

Southeastern

SM/SN

66%

34%

634

Southeastern

SM/SN

59%

41%

820

Northeastern Northeastern

SG/SH

56%

SJ

36%

of the type TJ76a drop-shaped jar (Panitz-Cohen 2009: Plate 30: 4-5) and the medium-sized type TJ76b funnelnecked jar (Plate 30: 7–8, see above) in contrast to only one near-complete jug from the Levantine tradition (Plate 30: 13). In the southeastern insula’s Building SD/SE, large portions of the neck of two different type TJ76b jars (Plate 34: 17–18) and a complete example (Plate 35:1) were recovered. To the south in Building SF no restorable examples were found, though two rim fragments from type TJ76b jars are noted in the plates. No Levantine jugs are published in the plates for any structure in the southeastern insula during Stratum S-4. Using Martin’s 1/100 method, Egyptianstyle jugs achieve their highest proportion both within the Egyptian-style assemblage (16.7%) and overall assemblage (9.2%) during this phase (2009: 455–456, fig. 6.5–6.6), with the number of restorable examples being notable considering their rarity in the much larger Stratum S-3 assemblage.

44% 64%

521 100

northeastern and southeastern insulae. Consequently, there seems to be no preservation bias against this vessel class. Instead, it seems that unlike Stratum S-4, the inhabitants of Stratum S-3 served their meals almost exclusively with jugs from the Levantine tradition. This pattern holds true for both the northeastern and southeastern insulae and belies the fact that by raw proportion the southeastern insula produced an overwhelmingly Egyptian-style ceramic assemblage. Indeed, if we consider that bowls from the Egyptian tradition would have offered little incongruity within a meal structured along Levantine lines, then their presence in high numbers throughout Stratum S-3 does little to change the fact that the overall syntax of the meal in Area S would have been Levantine in character. Conclusions While gross proportions of Egyptian-style to Levantine ceramics have been proposed as a method to track identity at 12th century BC Beth-Shean, a close examination of household-level foodways practices shows that higher levels of Egyptian-style ceramics do not correlate with an increase in Egyptian practices. If anything, the overwhelming quantities of Egyptianstyle bowls skew proportions and elide the fact that other Egyptian-style ceramics become less common diachronically in comparison to their Levantine counterparts—especially closed forms for storage/ serving and large bowls. Table 4 presents a summary of the assemblages for each household by phase based on large restorable fragments, an imperfect measurement but an important corrective to the bias imposed by examining gross proportions of individual fragments. While Martin did apply his 1/100 method to characterize general patterns at Beth-Shean, the spatial distributions that form the basis for his cultural interpretations are wholly derived from raw sherd counts (2009: 458–460, figs. 6.7a–6.7b, Table 6.10). His tentative hypothesis that it is possible to discern the diachronic development of a more Levantine northeastern insula and more Egyptian southeastern insula in Stratum S-3 is therefore difficult to sustain. With the foodways data presented above it is possible to offer an alternative hypothesis.

In Stratum S-3, large, partially restorable fragments— all bases from the type TJ76a drop-shaped jars—are only known from three units. In Stratum S-3b one was found in Building SG/SH (Plate 41:16) and another in Building SM/SN (Plate 45:10). In the case of the former, the same building produced two near-complete jugs from the Levantine repertoire—a type JG72b strainer jug (Plate 41:19) and a type JG71 narrow-necked jug (Plate 41:20). In the case of the latter, no other restorable jug examples were recovered. In Stratum S-3a, Building SM/SN produced a single type TJ76a base (Plate 54:15) and fragments from a type TJ76b rim (Plate 54:14); however, this context also produced three restorable jugs from the Levantine tradition—one type JG72b strainer jug, one type JG70 large piriform jug, and one type JG72a squat biconical jug with palm decoration (Plate 54: 16–18). If anything, what is remarkable from all substrata of Stratum S-3 is the dearth of Egyptianstyle jugs in comparison to the number of restorable examples from the Levantine tradition—in this case the three fragmentary bases discussed above are the best evidence for the continuity of the form after Stratum S-4. They can be contrasted with the 19 complete or near-complete Levantine jugs found throughout the 103

No Place Like Home Table 4. Comparison of the Household-level Assemblages based on partially restorable (≥50% of profile) or complete vessels based on drawn forms (after Panitz-Cohen 2009: 334-405; Yadin and Geva 1986: 52-86). Stratum

Insula

Building

Object Type Small-to-Medium Bowl Large Bowl/Krater

S-3 (general) Northeastern

SJ

Cookpot Beer Jar

Cookpot Beer Jar

Cookpot

Egyptian-style Levantine

Large Bowl/Krater Cookpot

Egyptian-style Levantine

3 (1) 2 (1) 0 1

0 (1) 1 (2) 0

2 (2)

3 (2) 4

2 (1) 1 (1)

0 (2*)

9 (12) 1

3 (5)

Egyptian-style

7

Egyptian-style

0

Levantine Levantine

Levantine

104

2 (3)

0

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

0

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Storage Vessel

1 (2)

22 (1)

Levantine

Levantine

Beer Jar

0

Egyptian-style

Levantine

Small-to-Medium Bowl

0

0

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

0 (2)

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Storage Vessel

0 (3)

4 (5)

Levantine

Levantine

Beer Jar

2

Egyptian-style

Levantine

Small-to-Medium Bowl

SG/SH

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

Northeastern

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Large Bowl/Krater

S-3b

0

Levantine

Levantine

Storage Vessel

SM/SN

Egyptian-style

Levantine

Large Bowl/Krater

Southeastern

0 (1)

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Small-to-Medium Bowl

S-3a

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

SG/SH

No. HU Forms (No. YG)

Levantine

Storage Vessel

Northeastern

Cultural Tradition

Egyptian-style Levantine

5 3 1 1 0 1 1 2

Jacob C. Damm: Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire

Stratum

Insula

Building

Object Type Small-to-Medium Bowl Large Bowl/Krater

Southeastern

SM/SN

Cookpot Beer Jar

Cookpot Beer Jar

Egyptian-style Levantine

Cookpot

Egyptian-style Levantine

Egyptian-style Levantine

Egyptian-style Levantine

Egyptian-style Egyptian-style

Storage Vessel

Levantine

Serving Jar/Jug Small-to-Medium Bowl Large Bowl/Krater Cookpot

Egyptian-style Levantine

0

4 3 2 0 2 2 1 1 3 2 1 3 0 1 2 1 2 1

0

Levantine

Levantine

105

1

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

1

15

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Storage Vessel

0

Egyptian-style

Levantine

Beer Jar

0

0

Levantine

Levantine

Beer Jar

0

Egyptian-style

Levantine

Large Bowl/Krater

1

5

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Small-to-Medium Bowl

0

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

SD/SE

0

Levantine

Levantine

Storage Vessel

Southeastern

Egyptian-style

Levantine

Large Bowl/Krater

SB

2

Levantine

Egyptian-style

Small-to-Medium Bowl

S-4

Egyptian-style

Egyptian-style

Serving Jar/Jug

Northeastern

No. HU Forms (No. YG)

Levantine

Storage Vessel

SA/SC

Cultural Tradition

Egyptian-style Levantine

4 0 1 1 0 4 1 0

No Place Like Home

Stratum

Insula

Building

Object Type Small-to-Medium Bowl Large Bowl/Krater

SF

Cookpot

Cultural Tradition

No. HU Forms (No. YG)

Egyptian-style

6

Egyptian-style

0

Levantine Levantine Levantine

Beer Jar

Egyptian-style Egyptian-style

Storage Vessel

Levantine

Serving Jar/Jug

First, with respect to the foodstuffs consumed and their mode of preparation in Area S, there is no indication from the available data for Egyptian practices outside of the presence of the ‘beer jar’—the distribution of which fails to follow any meaningful temporal or spatial pattern in relation to other ceramic forms or practices. Therefore, they either signify one of the few non-negotiable aspects of Egyptian foodways or they— and their associated product—had become sufficiently popular at Beth-Shean so as to transcend culturally specific practices. As noted by the excavators, food production at Beth-Shean was therefore almost exclusively Levantine in character and at no point do we see completely replicated Egyptian foodways at the site (Mazar 2009: 19). While negotiating key aspects of their identity, the Egyptians present at Beth-Shean recreated some non-negotiable elements of their foodways (beer production?) but otherwise adapted to local cultural patterns—including with respect to staples like bread. While the excavators also identify the table service as being another non-negotiable aspect of Egyptian foodways (Mazar 2009: 19), this merits reconsideration apart from gross proportions between Egyptian-style and Levantine forms. If we consider the totality of ceramic forms related to foodways and the fact that Egyptian-style bowls were likely unoffensive to members of either cultural group, the last phase in which an Egyptian ambience was created at the table in Area S seems to have been Stratum S-4—likely during the reign of Ramesses III (c. 1184–1153 BC, Martin 2009: 464), one of the last periods of stable Egyptian rule in the region.

Egyptian-style Levantine

0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

producing a set of four closed forms across two distinct classes (types TJ76a–b). Furthermore, while Building SB also produced restorable forms from a Levantine serving tradition in the form of two kraters and a jug, all lack conspicuously Levantine decoration. In this house especially, it was possible to conduct a meal in the Egyptian fashion with limited dissonance. After the destruction of Stratum S-4 there is a subtle shift wherein all varieties of Egyptian-style closed forms become substantially rarer, with the gaps seemingly being filled with their Levantine counterparts. Despite the fact that Stratum S-3’s assemblage is more than five times the size of Stratum S-4’s and its exposure more complete, the only Egyptian-style forms that are proportionally high are small-to-medium bowls. There is no indication that the sample is biased against Egyptian-style closed forms given the high degree of preservation for their Levantine counterparts. Sporadic Egyptian-style forms from outside of the bowl tradition do exist in this phase; however, they follow no discernable spatial patterning. Consequently, at no point in Stratum S-3 is it possible to say that households were able to produce an Egyptian ambience at mealtime. Given the overwhelming quantity of Egyptian-style bowls at the site, the Egyptian ceramic industry was clearly still producing at high volumes; however, a change had occurred either with respect to what the industry was capable of supplying, or what the garrison desired to consume. Regardless, in the final decades of the Egyptian occupation of BethShean, the process of identification had undergone a transformation. While it is not possible to say if the inhabitants of Area S were Levantine or Egyptian, it is clear that on the eve of the garrison’s final destruction, likely during the turbulent reign of Ramesses VI (c. 1146–1136 BC, Martin 2009: 464), it was either not possible or undesirable to fully replicate any aspect of Egyptian foodways.

As can be seen in Table 4, restorable elements of Egyptian-style closed forms for storage and serving are unusually common in Stratum S-4 considering its smaller overall assemblage, with several houses producing complete examples and Building SB

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Jacob C. Damm: Chapter 7. Identity at the Twilight of Empire Differences in gluten protein composition between old and modern durum wheat genotypes in relation to 20th century breeding in Italy. European Journal of Agronomy 87: 19–29. de Vartavan, C. 1987. Egyptian barley: A reassessment, in M. Collier and M. Kamish (eds) Wepwawet: Research Papers in Egyptology: 11–12. London: Department of Egyptology, University College London. Díaz-Andreu, M., S. Lucy, S. Babić, and D.N. Edwards (eds) 2005. The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion. London: Routledge. Dietler, M. 2010. Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of California Press. Emberling, G. 1997. Ethnicity in complex societies: Archaeological perspectives. Journal of Archaeological Research 5 (4): 295–344. Emberling, G. 2014. Ethnicity in empire: Assyrians and others, in J. McInerney (ed.) A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient World: 158–174. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. Fantalkin, A. 2015. Coarse kitchen and household pottery as an indicator for Egyptian presence in the southern Levant: A diachronic perspective, in M. Spataro and A. Villing (eds) Ceramics, Cuisine and Culture: The Archaeology and Science of Kitchen Pottery in the Ancient Mediterranean World: 233–241. Havertown: Oxbow Books. Fitzgerald, G.M. 1930. The Four Canaanite Temples of Bethshan, Part II, The Pottery. Philadelphia: University Museum. Frumin, S., Y. Melamed, and E. Weiss 2019. The wheatpeople of Canaan, in A.M. Maeir, I. Shai, and C. McKinny (eds) The Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages of Southern Canaan: 19–36. Boston: De Gruyter. Gadot, Y. 2011. Houses and households in settlements along the Yarkon River, Israel, during the Iron Age I: Society, economy, and identity in A. YasurLandau, J.R. Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow (eds) Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond: 155–181. Leiden: Brill. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Guedes, J.D., and R. Spengler 2014. Sampling strategies in paleoethnobotanical analysis, in J.M. Marston, J.D. Guedes, and C. Warinner (eds) Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany: 77–94. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Hastorf, C.A. 2017. The Social Archaeology of Food: Thinking about Eating from Prehistory to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hillman, G.C. 2001. Archaeology, Percival, and the problems of identifying wheat remains, in P.D.S. Caligari, and P.E. Brandham (eds) Wheat Taxonomy: The Legacy of John Percival: 27–36. London: Academic Press Limited.

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Chapter 8. ‘Work/Life Balance’ in Late Chalcolithic Anatolia: Household Activities and Spatial Organization at Çadır Höyük Stephanie Selover, Laurel D. Hackley, and Sharon R. Steadman The site of Çadır Höyük is located on the north central Anatolian plateau, near the modern city of Yozgat in the Sorgun province of modern Turkey (Figure 1). Çadır is a small mounded site that was occupied continuously from at least the Middle Chalcolithic until the Byzantine period, providing an example of a settlement that survived local and larger-scale cultural changes across many millennia. Excavations at the site have been ongoing since 1993, focused on various aspects of social life through millennia of occupation (e.g., Cassis 2009; Cassis et al. 2019; Ross et al. 2019a, 2019b; Steadman et al. forthcoming, 2019c, 2019d; Steadman and McMahon 2015, 2017). The Chalcolithic/Early Bronze I excavations cover roughly 900 square meters on the southern slope of the mound, exposing five phases between 3800 and 2800 BC. During this period, the architecture and material culture suggest a transition from a chiefly agro-pastoralist settlement, composed of comparable individual households, to a more organized or ‘planned’ arrangement of shared spaces designated for particular production activities. These changes in architecture and the creation of communal spaces within the settlement coincide with events taking place in the

larger fourth-millennium Middle East, particularly the growth and subsequent retraction of the Uruk system in southern Mesopotamia. We have previously argued that socioeconomic and other social structure changes that occurred at Çadır Höyük in this period were influenced by the expansion of Uruk and other trade networks in the mid and later fourth millennium (Steadman et al. 2019a, 2019b). A critical piece of this argument, missing until now, is a close analysis of the material culture that corresponds with the architectural and social changes we have observed. Here we present a detailed study of a specific subset of material culture found at the site and its distribution across the built spaces in the prehistoric layers. Investigating these distributions allows for a better understanding of the changing organization and use of space. Similar analyses elsewhere have yielded extensive and valuable data (e.g., Özbal 2012; Nishimura 2012; Rainville 2005). The present analysis at Çadır Höyük demonstrates what tasks were carried out where, mapping out a consistency of architectural footprint, accompanied by a preference for open-air work places that lasted centuries. The data will also indicate production levels of these tasks, in particular revealing

Figure 1. Left: Map showing Çadır Höyük in larger Anatolian and Mesopotamian context; Right: Aerial photo of Çadır looking east. The excavations discussed in this publication are in the sunlit area on the upper right side of the mound (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

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Stephanie Selover et al.: Chapter 8. ‘Work/Life Balance’ in Late Chalcolithic Anatolia the arc from household, to extra-household, and back to mainly household levels of production over the course of the millennium. The collective assemblage of the material culture data discussed here also reflects the larger social and economic patterns at play across the Anatolian plateau and beyond, and how these affected the work-related activities of Çadır residents within the settlement, providing clues about how they reacted to the regional networks in which they participated over the course of 1000 years of occupation.

here (Table 1). The area is separated into ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ towns, designations derived from the position of the two excavation areas on the mound (see Figure 2). At this point, the earliest layers are exposed only in the ‘Lower Town’ area (the LSS and SES trenches), with the Transitional and Early Bronze layers in clearer focus in the ‘Upper Town’ (the USS trenches). In the first half of the fourth millennium, the Lower Town is composed of well-built domestic compounds whose residents are engaged in a ‘typical’ Anatolian agro-pastoralist economy. This period is called the ‘Agglutinated’ phase, in reference to the layout of the compounds. Material culture production is commensurate with household-level requirements; trade appears to be conducted mainly at a local level with the only clearly present long-distance commodity being obsidian. By the middle of the fourth millennium, when the Uruk system is expanding, the subsequent ‘Burnt House/Omphalos Building’ phase in the Lower Town (Figure 3) retains a similar architectural footprint to the earlier Agglutinated phase but reveals significant changes to the spatial organization of task areas within the settlement. Extra-household production of ceramics, and potentially lithics and textiles, is attested, and evidence for considerable engagement with long-distance trade networks is present. The ‘Transitional’ phase in the Lower Town (Figure 4, lower plan), which includes the final two centuries of the fourth millennium and corresponds to the initial contraction of the Uruk system, marks another episode of social change at Çadır. This includes both architectural organization, a reduction in material

Çadir Höyük in temporal and regional context The six-millennium longue durée (c. 5200 BC to AD 13th century) of the Çadır habitation offers a host of opportunities to track various elements of residential life over multiple generations, and during manifold social, political, and economic transformations manifesting in the regions surrounding Çadır (e.g., Cassis et al. 2019; Cassis and Lauricella 2021; Cassis and Steadman 2014; Ross et al. 2019a, 2019b; Steadman et al. forthcoming). Some of our most dedicated analysis has been directed at the fourth millennium BC, with particular focus on contextualizing Çadır residents’ experience with events taking place in the larger Middle Eastern region, including the growth and retraction of the Uruk system in southern Mesopotamia. In previous publications of data, we have presented the panoply of the fourth millennium experience at Çadır (Steadman et al. 2018, 2019b, 2019c, 2019d). A brief summary of the chronological phases identified in the Late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age layers is useful

Figure 2. Left: View of southern slope of the Çadır mound showing the Upper and Lower Towns; Right: Topo map of the mound indicating location of the LSS, SES, and USS trenches discussed in the text (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

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Figure 3. Plan of Burnt House and Omphalos Building phase featuring some of the major architectural changes from earlier in the phase to later (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

culture production, and a ‘retraction’ of the settlement itself toward the center of the höyük in the Upper Town (Figure 4, upper plan), while the architecture of the Lower Town is given over to production activities. During the Early Bronze I phase, which coincides with a period of restructuring in southern Mesopotamia, the Lower Town is largely abandoned, with domestic and production activities shifting entirely to the Upper Town (see below).

1977; Steadman 2005; Tuan 1977). The organization of the built environment determines where inhabitants of a settlement engage in social behaviors and particular tasks, and these spatial patterns become embedded in the society’s structure, shaping behaviors (and subsequent construction) through generations and sometimes over centuries (Kent 1984, 1987, 1991; Rapoport 1969, 1990, 2008; Steadman 2015). Consistency in the use of space can yield otherwise elusive data on gendered behavior (Hendon 2006), the structuring logic of household production and consumption patterns (Blanton 1994; Greenfield, et al. this volume; Netting et al. 1984; Parker, 2012; Russell and Bogard 2010; Shafer-Elliott et al. this volume), and settlementwide socioeconomic and sociopolitical changes (e.g., Costin 1991; Foster 2012; Giddens 1984; Portnoy 1981; Steadman 2010, 2011).

As already noted, this socioeconomic, architectural, and behavioral arc at Çadır over the fourth and into the third millennium BC is loosely tied, temporally, to the southern Mesopotamian Uruk expansion, which featured heightened economic and social contacts throughout western Asia, and its subsequent contraction (Steadman et al. 2018, 2019b). The data presented here clearly demonstrate a later fourth millennium surge in both the presence of long-distance trade items present at Çadır and a robust increase in socioeconomic production activities at the settlement. The aim of the present study is not to belabor the apparent relationship between the economic development of the Uruk system and its possible impact on far-flung communities, but to examine the striking contemporary shifts in the designation of communal and private space and work at a small settlement.

Archaeological evidence for the organization and use of space in a settlement can therefore reveal critical information about the structure of a society and how it withstands pressures associated with changing political systems and technological innovations. The data retrieved from Çadır present a fascinating study of how residents dealt with a global environment that created opportunities for substantial socioeconomic changes in daily activities, while still maintaining longheld spatial boundaries rooted in a model of household production. We have previously discussed the practice of preserving the general architectural lines of the settlement at Çadır, even as the social organization of the community and the work its inhabitants engaged in underwent drastic changes (Hackley et al. 2018). Such architectural patterns held for centuries, until social and economic forces at the turn from the fourth to the third millennium caused a nearly complete break from long-held spatial norms. Here, we present the material

The analysis of spatial organization at Çadir Höyük Over the years our team has been amazed at the stability of the fourth millennium BC architectural footprint at Çadır (Hackley et al. 2018; Yıldırım et al. 2018; Steadman and Hackley 2017). This perhaps is related to the simple fact of living on a höyük with little space for expansion, but it also speaks to deep-seated human behavioral codes (e.g., Bachelard 1958; Davidson 2009; Heidegger 114

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Figure 4. Transitional phase featuring some of the major architectural changes from earlier in the phase to later. The lower plan shows the Lower Town, the upper plan shows the Upper Town (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

culture that allowed us to assess the changing use of these built spaces.

lithic production. With respect to food processing, we limited the representative data to ground stone items only: mortars/querns, pestles, handstones, and pounders (Figure 5a). Each green triangle (see figures below) represents the occurrence of one of these items. It should be noted that ground stone items are also used in ceramic production (for instance, to levigate clay and break up temper [e.g., Connell 2002; Gosselain and Livingstone 2005; Wright 1993]); however, in our opinion, this does not preclude such items from being used for food processing at different times in the day or week. Material culture associated with ceramic production (Figure 5b) includes burnishing stones or bones with burnish-wear, chunks of ochre, chunks of limestone or quartz (common temper in Late Chalcolithic ceramics), and unbaked ‘clay ovoids’ found in piles, ready for crafting into handmade vessels. One pink triangle (see figures below) represents one burnishing tool, or a collection (two or more pieces/ chunks) of temper, ochre, or clay ovoids.

Methodological considerations The material culture discussed and plotted in this study was collected over the course of 25 years of excavations, using a locus/feature system for recording horizontal/ vertical placement within the ten 10 × 10 m trenches found in the majority of figures in the following pages. All loci and features are represented in a meticulously constructed stratigraphic sequence featuring five main phases (Table 1). The earliest main phase (c. 5200– 4000/3800 BC; The Deep Sounding [DS on figures] phase V) is not included in the present study as it is currently solely represented in our 2 × 2 m Deep Sounding. The other four main phases (IV to I), which span the periods from c. 3800–2900/2800 BC, are included here and are described in more detail below. The material culture presented here is intended to define areas dedicated to daily or frequent tasks including food processing, and ceramic, textile, and

Textile production (Figure 5c) is illustrated by the presence of spindle whorls, loom weights, or 115

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Figure 5. Examples of the types of material culture forming the basis of the data analysis (text in parentheses represents the object’s Field Catalog Number/trench). a: 1–2. ground stone mortars (l-r: 2007/LSS 5, 8761/SES 1), 3. pestle (10395/LSS 4), 4. pounder (2480/LSS 5), 5. grinder (9068/SES 1); b: 1–3. burnishing stones (l-r: 12609/SES 1; 8924/SES 1; 11560/LSS 3), 4. clay ovoids (SES 1), 5. close-up of a clay ovoid; c: 1–2. loom weights (l-r: 19517/USS 10, 11520/SES 1), 3. metal needle (19753/LSS 3), 4. spindle whorl (19514/USS 10); d: 1–3. cores (l-r: 14777/USS 10, 9928/SES 1, 12616/SES 1), 4. flake (14890/SES 1), 5–6. blades (lr: 17591/USS 10, 13416/SES 1) (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

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Figure 6. a: Plan of the earlier Agglutinated phase showing the locations of work-related activities; b: Plan of the later Agglutinated phase showing the locations of work-related activities (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

bone/metal needles (in two cases metal items were identified as either broken pins or needles, and these were included). One blue triangle (see figures below) indicates the presence of at least one of these items. Lithic production (Figure 5d) was the most difficult to represent due to the vast amount of lithic debitage throughout the site. After consultation with one of our lithic specialists (B. Selvi, personal communication, 2020) we divided lithic material culture into two

categories: brown triangles represent the presence of at least one core plus at least three additional lithic items (flakes/tools); orange triangles represent the presence of either a minimum of two tools plus three additional flakes, or a minimum of seven flakes tightly clustered. In most cases the triangles represent assemblages exceeding these numbers. The intention was to identify places where individuals spent a minimum of one hour engaged in lithic production.

Table 1. Names, dating, and locations of phases discussed in the text (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project). Phase

Dates

Phase name and periodization in text

Location on mound

Phase V

ca. 5200–3800 BC

Deep Sounding (not discussed in text)

Lower Town: Trench LSS 5

Phase IV

ca. 3800–3600 BC

Phase III

ca. 3600–3200 BC

Phase II

ca. 3200–3000 BC

Phase I

ca. 3000–2800 BC

Agglutinated Earlier and Later

Lower Town: All LSS and SES Trenches

Transitional Earlier and Later

Lower & Upper Town: All Trenches

Burnt House & Omphalos Building Earlier and Later Early Bronze I Earlier and Later

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Lower & Upper Town: All Trenches

Lower & Upper Town: All Trenches

No Place Like Home Certain contexts containing the material culture described above were not included because we did not feel they represented work spaces. These contexts include walls, in which items might have been ‘swept up’ due to the brick-making process, wall foundation deposits, and burials.

limestone, and shell for temper rather than being used in food production. The Eastern Compound remains domestic in nature, with living and storage rooms located toward the east (primarily in trench SES 1), fronted by a large courtyard with an anteroom and associated furniture next to the central byway. The quantity and distribution of debitage suggests that lithic production remained a mainstay of activity, conducted primarily in the courtyard and perhaps the anteroom of the compound. Food production was also likely carried out in the courtyard. Toward the east, another open area appears to have been used as a production area for stone tools and possibly ceramics preparation; there is little evidence of food or textile production in this area.

A millennium of activity and spatial management at Çadir In our ongoing detailed stratigraphic analyses, Çadır’s five prehistoric phases (Table 1) have been divided into several dozen subphases which reflect subtle architectural changes throughout the periods. For the present study we have simplified these into ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ periods within each of the four phases discussed here in order to more effectively present the relevant data on activity and spatial management strategies through the millennium.

As in the earlier phase, the two compounds are separated by a street which apparently gave access to the interior part of the settlement. The material culture recovered from the street may suggest that work was also conducted here but could also have resulted from sweeping or dumping from inside the compounds. The street leads into the northern balk of our current excavations; the contemporary Agglutinated contexts of the Upper Town trenches lie underneath the present Upper Town exposure.

The Agglutinated Phase The material culture from our earliest extant Agglutinated phase (c. 3800–3600 BC) is presented in Figure 6a. The structures in the earlier Agglutinated phase, exposed in the Lower Town, are laid out into Western and Eastern compounds, separated by a street. At present, the earlier Agglutinated phase is not fully exposed and can only be briefly described here. In this earlier phase, the Eastern Compound is a domestic quarter, although not all the floors in the compound have been entirely revealed. The Western Compound is also likely domestic in nature (though only partially exposed at present). The material culture so far recovered from the earlier Agglutinated phase suggests a typical assemblage of household-based production items; the possible exception to this is a higher level of lithic production in the Eastern Compound, perhaps suitable for supplying both compounds. Production activities such as knapping took place in the open compound courtyards and street areas.

In this largely ‘Pre-Uruk’ period at Çadır Höyük, the material culture suggests that residents engaged in household-scale production, some light industry in the form of ceramic production, and possibly some lithic production in the Eastern Compound. The lack of evidence for certain key domestic tasks (such as textile production) may suggest that other units elsewhere in the settlement were providing certain commodities to the community. The Burnt House and Omphalos Building Phase The Burnt House/Omphalos Building phase (c. 3600– 3200 BC; hereafter ‘Burnt House phase’) is mainly exposed in the Lower Town, although this phase has also been uncovered in recently excavated areas in the Upper Town levels.

We have more complete data from the following later Agglutinated phase (Figure 6b). In the Western Compound, residents embarked on activities dedicated to ceramic production. A large updraft kiln dominates this area, and surrounding spaces were converted from what was likely living space to a storage building and ash dump. The ceramic production operation in the Western Compound (referred to as the ‘Pre-Ompholos’ phase in other publications [Steadman et al. 2017, 2019d; Steadman and McMahon 2017]), presents a material culture assemblage consistent with extra-household levels of production. The majority of material recovered here is made up of polishers and clay or temper items, all associated with ceramic production. The ground stone objects may have served to grind ochre,

At the end of the Agglutinated phase, the existing architecture in the Eastern Compound of the Lower Town was knocked down and construction began on a substantial domestic structure we call the Burnt House. The Burnt House and its courtyards appear to have functioned as a central locus of activity in the settlement during this period. The Burnt House phase corresponds to the significant expansion of the Uruk system, including the establishment of trade networks in southeastern Anatolia. This phase represents the highest density of architecture dedicated to domestic 118

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Figure 7. Plan of the earlier Burnt House phase showing the locations of work-related activities (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

and communal use in both the Upper and Lower Towns. We recovered the greatest quantity and diversity of production-related materials from this phase, in all areas of the settlement.

Compound ground stone was primarily used for the processing of raw clay and temper rather than for food production. In the Eastern Compound, the majority of production activities were carried out in the communal Southern Courtyard area. Ceramic production, likely in collaboration with the industry in the Western Compound, combined with lithic and probably some food production, took place in both the Southern (communal) and Burnt (private/domestic) courtyards. Ceramic production appears to exceed the needs of the Burnt House as a domestic unit, and extra-household production of lithics may also be in play, as it was in the Agglutinated phase.

The earlier Burnt House phase (Figure 7) saw the continuation of ceramic production in the Western Compound, with a rebuilt kiln and a new building (referred to as the ‘Omphalos Building,’ after a distinctive bowl form found among the many vessels stored inside) installed in what was previously an open courtyard. A radical change occurs in the Eastern Compound, where the Agglutinated architecture was demolished. A large building, termed the ‘Non-Domestic Building’ was constructed in the eastern part of the area to enclose a space that was likely dedicated to ritual activities (Yıldırım et al. 2018; Yıldırım and Steadman 2021). The domestic-use space contracted into the Burnt House, while the courtyard was divided into the ‘Burnt’ (west of the house) and Southern courtyards. While the Burnt Courtyard seems to have provided outdoor (private?) domestic space for the Burnt House residents, the Southern Courtyard was directly accessible from the street. In this earlier Burnt House phase the Southern Courtyard appears to have been focused on ceramic production activities. A possible kiln (constructed in one of the previous Agglutinated rooms), burnishing equipment, and an extensive number of clay ovoids, were accompanied by a massive grinding slab in the center of the courtyard, likely employed to knead clay and break up temper. In this phase, the entire Southern Courtyard in the Eastern Compound was now entirely devoted to communal, rather than household-based, production activities.

By the later Burnt House phase (Figure 8), there has been a further shift in the architectural layout, directed at maximizing production infrastructure. In the Western Compound the one-roomed Omphalos Building may have become two-roomed, or a combination room and inner courtyard. There was likely a kiln in the northeastern corner of the structure, but this area was damaged by the later construction of a Hittiteera silo, unfortunately eradicating the Chalcolithic remains there. The Southern Courtyard was still a busy communal space, now featuring two hearths and a bread oven, all likely for communal-scale use. A substantial exterior ‘Enclosure Wall’ and gate were constructed at the southern edge of the settlement. Behind (west of) the Omphalos Building, a stairway and path led up to the Upper Town, passing a cistern. Excavations in USS 9–10 (the Upper Town) have proceeded to this depth and show that workshops (likely communal in nature) take up most of the area east of the street. The material culture of the Lower Town in the later Burnt House phase (Figure 8) reveals an apparent explosion of activity. Ceramic production continued unimpeded in the Western Compound. Multiple locations of lithic production, including in the gate area, the Burnt Courtyard, and in the Southern Courtyard, suggest

The material culture in the earlier Western Compound Omphalos Building area (Figure 7) consists of numerous ground stone artifacts, accompanied by a more limited array of lithic and ceramic production items. As in the previous phase, we believe the Western 119

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Figure 8. Plan of the later Burnt House phase showing the locations of work-related activities (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

a considerable increase in lithic output at Çadır (for statistical analyses of lithic production see Steadman et al. 2019b and forthcoming). Textile production increased significantly in the Burnt Courtyard, and ceramic production continued at a high pace in the Southern Courtyard. Interestingly, ground stone food processing appears to have taken place elsewhere (with the possible exception of the Non-Domestic Building). We know that some food processing was taking place in the Southern Courtyard (von Baeyer 2018; von Baeyer et al. 2021), but anything requiring considerable grinding was being processed in as yet unexcavated areas of the Lower Town in this phase. Alternatively, it may have been handled in the Upper Town, as discussed below. Even considering the relative lack of food production, the sheer amount of activity in the Southern Courtyard is remarkable in this phase.

West of the Upper Town street are a somewhat confusing series of walls that seem to represent a number of largely ephemeral, small, workshop spaces, based on the non-domestic artifactual assemblage and small rooms, along with at least one fire installation. Directly east of the street is what appears to have been an enclosed courtyard space, just south of a room (extending into the northern balk) which was likely domestic in nature. The entryway to the Upper Town domestic area was perhaps at the northwest corner of the courtyard. In trench USS 10 a series of far smaller spaces, like the rooms to the west of the street, were also likely short-lived and ephemeral. These small rooms also contained a number of bins, platforms, and very well-formed clay floors. Within the easternmost USS 10 buildings, the significant number of ground stone items suggests that activities associated with food and ceramic production were taking place in this area of the Upper Town; perhaps these areas provided processed ingredients to the Lower Town. The lack of fire installations in the Upper Town further suggests this divided food-production strategy. It is also possible that ground stone itself was being produced in the workshops of the Upper Town, accounting for the density of objects found here. In addition to ceramics and food, both lithic and textile production were carried out in the Upper Town at this time, in both the open and closed work spaces.

The workshop areas of the Upper Town were also bustling places in the later Burnt House phase (Figure 8). While there is less of the Upper Town so far exposed, changes in the use and layout of space in this area are quite clear. The orientation of the Upper Town and Lower Town, including the streets, are aligned. The Upper Town street itself is an open walkway, lined with a series of dense clay coatings; a very thick seriation of layers in the northern balk indicates seasonal or yearly repairing of the street. The street surface also contained a large number of broken pottery fragments, perhaps used as paving or just simply trash. A well designed and maintained clay-lined drain was placed under the street itself, likely to draw water off of this thoroughfare.

The Burnt House and Omphalos Building phase, which largely corresponds to the greatest extent of the Uruk expansion, demonstrates the highest 120

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Figure 9. Plan of the Transitional phase showing the locations of work-related activities (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

levels of socioeconomic activity at Chalcolithic Çadır, particularly in the Lower Town. All four types of material culture indicators suggest an extensive, and even rapid, increase in production. While food production activities may have been intended to provision the household and community, it is possible that ceramic, lithic, and textile production may have ramped up to supply a more active regional trade network. In spite of a significant increase in activity in the Lower Town in both private (Burnt House) and communal (Western Compound and Southern Courtyard) spaces, the architectural footprint remains largely steady throughout this phase. Residents were reluctant to alter walls that had stood for decades, even centuries, and instead adjusted the way they used the space within their settlement. In many ways the Upper Town reflects the layout of the Lower Town, with more (as yet unexcavated) domestic areas to the north, and the more communal workshop and activity spaces to the south.

been functional. The Lower Town gate was blocked. In the Eastern Compound, while architectural orientations were maintained, the distinction between identifiable private and communal space has broken down. An earlier Transitional phase sees a short-lived domestic structure built just after the Burnt House was destroyed (Figure 9); it was soon replaced in the later Transitional phase by the creation of smaller, less substantial ‘apsidal’ buildings which appear to have served as storage spaces, or to have been used for informal or periodic work activities. Just north of these structures, a mudbrick and stone feature may have been part of a new, substantial ramp leading up to the Upper Town. Material culture suggests a persistence of textile production in the Eastern Compound; some lithic and ceramic production appears to continue; food production appears compatible with small-scale household production levels. Meanwhile, the Upper Town became more active, with larger architecture, still in consistent orientation with the Lower Town. While the central street remained in use, the rest of the architecture was quite different from the Burnt House phase. West of the street, a large fire installation dominated the space, along with what appears to be a smaller wall, perhaps intended to further contain the space around the fire installation; the more open area to the east and north may have been a work space, due to the non-domestic nature of the artifact assemblage and the small spaces allotted to activities.

The Transitional Phase The Transitional phase (c. 3200–3000 BC; Figure 9) corresponds to the period when the Uruk System began retracting back to Mesopotamia. At Çadır, this phase marks the beginning of a shift towards domestic occupation in the Upper Town, while additional areas of the Lower Town were converted to production space or abandoned outright. In the Lower Town, the Western Compound Omphalos Building area falls largely out of use, though the stairway and path to the Upper Town may still have

East of the street, the Burnt House phase domestic area was completely leveled, replaced by a large 121

No Place Like Home open courtyard, or perhaps even a second walkway, paralleling the main street. Similar to the Burnt House phase, the surfaces of both of these open areas were made up of a series of thick clay surface layers, extensively studded with broken pottery. These areas may also have served as open air work spaces.

open space, with the exception of a single structure and the westernmost pathway to the Upper Town. The collection of material culture in the northwest corner of trench LSS 3 suggests that activities, including food processing, textile, and lithic production, may have occurred on the pathway area heading into the Upper Town. The earlier EB Eastern Compound architecture may have been residential in nature, or these rooms were perhaps dedicated to daytime work activities. Food processing and lithic production appears to have been carried out in this area, possibly accompanied by some ceramic activities (temper preparation and pot burnishing). By the later half of the Early Bronze I phase, the Lower Town was almost completely abandoned.

The eastern USS 10 trench features a series of rooms (Figure 9), larger than in the previous phase, offering a mix of open-air and enclosed spaces. A number of large bins, platforms, and likely pot-holders were found in these areas. Several large fire installations are present, one of which was remade in the same location over a number of phases, continuing even into the Early Bronze Age. These spaces were plastered with a thick, clean clay; floors sloped, sometimes sharply, from north to south, indicating perhaps an organic (wooden?) floor may have created covered storage spaces beneath.

Despite remaining in use, the Upper Town also changed profoundly. In the earlier EB period (Figure 10), as in the Lower Town, the basic orientation of architectural units remained consistent, but the passageways were blocked and a large and very well-built 2 m-wide perimeter wall was erected over the former walkways, very effectively blocking the street. This, along with the lack of identifiable domestic contexts in this phase, suggests that living space had retracted within the perimeter wall, currently beyond our excavations.

Throughout the Upper Town, ground stone materials proliferate, including within the street, indicating either food production in this area or the disposal of these tools in ‘outside’ spaces. It is possible that the ‘street’ had transitioned into an open courtyard rather than a byway between the Upper and Lower Towns. The recovery of ground stone and ceramic-related materials in the eastern USS 10 trench is indicative of extensive ceramic production taking place here; this is further supported by the fire installations spread across the Upper Town.

We have been able to determine that a small number of rooms (Rooms 1–3) were built directly against the interior of the perimeter wall itself, with evidence of food and possibly lithic production recovered from the floors of these rooms. East and outside of the new wall, a number of small and likely enclosed workshops were still in existence, built directly against the perimeter wall, but otherwise essentially unchanged from the Transitional phase. The sloped clay or plastered clay floors persisted into this phase, accompanied by a number of bins, pedestals, and benches. Interestingly, an even higher number of fire installations were present in this earlier EB period. As mentioned above, the largest of these was built directly over the analogous Late Chalcolithic and Transitional installations.

While some work continued in the Lower Town, especially within the Eastern Compound, it is clear that the focus of activity, especially ceramic production, had moved to the Upper Town. Production levels appear adequate for Çadır households, but it is unclear whether they were sufficient to supply regional trade networks; other indicators suggest long-distance, and possibly regional trade activities had significantly decreased at this time (Steadman et al. 2018, 2019b, 2019c). At the same time that the Uruk system was experiencing a retraction and reorganization in Mesopotamia, the major production areas at Çadır were also ‘retracting’ northward, closer to what may have been the center of the settlement. The once central Lower Town went from a lightly occupied area in the earlier Transitional phase to what appears to be simply a ‘day use’ and storage area by the later period of this phase.

A variety of activities were carried out in these Upper Town work spaces situated outside the perimeter wall. Textile production, previously unusual in the Upper Town, seems to have become common, and lithic production is also apparent. Evidence for food and ceramic production is also present, though not at the level expected, given the number of fire installations. It is possible that some of this work continued to take place in the Lower Town (Figure 10), and perhaps also within the Upper Town perimeter wall. The external production space in the Upper Town earlier EB period offers an interesting parallel to the Southern Courtyard area in the Burnt House phase of the Lower Town. Communal work space in these periods is located to the southeast of the main occupational area and outside the main domestic quarter.

The Early Bronze I Phase By the Early Bronze (EB) I period (c. 3000–2800 BC), the Uruk System was no longer on the global stage. At Çadır, the earlier EB Lower Town architecture was flimsy and ephemeral (Figure 10), although it still preserved the orientation of the former architecture and even reused some of its foundations. In this earlier EB period the Western Compound provided simple 122

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Figure 10. Plan of the Early Bronze I phase showing the locations of work-related activities (© Çadır Höyük Archaeological Project).

In the later Early Bronze I period the architecture suggests that almost all activities had moved inside the Upper Town perimeter walls (Figure 10). Rooms 1 and 2 in trench USS 9 were eradicated, creating a large open space in this later period. Likewise, in trench USS 10, most of the walls and fire installations southeast of the perimeter wall were removed and Room 3 bacame an open space. Walls were added to the east, creating a type of zig-zag external perimeter wall. The only major external architecture at this point was a very large kiln resting on one of the new walls, and interestingly, the kiln faces to the to the inside of the settlement for the first time; all previous fire installations had faced outward, to the south. The open spaces within the perimeter wall consisted of well-made open courtyards, paved with a series of clay and crushed stone layers. A well-made drain (not shown in Figure 10) snaked under the wall to the south. These internal courtyards were largely clean of material; some lithic debitage may have indicated a work area, or perhaps refuse disposal.

activity areas to inside the settlement, not to mention the abandonment of the more accessible Lower Town, would suggest increasing concern about the stability of the region even in the earlier part of the third millennium. Discussion and conclusions This survey of both material culture and architecture from 1000 years of habitation at the site of Çadır Höyük reveals a number of interesting and informative patterns. As has been noted previously (e.g., Hackley et al. 2018), the architectural footprint and the associated use of space remains quite consistent, but usage of them does evolve over time. Within these architectural changes, some living areas are repurposed into work areas as the settlement develops. The earliest Agglutinated phase sees household-scale production of pottery, food, lithics, and textiles—largely sufficient for the needs of each household. By the later Agglutinated phase, the community experiences a shift as the Western Compound transitions to non-domestic work space and increasing ceramic production levels.

By the later EB I, contemporary with the post-Uruk period, almost all production activities at Çadır are absent from our excavation areas. Residents appear to have moved the majority of their work spaces to the interior of their settlement, behind their new and substantial perimeter wall. Little is known about the EB I–II period in this region of the Anatolian plateau, though research has indicated that by the EB III period, social, political, and economic upheaval is well underway, and most if not all of the urban spaces are enclosed within large perimeter walls such as the one here at Çadır (Bachhuber 2015; Selover 2015). The construction of a perimeter wall and the movement of

By the Burnt House phase, social and economic organization had altered even more substantially, perhaps due to contact with larger networks feeling the ripples of Uruk expansion. Tasks such as ceramic and lithic production became common in communal spaces, including the Lower Town Omphalos Building and the Southern Courtyard, and in the open eastern areas of the Upper Town. Data for both activities suggest extrahousehold and even extra-community production levels, and the evidence indicates collaborative work 123

No Place Like Home between households. The rather dramatic increase in lithic and textile production in the Burnt House Courtyard suggests that residents of the Burnt House may have been participating in extra-household production of these commodities. Also notable is the general accessibility of work areas spread across the Lower Town. Residents appear to have carried out daily tasks without worrying about privacy or protection from visitors (traders?) or other residents of the settlement.

represented a natural phase in their lives as buildings, which residents accepted as part of the use-life of their built environment. This remains true even into the Early Bronze I period, when enclosed spaces became sparser, but still retained the essential location and orientation that had been utilized for centuries. A second takeaway from this study reveals the Çadır residents’ penchant for open, outdoor, and more socially-oriented work spaces. Residents gravitated to the open courtyards to accomplish their daily tasks, even occasionally sitting along the street or pathways while engaged in mobile, social activities like knapping, sewing, or spinning. Although most of the courtyard spaces shifted from private or domestic to communal use, and certain activities were sometimes emphasized over others, the location of workspaces remained startlingly consistent throughout time. The spatial organization of work in established outdoor courtyards remained intact for nearly 1000 years, until a contraction into the center of the settlement interrupts our excavated sequence.

The Transitional phase demonstrates a reorientation in the use of space, perhaps concomitant with the settlement’s declining contact with regional systems. As these systems collapsed, inhabitants began a return to household-scale schemes of production, particularly in the Lower Town. Former living spaces fell into disrepair or were remodeled and utilized for communal production tasks and storage; these spaces were not reoccupied as dwellings. Ceramic production in the Western Compound came to a halt. Activity continued in the Eastern Compound, now possibly entirely communal in nature, but no longer at the frenetic pace of the previous phase. Instead, residents relocated a significant portion of their ceramic production to the Upper Town, along with either ground stone production or food processing activities. While tasks in the Lower Town were still in open and easily accessible areas, it is no longer clear that residents were occupying the Lower Town; tasks in this area may have been limited to daylight hours only. In the Upper Town, activity areas behind walls or nearer to the interior of the settlement became the norm.

This study also shows that a relatively simple (though detailed and time-consuming!) spatial analysis of task performance can be an indicator of far larger social and economic phenomena. Whether it was prompted by the Uruk expansion or by other factors, we can clearly demonstrate that the production level of everything but foodstuffs saw a dramatic increase in the midand later fourth millennium. The data presented here directly correlates with discussions presented elsewhere (Steadman et al. 2019c, 2019d, forthcoming; Yıldırım et al. 2018), demonstrating rapid and dramatic socioeconomic, religious, and sociopolitical changes at Çadır during this millennium. The activity area analyses presented here also reveal the slow but inexorable retraction of daily work in open and easily accessible places to locations that are eventually tucked behind outer protective walls. This movement of work spaces may well reflect a larger picture of a changing social environment on the Early Bronze Age Anatolian plateau, one perhaps far less friendly than had been the case in the Late Chalcolithic.

This trend continued and expanded in the Early Bronze Age. Activities in the Lower Town were concentrated in the western area, perhaps only in daylight hours, likely in open space flanking the pathway to the Upper Town. Activities in the Upper Town, over the course of the Early Bronze I phase, moved behind the substantial walls forming the new perimeter of the community. Production levels, in visible excavated areas, dropped dramatically. Several principles are clearly demonstrated at prehistoric Çadır Höyük. First is the absolute consistency of the architectural footprint throughout the 1000 years of this study. Whether converting from domestic to communal (work space), or vice-versa, spaces reproduced the layout of the previous architecture, respecting the same orientation and passageways. The transition of spaces from domestic to ‘industrial’ did not signal evidence of community rupture, but rather

Accomplishing painstaking analyses such as those presented here is important for the basic knowledge that can be gained from the study and presents a paradigm that can become common across archaeological excavations. What is most satisfying, however, is the insight these archaeological efforts offer into the daily lives of those who occupied the ancient central Anatolian plateau.

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Stephanie Selover et al.: Chapter 8. ‘Work/Life Balance’ in Late Chalcolithic Anatolia Heidegger, M. 1977. Building, dwelling, thinking, in D. Krell (ed.) Basic Writings: 323–339. New York: Harper Collins. Hendon, J.A. 2006. The engendered household, in S.M. Nelson (ed.) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology: 171– 198. New York: AltaMira Press. Kent, S. 1984. Analyzing Activity Areas: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Use of Space. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Kent, S. 1987. Understanding the use of space: An ethnoarchaeological approach, in S. Kent (ed.) Method and Theory for Activity Area Research: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach: 1–62. New York: Columbia University Press. Kent, S. 1991. Partitioning space: Cross-cultural factors influencing domestic spatial segmentation. Environment and Behavior 23: 438–473. Netting, R.M., R.R. Wilk, and E.J. Arnould (eds) 1984. Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. Berkeley: University of California Press. Özbal, R. 2012. The challenge of identifying households at Tell Kurdu (Turkey), in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 321– 346. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Nishimura, Y. 2012. The life of the majority: A reconstruction of household activities and residential neighborhoods at the late-thirdmillennium urban settlement at Titriş Höyük in northern Mesopotamia, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 347– 372. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Parker, B.J. 2012. Domestic production and subsistence in an Ubaid household in Upper Mesopotamia, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 289–318. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Portnoy, A. W. 1981. A microarchaeological view of human settlement space and function, in R.A. Gould and M.B. Schiffer (eds) Modern Material Culture. The Archaeology of Us: 213–224. New York: Academic Press. Rapoport, A. 1969. House Form and Culture. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall. Rapoport, A. 1990. Systems of activities and systems of settings, in S. Kent (ed.) Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: 9–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rapoport, A. 2008. Environment-behavior studies: Past, present, and future. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 25(4): 276–281. Rainville, L. Investigating Upper Mesopotamian Households using MicroArcharological Techniques. BAR International Series No. S1368. Oxford: Archaeopress. Ross, J.C., G. McMahon, Y. Heffron, S.E. Adcock, S.R. Steadman, B.S. Arbuckle, A. Smith, and M. von

References Cited Bachelard, G. 1958. The Poetics of Space. Translated by M. Jolas. New York: Beacon. Bachelard, G. 2015. Citadel and Cemetery in Early Bronze Age Anatolia. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing. Blanton, R.E. 1994. Houses and Households: A Comparative Study. New York: Plenum Press. Cassis, M. 2009. Çadır Höyük: A rural settlement in Byzantine Anatolia, in T. Vorderstrasse and J. Roodenberg (eds) Archaeology of the Countryside in Medieval Anatolia: 1–24. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Cassis, M. and A.J. Lauricella 2021. Positive abandonment: The case from Çadır Höyük, in D.B. Stewart and R.M. Seifried (eds) Deserted Villages: Perspectives from the Eastern Mediterranean: 27–66. Grand Forks: University of North Dakota Digital Press. Cassis, Marica, A.J. Lauricella, K. Tardio, M. von Baeyer, S. Coleman, S.E. Adcock, B.S. Arbuckle, and A.L. Smith 2019. Regional patterns of Transition at Çadır Höyük in the Byzantine period. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 7(3): 321–349. Cassis, M. and S.R. Steadman 2014. Çadır Höyük: Continuity and change on the Anatolian Plateau, in S. Stull (ed.) East to West: Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology: 140–154. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Connell, S.V. 2002. Getting closer to the source: Using ethnoarchaeology to find ancient pottery making in the Naco Valley, Honduras. Latin American Antiquity 13(4): 401–417. Costin, C.L. 1991. Craft specialization: Issues in defining, documenting, and explaining the organization of production. Archaeological Method and Theory 3: 1–56. Davidson, T. 2009. The role of domestic architecture in the structuring of memory. Space and Culture 12(3): 332–342. Foster, C.P. 2012. The Uruk Phenomenon: A View from the Household, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 437–472. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gosselain, O.P., and A. Livingstone Smith 2005. The source: Clay selection and processing practices in SubSaharan Africa, in A. Livingstone Smith, D. Bosequet, and R. Martineau (eds) Pottery Manufacturing Processes: Reconstitution and Interpretation (BAR International Series No. 1349): 33–47. Oxford: Archaeopress. Hackley, L.D., S.L. Selover, and S.R. Steadman 2018. The persistence of social and spatial memory at prehistoric Çadır Höyük. International Journal of the Constructed Environment 9(4): 1–20. 125

No Place Like Home Baeyer 2019a. Anatolian empires: Local experiences from Hittites to Phrygians at Çadır Höyük. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 7(3): 299–320. Ross, J.C., S.R. Steadman, G. McMahon, S.E. Adcock, and J.W. Cannon 2019b. When the giant falls: Endurance and adaptation at Çadır Höyük in the context of the Hittite Empire and its collapse. Journal of Field Archaeology 44(1): 19–39. Russell, N. and A. Bogaard 2010. Subsistence actions at Çatalhöyük, in S.R. Steadman and J.C. Ross (eds) Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East: New Paths Forward: 63–79. London: Equinox. Selover, S. 2015. Excavating war: The archaeology of conflict in central and south-eastern Anatolia from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago. Steadman, S.R. 2005. Reliquaries on the landscape: mounds as matrices of human cognition, in S. Pollock and R. Bernbeck (eds) Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives: 286–307. Oxford: Blackwell. Steadman, S.R. 2010. Agency, Architecture, and archaeology: Prehistoric settlements in central Anatolia, in S.R. Steadman and J.C. Ross (eds) Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East: New Paths Forward: 27–46. London: Equinox. Steadman, S.R. 2011. Take me to your leader: The power of place in prehistoric Anatolian settlements. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 363: 1–24. Steadman, S.R. 2015. Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space. London: Routledge Press. Steadman, S.R. and L.D. Hackley 2017. Tarih Öncesi ana Çağlarda Dolu Yerleşme Düzeni ve Toplumsal Yapılanma/ Spatial Organization and Social Complexity in Prehistoric Anatolian Settlements Aktüel Arkeoloji 55: 52–63. Steadman, S.R. and G. McMahon 2015. Recent work (2013–2014) at Çadır Höyük on the north central Anatolian plateau, in S. R. Steadman and G. McMahon (eds) The Archaeology of Anatolia: Recent Discoveries (2011–2014). Volume I: 69–97. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Steadman, S.R. and G. McMahon 2017. The 2015–2016 Seasons at Çadır Höyük on the north central Anatolian plateau, in S. R. Steadman and G. McMahon (eds) The Archaeology of Anatolia: Recent Discoveries (2015–2016). Volume II: 94–117. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Steadman, S.R., T.E. Şerifoğlu, S. Selover, L.D. Hackley, B. Yıldırım, A.J. Lauricella, B.S. Arbuckle, S.E. Adcock, K. Tardio, E. Dinç, G. McMahon, and M. Cassis 2017. Recent discoveries (2015–2016) at Çadır Höyük on the Anatolian north central plateau. Anatolica 43: 203–250.

Steadman, S.R., B.S. Arbuckle, and G. McMahon 2018. Pivoting east: Çadır Höyük, Transcaucasia, and complex connectivity in the Late Chalcolithic. Documenta Praehistorica 45: 64–85. Steadman, S.R., L.D. Hackley, S.L. Selover, B. Yıldırım, M, von Baeyer, B. Arbuckle, R. Robinson, and A. Smith 2019a. Early lives: The Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age at Çadır Höyük. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 7(3): 271–298. Steadman. S.R., G. McMahon, B.S. Arbuckle, M. von Baeyer, A. Smith, B. Yıldırım, L.D. Hackley, S.L. Selover, and S. Spagni 2019b. Stability and change at Çadır Höyük in central Anatolia: A case of Late Chalcolithic globalisation? Anatolian Studies 69: 21–57. Steadman, S.R., G. McMahon, and J.C. Ross 2019c. Chalcolithic, Iron Age, and Byzantine investigations at Çadır Höyük: The 2017 and 2018 seasons, in S. R. Steadman and G. McMahon (eds) The Archaeology of Anatolia: Recent Discoveries (2017–2018). Volume III: 32– 52. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Steadman, S.R., G. McMahon, T.M. Şerifoğlu, M. Cassis, A.J. Lauricella, L.D. Hackley, S.L. Selover, B. Yıldırım, B.S. Arbuckle, M. von Baeyer, Y. Heffron, K. Tardio, S.E . Adcock, E. Dinç, G. Özger, B. Selvi, S. Offutt, and A. Hartley 2019d. The 2017–2018 seasons at Çadır Höyük on the north central plateau. Anatolica 45: 77–119. Steadman, S.R., J.C. Ross, and M. Cassis forthcoming. The land that time forgot: Five millennia of settlement at Çadır Höyük on the Anatolian plateau, in J. R. Kennedy and P. Mullins (eds) From Households to Empires: Papers in Honor of Bradley J. Parker. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Tuan, Y.F. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. London: Edward Arnold. von Baeyer, M. 2018. Seeds of complexity: An archaeobotanical study of incipient social complexity at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük, Turkey, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut. von Baeyer, M., A. Smith, and S.R. Steadman 2021. Expanding the plain: Using archaeobotany to examine adaptation to the 5.2 kya climate change event during the Anatolian Late Chalcolithic at Çadır Höyük. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 36: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.102806. Wright, K.I. 1993. Early Holocene ground stone assemblages in the Levant. Levant 25(1): 93–111. Yıldırım, B., L.D. Hackley, and S.R. Steadman 2018. Sanctifying the house: Child burial in prehistoric Anatolia. Near Eastern Archaeology 81(3): 164–173. Yıldırım, B. and S.R Steadman 2021. Chalcolithic religion and ritual on the Anatolian Plateau, S.R. Steadman and G. McMahon (eds) The Archaeology of Anatolia Volume IV: Recent Discoveries (2018-2020): 370–393. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 126

Chapter 9. Household Archaeology During the Early Bronze III of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Haskel J. Greenfield, Jon Ross, Shira Albaz, Tina L. Greenfield, Jeremy A. Beller, Suembikya Frumin, Ehud Weiss, and Aren M. Maeir The Early Bronze Age (hereafter, EB–3700–2000 BC) of the southern Levant is a period and place where dramatic changes in the nature of society transformed the way in which people lived and organized their lives. Large fortified urban1 settlements appear at the pinnacle of the regional settlement hierarchies as the population grows and aggregates behind massive fortifications for safety and control (Greenberg 2019; Miroschedji 2018: 109–148).2 Since then, urban systems continue to dominate settlement in most arable regions until modern times (Berry et al. 1963: 389–405; Childe 1950: 3; Lapidus 1969; Meadows and Mizuiski 1969; Pounds 1969: 135–157). During this period, the level of craft in both pottery and metallurgical production achieves new heights pointing toward increasing productive specialization. While the preceding Chalcolithic is repeatedly characterized as reflecting a ‘chiefdom’-like level of political organization, the EB is when the earliest states in the region appear (Greenberg 2019; Höflmayer 2014; Miroschedji 2009, 2018; Nigro 2010). During the transition from the EB I to the EB II–III in the southern Levant, the nature of buildings within these urban settlements shift from the pattern seen during the Chalcolithic (with large agglutinated structures) (Levy et al. 2006) and EB I (with its large multi-room structures) (Paz 2012) to small, almost regimented structures repeatedly spread across sites and composed of 1–2 rooms and a courtyard (Ben-Arieh 1992; BenTor 1992; Greenberg 2019; Miroschedji et al. 2001). This change suggests an alteration in the nature of households at this critical point in time. Each of these small structures has usually been interpreted as the residence of a single household, probably composed of Although not all scholars, particularly those working in Jordan, agree with the designation of ‘urban’ to the large fortified communities in the southern Levant – see Chesson, M.S. 2015. Reconceptualizing the Early Bronze Age southern Levant without cities: local histories and walled communities of EB II–III society. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 28: 51–79. 2  But see also recently Ashkenazi 2020 who argues that the fortifications were not used to protect the people who lived in those town – see Ashkenazi, H. 2020. Sometimes defence is just an excuse: fortification walls of the southern Levantine Early Bronze Age. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30: 45–67. 1 

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a nuclear family, because of their size (Ashkenazi 2016: 383, Greenberg and Paz 2014). This is a very different pattern than was seen in EB Mesopotamia where there is continuous evidence of what are probably large extended family households from the Chalcolithic (Foster 2009) through the EB (Matney 2000; Nishimura 2008; Ur 2014) and even later periods (Stone 1987). Yet, we know relatively little about the nature of daily life activities in the EB II–III of the southern Levant within these buildings. It is through the distribution of activities in buildings that we may ultimately be able to identify whether they are occupied by single or extended families, whether they are inhabited by individual or multiple households, or whether multiple buildings are occupied by a larger extended family household in this crucial period. In this chapter, we present the results of our recent decade-long intensive fieldwork at the site of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel to increase our understanding of the nature of early household behavior during the Early Bronze of the southern Levant. Household archaeology at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Household archaeology has long been part of the research program at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath. Most of the early research was focused on the Iron Age to discern whether houses were inhabited by Judahites or Philistines based on architecture and material culture (Chadwick and Maeir 2012: 601–18). This approach has also proven useful in the identification of bone tool and other workshops that appear to be associated with households (Horwitz et al. 2006; Richardson et al. 2021). From the very beginning of the excavations in Area E in 2004, our work has been focused on understanding households, first in the Late Bronze (LB) and then in the EB. In 2017, we completed our excavations of the EB in Area E at the site. The goal of the excavations was to focus on systematically uncovering a series of residential buildings that were probably occupied by private non-elite households to increase our understanding of domestic household lifestyles during the EB. As will be related below, we uncovered several EB buildings that represent a segment of an urban neighborhood. We are still in the process of analyzing

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Figure 1. Location of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath and some important EB sites in the region (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

the wealth of excavated material, but will summarize the information below and how it relates to increasing our understanding of household archaeology in this early urban period.

our understanding of the evolution of complex society as is the better investigated archaeology of the newly emerging elite. Hence, our long-term research program at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath was designed to intensively focus on domestic life in non-elite contexts. We describe some of the patterns uncovered in our research and discuss their relevance for understanding daily household life during the later EB III of the southern Levant.

Our choice to focus on excavating an early urban neighborhood composed of a constellation of buildings, separated by a street or alley, occurred in large part with the concomitant increased emphasis upon the household and the mundane in archaeology in general, and in this region in particular. It is the first time that such a focus, has been applied to an early urban center in the Shephelah region. We chose to investigate the smaller and mundane characteristic of the lower echelons of society. Quotidian behavior is as vital to

Presentation Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath has long been recognized as a major archaeological site—since the 1840s (Maeir 2003, 2008, 2012, 2017). Its status in the EB, however, long remained unknown. For example, when Bliss and Macalister 128

Haskel J. Greenfield et al.: Chapter 9. Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze III briefly excavated at the site in 1899, they uncovered evidence for a large-scale fortification system and thick deposits from various time periods but incorrectly assigned them to the Iron Age (IA). Some Early Bronze Age artifacts were recovered by Bliss and Macalister, but they were largely ignored and their significance not understood until recently (Avissar Lewis and Maeir 2012, 2015, 2017).

and commands the modern Israeli (ancient Philistia) southern coastal plain and the Shephelah region to the north, south, and east, for a distance of at least 10 km. It is situated to allow a clear view of the entire surrounding region to the base of the Judean Mountains. On a clear day, one can see and be signaled from the site of Azekah on the border between the lower and higher Shephelah to the east, and to the Mediterranean in the west. The mountaintops of Judea are visible to the east. This position allows inhabitants to observe and control traffic, signal to allies and neighbors, as well as to mount a defense against enemies since it rises high above the valley floor. Many other contemporary EB sites in the region are also visible from the summit, including Gezer, Lachish and Ashkelon (Figure 1).

In 1996, Maeir began a long-term (25 years) research program, of which our part recently was completed in 2017. Due to his efforts and those of his colleagues, it is now recognized that the site is a major EB fortified urban center that dominated the immediate hinterland of the site. It was one of the largest, if not the largest, EB fortified urban centers in the region (Maeir 2017). Between 2008 and 2017, we jointly investigated an Early Bronze neighborhood that was exposed at the east end of the site (Area E). The results have allowed insight into the nature of daily life activities among non-elite households (Greenfield et al. 2017).

Surrounding Environment Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath is located in an optimal position on what is called an ecotone. This is the transition between different environmental zones that allows the inhabitants to exploit many more types of resources. Each zone provided the site with a wealth of food and other resources.

Location The site of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath is located almost halfway between the Mediterranean coastline and the Judean Mountains, where the major cities of Judea (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron) are located (Figures 1–2). It is positioned on a prominent rise at the westernmost edge of the Shephelah (Judean Foothills). It overlooks

The site itself is on a limestone outcrop that provided the raw materials for buildings and fortifications (Shai et al. 2014, 2016), as well as for the vast majority of the chipped and ground tool industries (Beller et al. 2019; Manclossi 2016). The wind blows from the west to the

Figure 2. Aerial photograph of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath and surrounding countryside taken from east (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

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and Africa. There would have been marshes with reeds and a variety of aquatic life to exploit (Danin 2004). The repeated history of settlement at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath is likely due to its prominent location atop a natural hill overlooking the coastal plain with an unimpeded view to the mountains, as well as the proximity of the site to a wealth of natural sources (e.g., water, fields, wood, clay, roads). These clearly were important factors in determining where people chose to live.

To the north, the site overlooks the Elah River valley, which currently runs alongside the north edge of the lower tell. Today, the valley is filled with alluvium to the point where water only runs during the rainy season. In the EB, however, the elevation of the valley was much lower, c. 3 m or more, which would have allowed the inhabitants to have fresh flowing water year-round from the Elah River (Ackermann et al. 2014). At this point, the valley is very wide since the site is located at the point just before the valley gives way into the wide and relatively flat coastal plain. Today, and probably in the past, this is where agricultural fields would have been easily located since it is filled with rich alluvial dark brown soils or grumusols (vertisols) with a relatively high water table (Olsvig-Whittaker et al. 2015). It is where various clay sources for ceramics would have been found (Ben-Shlomo 2012; Ben-Shlomo et al. 2009). Along the current banks of the Elah River, there are trees of Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) and shrubs of lilac chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus).

The goal of our excavations was to provide insight into daily life during this period (Greenfield et al. 2016, 2017). The area of excavation is to some extent a window into the extensive EB III horizon that extends across the site. In most areas of the site, the EB layer is deeply buried beneath many meters of later deposits, making it relatively inaccessible until the upper phases are stripped away. In Area E, down-slope erosion exposed the EB horizon which allowed us to open up a large excavation area into this phase (20 × 30 m). While this might seem small in the context of such a large site, it is the first time that this horizon has been explored in such a broad exposure at the site. Our work was constrained by three variables. First, and most devastating, the later occupants of this part of the site (i.e., LB and IA) disturbed parts of each of the EB buildings through the digging of storage pits, foundation trenches, and robber trenches (Shai et al. 2012). This occurred to the north, east, and south of the excavation area. Second, the stratigraphy dramatically increased in thickness to the west of the excavation area where the horizontal plateau housing Area A is located. In this area, the uppermost EB horizon is c. 4 m below the modern surface. Third, the EB horizon is located atop a series of terrace-like structures that descend in elevation downslope from west to east. While we did not have enough time to penetrate the thick IA rubble field along the east perimeter of the excavation area, it is likely that the EB horizon continued below it. Hence, even though there are later disturbances to the south, east, and north, it is likely that the EB horizon is better preserved below the depth of these disturbances. In consequence of these limitations, a smaller area of excavation than originally planned (20 × 20 m) was ultimately exposed of the well-preserved EB horizon (Figure 3).

To the east, the site is located at the west edge of the Shephelah with Mediterranean-type vegetation that is ideal for grazing livestock. The Rendzinatype soil concentrated in depressions between the rocky outcrops would have been ideal for small-scale cultivation or gathering of natural fruits. Trees, such as kermes oak (Quercus calliprinos), lentisk (Pistacia lentiscus), and Palestine buckthorn (Rhamnus lycioides), grow throughout the region, mostly in the depressions filled with pockets of soil. Smaller shrubby vegetation and a large variety of herbaceous plants are found on the sunny southern slopes and lower down the slopes (Frumin 2017; Frumin et al. 2018). Farther to the east (c. 10 km), the well-watered steep slopes of the Judean Mountains, with their thick forests, would have provided more wood for construction and other uses (Danin 2004; Frumin 2017; Olsvig-Whittaker et al. 2015). To the west, the broad coastal plain extends uninterrupted to the Mediterranean coast (c. 20 km). It is characterized more by sandy ridges and deep troughs, with clayey soils (loams), which are subject to flooding and water-logging (Olsvig-Whittaker et al. 2015). The plain contains a wealth of potential animal, plant, and other resources, including both aquatic and terrestrial. For example, the coastal plain lies along one of the major migration routes for birds flying between Europe

Size and Nature of the EB Settlement The results of an extensive survey program of surface topographic and artifact collection across the site (Dagan and Uziel 2018; Uziel and Maeir 2005, 2012, 2018), since corroborated by excavations, demonstrate that the EB III settlement extended across and encompassed the entire tell (c. 24 ha) (Figure 4). EB III material has 130

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Figure 3. Map of site the extent of the EB fortifications (dashed where reconstructed) and the location of various excavation areas where EB material has been found on Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

been excavated at the westernmost end of the site (Area F), in the center (Area P), and at the easternmost end (Areas A and E) (Greenfield et al. 2016, 2017; Shai et al. 2014, 2016) (Figure 3). Based on these data, the site emerges as a major urban center for the region for the first time during the EB II–III. It is difficult to separate out the surface remains between the two periods. While the excavations demonstrate that the site was most certainly occupied across its entire extent during the EB III, it was not possible to fully probe to the sterile substrate or bedrock before the end of the excavations in 2017. In Area E, within the deepest and only probe to reach bedrock, albeit in a small (2 × 2 m) telephone booth-sized area, some EB II material appears in the lowest stratum. Otherwise, it appears that the vast majority of the EB stratigraphic sequence in this area (5–6 m thick) is composed of EB III deposits.

Each of these fortified urban settlements dominate large territories (Miroschedji 2009). The territory around Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath includes transitory settlements (camps and cave-dwellings), small and large villages, and fortified towns and cities (Levy-Reifer 2012, 2016; Miroschedji 2009). Smaller settlements appear to be interspersed between larger ones. Such a settlement hierarchy can be interpreted as signalling the emergence of complex societies in the region, probably that of low-level state societies (cf. Johnson 1973, 1977; Miroschedji 2009; Uziel et al. 2014; Wright and Johnson 1975). The presence of various other indicators for the emergence of state-level society by this point in time are found at a variety of sites spread across the region. These include the appearance of large administrative structures such as palaces (at Yarmuth, Megiddo, Jericho) (Kempinski 1992; Miroschedji 2003, 2020; Nigro 2020b; Ussishkin 2018), granaries (at Bet Yerah) (Greenberg 2011; Paz and Greenberg 2016), organized urban layout (various sites) (Kempinski 1992), and temples (at Megiddo and elsewhere) (Kleiman et al. 2017; Ussishkin 2018). Unfortunately, since the region is not yet a literate one (Shai and Uziel 2010), it is impossible to state categorically the exact nature of society beyond such generalities. There is, nevertheless, evidence for the use of glyptic devices probably to enable various types of administrative activities, such as record keeping (Miroschedji 2006, 2009).

The large size of the settlement during the EB III marks the beginning of the site as an urban community and is comparable or larger in size than other large fortified urban centers in the region, such as Jericho (6.5 ha), Ai (11 ha), Yarmuth (16 ha), Megiddo (25 ha), and Bet Yerah (25 ha) (Nigro 2016, 2020a). Furthermore, the EB III settlement at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath is surrounded by a large fortification system on a broad (c. 2 m) and deep (2–3 m) stone foundation (Chadwick et al. 2017; Shai et al. 2016; Welch et al. 2019). 131

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Figure 4. Map showing the size of Tell es-Safi/Gath in different EB periods based on typochronological analysis of surface and excavated remains (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

While some continue to argue that the early complex and urban societies of the southern Levant are not yet at the political level of the state (Chesson 2015; Chesson and Philip 2003), the differences in opinion seem to coincide between those who work in Israel versus those whose research focus is in Jordan. We suggest that the difference in opinion is valid and a reflection of the differences in the archaeological record between the eastern and western segments of the southern Levant. These differences in opinion disappear as one moves from the southern to the northern Jordan Valley region where state-like manifestations are more evident (Greenberg 2019).

the same buildings undergo a series of renovations (Figures 5a–c). The architectural continuity between phases within this stratum is supported by the ceramic inventory (Shai et al. 2012, 2014; Uziel and Maeir 2012b). In most cases, the same stone foundations are used in each phase of the E5 Stratum, while the mudbrick superstructure is renewed in each phase. This renewal process creates a thick collapse layer between each of the floors and the accumulations on the floors. Above (and after) the E5 stratum, there is a long period of abandonment in this part of the site until close to the end of the LB when a large ‘Patrician House’ is constructed (Shai et al. 2012, 2020a, 2020b). A thick aeolian culturally sterile layer seals the top of the E5 Stratum. The chronologically diagnostic pottery in the E5 Stratum indicate a later EB III (IIIC) date (Shai et al. 2012, 2014). This typological date is supported by radiocarbon evidence obtained through high precision dating and Bayesian modeling of short-lived organics (e.g. olive pits) from extremely secure depositional contexts (e.g. floors, inside vessels). The terminal dates

Chronology Here, we deal largely with the evidence from Stratum E5, which represents the latest phase of the EB III (EBIIIC) occupation sequence in Area E, and is the most completely excavated and analyzed to date. The E5 stratum is actually composed of three phases—E5a (latest), E5b (middle), and E5c (earliest) during which 132

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Figure 5a. Plan of houses excavated in Stratum E5 from Area E (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project). a) Plan of E5a phase buildings.

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Figure 5 b) Plan of E5b phase buildings.

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Figure 5 c) Plan of E5c phase buildings and location and orientation of four donkey burials from the E5c Stratum.

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Figure 6. Aerial photograph of Area E at end of 2017 excavation season showing the decline in slope from west (left) to east (right) in excavation area (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

for the E5 stratum are ca. 2550–2600 BC (Regev 2013). This synchronizes with the terminal dates for EB III occupations from nearby sites (e.g., Yarmouth) and supports the new ‘high’ radiocarbon chronology for the southern Levant (Regev et al. 2012a, 2012b).

buildings to the east are more fully exposed since there is less overburden in this area, they are also more disturbed by later activities. The alley declines in elevation, at first gradually and then more suddenly, from northwest to southeast (Figures 5a–c, 6). The effects of the winter torrential rains and consequent runoff evidently severely eroded the walking surface into a V- or U-shaped depression down the center of the alley. This erosional feature is periodically and purposefully filled in with small and medium-sized stream pebbles, broken ceramics, and other artifacts and ecofacts (animal bones and plants) to make it level and counter the effects of erosion. The alley is only about a meter wide in the earliest phase (E5c) which is sufficient room to allow for the passage of a donkey carrying goods on either side (Shai et al. 2016). This is likely how large quantities of water and other goods were carried up the hill for the families living in the neighborhood. In the next phase (E5b), however, the alley is narrowed by the construction of two buttresses built on either side (W15AQ16 and W18E93A15) that may have even allowed it to be fully closed off with a door. It is not clear what narrowing the passageway implies at this point. In the final phase (E5a), the alley is narrowed by the construction of a buttress built only on

Household Architecture The evidence for household archaeology at Tell eṣṢâfi/Gath comes from our excavations at the eastern end of the site in Area E. Sections of at least six Early Bronze III buildings with multiple phases of renovation and construction were uncovered. In the E5 Stratum of Area E, one complete and parts of several other buildings were excavated down to the next major horizon (Stratum E6). Overall, there is no evidence of elite architecture or other forms of behavior in the excavation area. The buildings appear to be non-elite/ lower stratum domestic residences. Here we deal with only the E5 Stratum remains. In each phase of the E5 Stratum, buildings are altered and renovated, as walls are added and/or removed, and the mudbrick superstructure is renewed. A small street or alley divides the buildings on either side into western and eastern complexes. While the 136

Haskel J. Greenfield et al.: Chapter 9. Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze III too much to be certain. The middle building (Building 74505 in E5a) is the most completely exposed by our excavation. The others are either not fully exposed or severely damaged by the activities of later occupants. In some cases, building numbers are not given because they cannot be defined well enough due to disturbance by later activities (e.g., particularly along the eastern perimeter of the excavation area).

the left side (W18E93A15) and a large stone (18E83C11) placed in the alley immediately behind the buttresses that would have further constricted passage along this artery. One could almost imagine someone sitting guard on the stone to regulate traffic along the alley. To date, no doorways have been discovered that would allow passage from within the buildings to the alleyway, but this may be a function of the limited exposure of most of the buildings. There are internal doorways in some of the buildings (e.g., Building 74505 in E5a and earlier phases of the building). The absence of doors makes it difficult to determine the extent of houses, but we have differentiated them based on wall thickness and depth that would have made mudbrick doorways over stone foundations too high for easy passage, and the distribution of hearths and other features.

Contrary to some earlier publications where the extent of the rooms was not yet recognizable (Greenfield et al. 2017, 2020), it is now clear that the buildings were constructed according to a standard plan. Room sizes are relatively consistent between phases, although some rooms are subdivided over time (e.g., the large room in Building 17E82D08 in E5c is subdivided into two rooms in the E5a and E5b phases). Even the walls of all the buildings are built according to a standard template. Most have three rows of roughly-shaped field stones in each course of the exterior walls, while there are only two rows per course in the interior walls. Exterior walls tend to be thicker and are composed of three- to five-course stone foundations, while interior walls are thinner and composed of two- to three-course stone foundations from smaller stones. Some walls continue in use for a very long time—for example wall 74511 is utilized through the E5 and E6 Strata and is c. 2 m high before the area is abandoned. It effectively divided the buildings on either side of the wall.

The single complete building in the middle of the area (Building 74505 in E5a)3 might have had a potential doorway in the middle of its western wall (W94020 in E5a), but this location is severely disturbed by an LB pit that destroyed this section of the wall. Comparisons with other contemporary urban tell EB III architectural units show a dearth of clear doorways to streets (Albaz 2019). In general, the east wings/flanks of the easternmost line of buildings east of the alley are not well preserved for any of the E5 buildings. This is where we would expect to find the main doorways/building entrances for this line of buildings—i.e., facing downslope and in the direction of the rising sun. Sadly this is where the effects of downslope erosion are most severe combined with extensive pitting from the LB and IA (in Squares 73D, 84A, 84C, 94A).

It is difficult to estimate the height of the buildings. If we assume only a single story in each building, then the mudbrick superstructure atop each of the stone foundations would have been at least 2 m in height. In spite of the fact that there is no evidence of stairs or ladder locations to access the roofs or a second story, the small size of each building would suggest that there were rooms above the first floor as well. It is likely that the roofs were flat as is common in the region even today. Most household activities likely took place on the ground floor, while some (particularly sleeping in warm weather) may have taken place on the flat roof or more possibly on a second story. Similarly, the absence of evidence for toilets does not mean they did not exist, but were likely in a form that did not preserve or were not easily recognizable (e.g., as chamber pots).

The layout of each of the buildings appears to be similar across the excavation area. There is a courtyard (based on its width and absence of evidence for pillars, except in E5c Building 17E82D08) and a smaller room that backs onto the alleyway. Parts of two buildings are found west of the alley (Buildings 104311 and 94118 in E5a). In each building, parts of two rooms were exposed. The one to the south unfortunately is more intensively disturbed by Late Bronze and Iron Age activities. To the east of the alleyway, parts of at least five buildings are exposed in E5a (Buildings 74808, 94413, 74505, 114402, and E15AW04), while parts of six have been defined in each of the E5b and E5c phases. Probably a seventh building existed in the southeast corner of the excavation, but later activities damaged that area

Most of the rooms have beaten earth floors, with the exception of one that had a stone paving across its entire length that was laid down in its final renovation (i.e., Building 104311, Room 104311 in Stratum E5a). Several of the buildings have rooms with small pebble surfaces (e.g., Building 74512, Room E15AQ09 in E5b Stratum, and Building 134307, Room 18E83C09 in E5c Stratum). These tend to be in the smaller ancillary room, rather than the courtyard and may represent the base of sleeping platforms. Occupational debris

While the buildings continue from phase to phase, we use different building numbers to signify their renewal in each E5 phase. As a result, different numbers are used for the same building foundations in each phase.

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also occasionally consumed (3%) (Greenfield et al. forthcoming). While these percentages vary slightly from phase to phase and from publication to publication as the analytical sample size increases (e.g., Greenfield et al. 2016), they remain in the same general order of frequency throughout the sequence.

Just as the alley descends in elevation from northwest to southeast, the entire excavation area does as well. It follows the natural slope of the mound, while the floors in each building are relatively horizontal. Between each row of buildings, the floors are dramatically lower in absolute elevation as one moves from west (172.70 m asl in Room 104311 of Building 104311) to east (172.18 m asl in Room 114402 of Building 114402 in Stratum E5a). This pattern is repeated in each phase of the E5 Stratum. In consequence, we reconstruct that the neighborhood was built on a series of terraces to compensate for the uneven natural slope of the underlying terrain. This pattern probably began when the neighborhood was first constructed in the basal E9 stratum as the floors are always horizontal in each of the ensuing EB strata.

Hunting and fishing provides a small (7.3%), but essential aspect to the local economy (Table 1). These include wild mammals (4.9%), fish (0.8%), birds (1.1%), reptiles (0.3%), and other wild animal taxa. The most common wild taxon is gazelle (3.7%), followed by birds (1.1%), both increase throughout the E5 sequence. As the excavations progressed and our analytical sample has increased, goats became slightly more common than sheep (670:469 NISP; 59:41%), contrary to some of our earlier analyses (Greenfield et al. 2016). An indication of the types of food products produced from the various domestic livestock can be garnered from age-at-death patterns. Cattle, sheep, and goats can be exploited for both their primary (meat, hide, bone, blood) and secondary products (milk, wool, and traction) (Greenfield 1988, 2010). Animals with secondary products functions are culled when their usefulness for their secondary products (e.g. milk, wool, and traction) diminishes later in their lives. Only about a quarter of the sheep in Area E are slaughtered as adults, compared to approximately half of the goats and cattle (Greenfield et al. 2016). This differential distribution across the domesticated taxa suggests that sheep were culled much younger in life than the goats and cattle from the site. The younger age-at-death culling pattern for sheep implies that they were preferentially culled for their primary products, while the older age-atdeath for goats and cattle implies that they were more heavily exploited first for their secondary products, and only afterwards for their primary products. Also, this emphasis upon older goats over younger sheep suggests that milk products were likely an important component of the urban inhabitant’s diet, similar to the culling of animals for their meat (i.e., sheep).

Activity types Several kinds of activities can be identified as having taken place in the E5 Stratum of Area E. They are discussed separately by types of activities, such as sustenance (food acquisition), ritual, administration, extra-regional provisioning of goods, decoration, and recreation. Sustenance Several types of activities related to food provisioning have been identified, including acquisition, preparation, cooking, serving, storage, and disposal. Two types of food remains have been recovered during the excavations: faunal and floral. Each will be discussed in turn with regard to household behavioral activities. Food Acquisition In order to acquire animal foods, one has to either raise domestic stock or hunt wild animals. While the zooarchaeological sample from Area E at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi is not yet studied at a refined level divided among houses and phases, some information about what the inhabitants of the households hunted and herded can be gleaned. Preliminary faunal analyses of the E5 Stratum as a whole indicates that the local economy was heavily oriented towards the production and management of domestic animals (92.6% of NISP) (Greenfield et al. 2016).

Since the faunal assemblage is from an urban settlement, it is likely that the animals are not raised in the same location. There is no evidence that the animals were stabled directly in or adjacent to the households. For this to have occurred, significant and thick deposits of dung would have been expected in the deposits of Area E. While phytolith deposits are found throughout the excavation area, most are thin, ephemeral deposits that may reflect the piling of matts or brush on floors.

The most frequent taxa include sheep and goats (caprines—76.4% when combined with indeterminate sheep/goat specimens). Caprines dominate the assemblage (indeterminate sheep/goat [Ovis/Capra] = 57%, goats [Capra hircus] = 11.6%, and sheep [Ovis aries] = 8.1%). Cattle (Bos taurus) are the next most common taxon (11.6%). Donkeys (Equus asinus) are

Recent isotopic and botanical analyses suggests that the bulk of herds are raised and managed in the region immediately proximate to the site and that only a few animals, such as donkeys and the occasional caprine, 138

Haskel J. Greenfield et al.: Chapter 9. Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze III came from distant lands (Arnold et al. 2018; Frumin 2017; Frumin et al. 2014, 2021). Given that the herds of sheep, goat, and cattle were raised in the surrounding countryside, they were probably managed by local pastoralists and/or villagers from the region. It is unlikely given the size of the buildings in Area E that herds would have been housed within them while occupied by people. If this is the case, the goal of the shepherds was not only to increase the size of the herd, but to also be able to maintain it through the years (Cribb 1987; Greenfield 1988; Redding 1984; Sasson and Greenfield 2014). These data provide some insights into the economic behavior related to food provisioning to the non-elite inhabitants of the site.

Most of the vessels are handmade. A minority of the fine ware bowls and jugs (3%) are produced on a slow wheel where a coiled ‘rough out’ (roughly shaped hollow container) is thinned and shaped on a wheel to achieve the final form. The variation, and distribution, of potting techniques and methods suggests that household assemblages are mass-produced and types were derived from several specialist workshops (Ross et al. 2020). In other words, there is no evidence for household production of such vessels. Food Preparation Grains would have needed to be processed prior to cooking. Both upper and lower grinding stones of various types and sizes have been recovered from the E5 phases (Beller et al. 2019; Beller et al. 2016). Many are fragmented and originate from secondary contexts (e.g., wall make-up, fills). Those that are complete, however, namely lower grinding stones, are often associated with cooking installations and buried in situ by later occupational debris or accumulation on floors. Several complete mortars and many complete pounders come from the same contexts. These implements could be used in the preparation of food and other materials (e.g., pigments).

Similarly, most of the botanical data point to exploitation of the local environment. The resulting botanical assemblage is rich and diverse (Frumin 2017; Frumin et al. 2014, 2021). In general, it suggests that most plant foods were domestic crops that are commonly found in the region since the Neolithic. The most common domestic taxon is hulled emmer (Triticum dicoccum, ca. 40%), while barley (Hordeum vulgare), olive (Olea europaea), figs (Ficus carica), lentils (Lens culinaris), grape (Vitis vinifera), Atlantic pistachio (Pistacia atlantica), grass pea (Lathyrus sativus/cicera), fava bean (Vicia faba), and flax (Linum usitatissimum) are also present. In other words, cereals, pulses, nuts, sweet fruits (e.g., grape and fig), and oil plants comprise approximately half of the total plant assemblage. These crops suggest that the local agricultural economy was structured and intensive (Frumin et al. 2021). Canaanean blades, used as sickles, and other chipped stone tools would have likely been utilized for the harvesting and threshing of cereals. Most of the chipped stone industry appears to be of local origin (Manclossi and Rosen 2017, forthcoming; Milevski 2009).

Most materials were prepared with chipped stone tools. Micro-wear analysis of the chipped stone tool assemblage suggests that they were used for a variety of domestic tasks. Such tools were used for cutting and slicing meat, hide, and plant materials, and engraving a variety of types of raw materials, such as wood and bone (Manclossi and Rosen 2017). In the center of one courtyard, a large (1 m diameter) round installation (Installation 94606) was found. It is built of medium-to-large field stones and completely filled to the top with small and medium field stones (Figure 7). It continued in use from the beginning of the E5 Stratum (E5c) through the second phase of renovations (Phase E5b) (Shai et al. 2014). It was covered over and not visible in the latest phase (E5a). While its function is unclear, it most likely was some kind of working surface since the center was a large and relatively flat capping stone. It is unlikely to have been a column base since it is much larger and more massive than column bases found elsewhere, such as at Yarmouth (Sebag 2012). It is very likely that this is where some food was processed since it is directly proximate to two pebble hearth installations in Stratum E5c where food was likely cooked (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2017a, 2017b).

A majority of the more diagnostic chipped stone tool types fall into three general functional categories: agricultural (sickle segments), ritual (tabular scrapers), and domestic (the ad hoc tools). The domestic ad hoc chipped stone tools appear to be largely locally sourced since they are indistinguishable from the lithic sources present on the site naturally (Manclossi and Rosen 2017). Most of the chipped stone tools found in the E5 buildings are ad hoc flake fragments useful for slicing or scraping meat and hides. It is likely that they were made on the spot from rough cores. Petrographic analysis of the EB ceramic vessels indicates the exploitation of local clay sources from the proximate Elah River valley, which runs along the northern base of the site, for all but a few vessels (Ben-Shlomo forthcoming). Furthermore, the nonplastic (tempers) components in the petrographic thinsections are typical of the local lithology of the site (Ben-Shlomo et al. 2009).

Animal carcasses were butchered with chipped stone tools—most likely blades and flakes made of siliceous materials locally available for the most part. There is no evidence of metal marks on the animal 139

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Figure 7. Photograph of solid round installation (Inst. 94606) from the E5b and E5c Strata (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

access to food and the implied status of the inhabitants for each of the building complexes is relatively similar.

remains. Also, there is no evidence for a centralized distribution system for meat since all parts of each of the common domestic livestock are found within the houses. This suggests the presence of complete carcass processing and consumption within the building complexes. If there was a market place located nearby where animals were dismembered and the parts then distributed to households, it is expected that there would be differential distribution of body parts across the neighborhood. It is likely that either households had an arrangement with pastoralists to obtain whole animals, or whole animals were purchased in a market environment and then butchered within each household. Additionally, the similarity of consumption patterns both in taxa and body portions suggests egalitarian status within the neighborhood. The standardized food consumption patterns indicate that

Cooking and Serving The botanical and the phytolith analyses suggest intensive use of both dung and wood as fuel sources (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2017a, 2017b; Frumin et al. 2021). Cooking facilities are prevalent throughout the excavation area. These are circular in form with a dense concentration of pebble-sized stones as the base. The stones are cemented in place with a binding agent consisting of crushed chalk. They were likely used for both cooking and/or heating. Only in two installations (Installations 74515 and 114115 in E5a) is there an underlying mudbrick platform that sits atop the floor raising it slightly above the floor level. Such cooking 140

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Figure 8. Photograph of two E5a pebble hearths (Installations 114607 and 17E83B07 in Room 114503 of Building 134307 in E5c; Installations E15AT04 and E15AT06 in Room 104108 of Building 104311) (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

Figure 9. Illustrations of typical pottery recovery from Stratum 5 in Area E (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project). a) Storage jars with a flaring rim.

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Figure 9 b) Hole-mouth and storage jars.

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Haskel J. Greenfield et al.: Chapter 9. Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze III Yet, the abundance of boiled sheep and goat remains suggests that stews were likely a significant part of the household diet. The interior and exterior surfaces of holemouth vessels (Figure 9c) are often covered with soot marks and carbon deposits, which reinforces their identification as cookware. The flat bottomed holemouth vessels were likely used for low-temperature slow-cooking (i.e., stewing) since the vessel base would rest on the ground immersed in a bed of coals (Greenberg 2006). The fuel types identified in the ash micro-remains and phytolith assemblage confirm the occurrence of low-temperature cooking in the Area E neighborhood (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2017a, 2017b). This suggests a different style of cooking compared to other EB II–III sites that primarily used round bottomed holemouth jars for cooking, specifically fast cooking/boiling, where the vessel is likely positioned directly over an open flame, such as at sites in the south (e.g., Arad) and north (e.g., Dan) (Greenberg 2006). Greenberg’s (2006: 43) functional distinction between flat based and round based holemouths as indicative of ‘differences in cuisine: fast-cooked versus slow cooked foods,’ appears to be consistent with the results of our study of the micro-archaeology on the hearths/cooking installations (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2017a, 2017b).

Figure 9 c) Large platters.

In terms of serving food, there are a number of large serving platters (Figure 9c–d), some of which are decorated with web-pattern burnishing (Shai et al. 2014; Uziel and Maeir 2012b) (Figure 8d). The platters are scattered across the entire excavation area and are still undergoing analysis (Albaz 2019; Ross 2020; Ross et al. 2020). Ground stone vessels may also have functioned in a serving capacity, as the remains of several have been recovered in household contexts (Beller 2017, 2019) (Figure 10).

facilities are dispersed throughout the excavation area, and there is at least one in each house in each phase of occupation. In two cases, two hearths are found next to each other (Installations 114607 and 17E83B07 in Room 114503 of Building 134307 in E5c; Installations E15AT04 and E15AT06 in Room 104108 of Building 104311 of E5a—Figure 8). These appear to be examples of lateral displacement of short-lived features since one of the pair seems to represent a later rebuilding of the earlier one. These pebble installations were used for a low temperature fire as the pebbles and surrounding cemented chalk and sediments do not show evidence of significant heating beyond 400°F/200°C. These are probably where households cooked their meals— outside in the open air since they seem to be found mostly in courtyards (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2017a, 2017b). A few heating facilities are found in smaller rooms, where their function was probably to warm the rooms.

The exteriors of some ceramic vessels are coated with a thick white lime-plaster matrix that is found to be applied after firing the vessel. This exterior coating seems to be applied for a secondary use of the vessel, once it has arrived in the household. It is thought that the function of the coating is to reduce permeability in vessels used for mixing and/or serving liquids in order to protect the contents of vessels (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2016).

In general, the E5 ceramic vessel assemblage is reflective of domestic daily-life household activities. Morphologically, vessels that could be used for cooking, serving, and storage abound in the assemblage (Figures 9a–d). In terms of food preparation, it is likely that the holemouth jars and bowls were used for serving and cooking. Attempts to extract lipids from containers in the EB assemblage were unsuccessful, so it is difficult to determine exactly what was cooked in these vessels.

Some coating of vessels may have taken place within households since bitumen is found in an unused state, as chunks, and on vessels (Figure 11). It is likely that it was used for a number of tasks, including as a binder to glue objects together. The abundant grains in the botanical assemblage suggest that there was a variety of breads, gruel, olive oil, fruits, and other foods that were stored and/or processed within them. 143

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Figure 9 d) Bowls and platters, some of which are decorated with web-pattern burnishing.

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Figure 10. Photograph of basalt grinding stone fragment (Basket 16E84A007) from Stratum 5 in Area E (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

Food Storage Ceramic vessels that were likely used as containers for food include: storage jars with folded rims (the most common vessel type) (Uziel and Maeir 2012b). Some are small, while others are extremely large pithoi (Albaz 2019; Uziel and Maeir 2012b). These are found scattered throughout the excavation area in almost every room and most are extremely fragmented. A notable exception to the distribution of smaller storage jars is where the largest storage vessels are found. They are present in the collapse of Room/Courtyard 104108 of Building 104311 in the E5a Phase at the western edge of Area E excavation—Figures 5a and 12). The large storage vessels are without handles, while the smaller ones often have wavy ledge handles at the midpoint and sometimes a loop handle on the rim that probably helped to steady or brace the vessel when being carried. The handles on the smaller vessels make them more portable and suitable for carrying (water, grain, etc.) compared to the very large and handleless jars that were likely stationary and used for bulk storage (Figure 9b).

Figure 11. Photograph of bitumen piece inside ceramic vessel fragment (Basket 16E93A07) from Stratum 5 in Area E (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

Three large circular stone installations built of smallto-medium field stones were discovered, with at least one in each of the E5 Strata. The interiors of each were hollow, with relatively similar diameters (ca. 60–80 cm). They were built after the erection of the adjacent stone walls, and used the walls as the back of the installation. Most of the others were too badly damaged by later 145

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Figure 12. Photograph of large pithoi found in collapse of Room/Courtyard 104108 of Building 104311 in the E5a Stratum (with Eric Welch) (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

Figure 13. Photograph of Installation 134506 in E5a that likely functioned as granaries (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

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Haskel J. Greenfield et al.: Chapter 9. Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze III period intrusions to be able to adequately sampled for flotation (Installation 104506 and Installation 20E83A04 in E5b). The high density of carbonized plant remains recovered in the best preserved hollow installation (Installation 134506 in E5a—Figures 5b, 13) suggest that each of these likely functioned as a granary (Figure 13). All of these installations were used for relatively short periods of time (generally for only a single phase of E5b), with the exception of Installation 134506 used in Strata E5a and E5b.

Rubbish is clearly disposed of in the alleyway since it is filled with broken fragments of pottery, animal bones, and carbonized plant material. Interestingly, and contrary to the LB and IA in this area, there are no rubbish pits or middens associated with the Early Bronze occupation. It is likely that a significant portion of garbage was also disposed of somewhere off-site since the amount of rubbish in buildings and the alleyway could not account for the more than 300 years of continuous EB occupation in this area of the site.

The distribution of granaries changes over time. In the earliest stratum (E5c—Figure 5c), quite to our surprise, not a single installation was found that would qualify as a granary. In the middle stratum (E5b—Figure 5b), three granaries were found dispersed between buildings on the east side of the alley (Installation 20E83A04 in Building 84309, Installation 134506 in Building 134309, and Installation 104508 in Building 114805). In the latest stratum (E5a—Figure 5a), three granaries were identified (Installation 74515 in Building 74505 and Installation 114115 in Building 94118). A third installation (134506) probably belongs to a building just to the east of Building 74505 based on its relationship to walls in the underlying E5b Stratum. It is the only granary to be used in two phases of occupation (E5a and E5b—Figures 5a, 5b, and 13). The building to the east is so poorly defined because of erosion and later occupations that it is not given a discrete building number. While such installations are located in almost every building on the east side of the alley, their near absence on the west side of the alley may simply be a function of the small area of exposure.

A high percentage (c. 27%) of the faunal remains display evidence of use wear polish. This suggests they were parts of tools or ornaments that broke during use and were embedded in the dirt floor. In other words, not all bones represent what was being eaten in the houses. Many of these bones show evidence of use as shovels and may have been used as scoops or dust pans to clean debris off floors (Greenfield et al. 2018). Textile Production Various other household activities also took place within the structures. The presence of spindle whorls suggests that some phases of textile production, such as spinning (e.g., for clothing), occurred within the buildings. Some are scattered throughout Area E, but appear to be mainly concentrated in the E5 courtyards in each phase (Albaz 2019). There is also a concentration of stone spindle whorls in the E5c phase of Courtyard 114503 of Building 134037 (south of Wall 74511 and west of Wall 84513, Locus 134307) that suggests either an activity or storage location (Beller et al. 2019, 2021). This is corroborated by the analysis of bone tools (Richardson et al. 2021). The location of spindle whorls and other tools suggest that some kind of textile production activities probably occurred in the courtyards.

If each building was inhabited by a separate household responsible for its own food storage, then we would expect to find such facilities in each building. This seems to be the case on the east side of the alley in the latter two strata. The absence of such facilities in the earliest phase (E5c), on the other hand, may signify that either grains were stored in a different way (e.g., storage jars) during this period, or that the inhabitants of this group of buildings may have pooled their long term grain storage, thereby signifying some kind of corporate relationship between the residential units (e.g., as a closely-related extended family series of households).

Larger stone weights (14+cm in diameter) appear in Courtyard 74512 in Building 74512 during Phase E5b (Locus 74606) (Figure 14). Their function is unclear, but it has been proposed that they may be weights for nets, digging sticks, and/or drilling implements (Beller et al. 2019: 121-152, forthcoming). Administration The EB of the southern Levant is considered to be largely a preliterate era since there is no evidence for the use of any form of indigenously developed or imported (cuneiform and hieroglyphics) writing systems (Shai and Uziel 2010). Hence, it is difficult to directly infer whether any administrative activities took place within households. The best evidence that people kept records, such as the ownership of goods, comes in the form of cylinder seals that are occasionally found in various sites across the region (Ben-Tor 1995;

Food Disposal The ancient occupants of Area E kept their homes relatively clean. In general, there are few bones found directly on the floors. Yet, across each room, spreading outwards from the hearths, there was a thick 10-15 cm ash layer that built up above the compact earthen floors. Most of the in situ faunal and floral remains were recovered from this layer. For example, only 20% of the fauna analyzed to date comes from the alleyway. 147

No Place Like Home vessels with pot marks found in the E5, E6, and E7 Strata (Figure 12) (Kisos 2014) (Figure 16). Since there is little to no repetition among signs, it is difficult to understand their meaning or significance. The marks were incised while the clay was still wet, during their manufacture. However, the lack of repetition makes it unlikely that they relate to fixed volumes, vessel contents, or different functions. The wide variety of signs (n=x) do not correspond to discernible differences in size classes (capacities) and vessel form. Neither is there a demonstrable relationship between specific pot marks and a particular clay source or temper type identified in the petrography. They are no different to vessel types without pot marks in regards to shape, size, fabric, and their spatial distribution in the neighbourhood. Analysis of the ceramic vessel chaîne opératoire suggests that they were made by only a few local specialist workshops (Ross et al. 2020). Assuming the variety of potters marks is constant as it basically stays the same over the three later EB III phases under consideration, it may be that the marks reflect the producer’s signatures. This would suggest that there is at least 19 individual potters or potters’ workshops in and around the area of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath during the 150 or so years represented by the E5a-c strata. The heterogeneity of the assemblage is similar to the results from the fingerprint analysis (Fowler et al. 2020) where there is also quite diverse age and sex categories. Another alternative explanation suggested by Albaz is that the marks indicate an early stage that preceded the development of writing, a medium that was used to convey messages from the government to all echelons of the population with the help of ceramic vessels that were widely used in everyday life (Albaz et al. 2017; Kisos 2014).

Figure 14. Photograph of large stone weights (14+ cm diameters) in Courtyard 74512 in Building 74512 from E5b (Basket 746039-2) (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

Greenberg 2001; Joffe 2001). In the E5b Stratum layer of Building 114805, there is an exquisitely carved hippopotamus ivory cylinder seal (Figure 15a-b). Since its original publication (Maeir et al. 2011), the seal has been reassigned stratigraphically to the E5b (originally reported as coming from E5c - Maeir et al. 2011) Phase. It is carved in a style similar to other northern Levantine specimens, its origin is not clear. It may have come from Egypt as a trade good and been carved in the northern Levant and then picked up by a merchant who brought it south (Greenfield et al. 2020). It is also possible that it may have originated from the Levant, as hippopotami existed in the coastal plain of Israel until the Iron I period (Horwitz and Tchernov 1990). The exotic raw material and knowhow involved in shaping such a small object suggests that it was made by a skilled artisan and was a relatively expensive object. While it is tempting to speculate that such objects were owned and used by the elite or their administrators, the discovery of such an item in a non-elite building suggests that the owner was conducting activities that involved some kind of tracking of ownership or record keeping. This would be beneficial to individuals involved in the exchange systems, such as merchants.

Extra-Regional Provisioning of Goods The site is well-positioned to regulate traffic along several historically known major transportation routes. The broad Elah River valley allows for easy east and west movement up and down from the mountains to the coastal plain. A north-south route went along the base of the hills between the Shephelah and coastal plain. Slightly inland, there is the International Road that goes along the coast (or a few km inland, depending on topography). Another is the route along what is known as the Trough Valley that travels along the line where the Shephelah meets the Judean Mountains (e.g., from Qiryat Gath, Beit Guvrin, Azekah to Beth Shemesh) (Dorsey 1991). While this location allows the occupants of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath to intercept and control much of the trade and transport flowing through the region, it also is well positioned to allow merchants moving through the region to provision the site. This is probably one of the reasons that it remained an optimal location for settlement through time.

A second hint of potential administrative activities come from the large number (n=>234) of Early Bronze 148

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Figure 15. Photographs of beads found in a vessel with other perforated beads (above left) in E5b Stratum of 114805 Building and of ivory cylinder seal (above right and below- Basket 1049021) (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

regions to the north, such as the Galilee and Golan (Beller et al. 2016, 2019). In addition, several grinding stones made of ferruginous sandstone within Phase E5a likely originate from sandstone sources in the Negev Desert (Beller et al. 2019).

There are goods found within each building that suggest that the occupants were tied into local as well as interregional exchange networks. It is not clear if goods were distributed directly to the occupants, or purchased in local market places from merchants who brought them to the site. Examples of interregional exchange items found in several buildings include a handful of hippopotamus ivory objects (the ivory cylinder seal, and other pieces of ivory that are shaped and drilled) (Greenfield et al. 2020; Maeir et al. 2011). Ivory was clearly not limited to the elite stratum of society. A few ceramics also come from non-local sources, suggesting that they may have been containers for goods transported from elsewhere. At least 15 ceramic vessels were imported from outside of the local region. All except one are closed mouth vessels that can be used to transport goods (fluids and/or solids). The petrographic analysis suggests that their clay sources and workshops came from somewhere near the northern Levantine coast, lower Galilee, and/or the central hill region (BenShlomo forthcoming). Similarly, basalt grinding stones found in each residential complex, essential tools for processing grains and other plants, were brought to the site from outside of the region since there are no local basalt sources. XRF analysis indicates that they are geochemically most consistent with sources from

A few copper objects were recovered from the Stratum E5 buildings: three awls, a chisel and a broken axe (Figure 17). Lead Isotope Analysis (LIA) showed that their origin is consistent with the Arabah deposits (both Timna sandstones and Faynan DLS ores) and correspond to the evidence that suggests they came from Faynan, where intensive mining and smelting operations are identified from this period (Eliyahu-Behar and Yahalom-Mack forthcoming) (Figure 13). Bitumen found in the form of globules and coating on ceramic vessels probably originated in the Dead Sea region where it is abundant (Eliyahu-Behar forthcoming) (Figure 11). A number of other goods indicate that items were being imported to the site and provided to households in Area E from Egypt, as well (e.g., stone mace heads based on stylistic grounds) (Greenfield et al. 2020). All of these goods were carried by donkeys. Isotope analyses showed that the donkeys found on the site, both eaten and sacrificed ritually, came from elsewhere 149

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Figure 16. Photograph of Early Bronze vessel (storage jar) with pot marks found in the B.1142009/1, L.114202 Storage jar, E5a Alleyway (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

and probably brought goods to provision the occupants. Dental isotopic analysis of sheep, goats, gazelle, and donkeys indicate that several of the sacrificed donkeys and at least one goat were born and raised in Egypt, and brought to the site of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath shortly before they were sacrificed (donkeys) or consumed (goat) (Arnold et al. 2016, 2018). These data correspond nicely with Old and Middle Kingdom Egyptian texts that describe, and iconography that depicts, donkey caravans carrying goods to Egypt from the southern Levant and elsewhere (Brewer 2002; Milevski 2009; Newberry 1893; Partridge 1996; Pritchard 1955; Shea 1981). Further evidence of the importance of donkeys to the provisioning of households with local and interregional sourced goods is the presence of a few fragments of zoomorphic (donkey) figurines, similar to the well-preserved one from Tell Azor, in the E5 residential buildings (Figure 18a). From the advent of donkey domestication, they are used as pack animals to carry trade goods over short and long distances, particularly in regions with uneven terrain. The importance of donkeys to the transportation system of the Early Bronze Age cannot be underestimated (Goulder 2020; Milevski and Horwitz 2019; Mitchell 2018).

Figure 17. Photograph of a broken copper axe head (B1343041) recovered from the Stratum E5B building 74512, Room 134309, B.1343041, L.134304. (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project)

Given all of the above, exotic and potentially expensive goods were brought into the site from outside the immediate hinterland. The presence of such goods in what are interpreted to be non-elite residential buildings suggests that imported commodities were not always signatures of elite trade networks in early 150

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Figure 18. Illustrations of two zoomorphic (donkey left and sheep right) figurines recovered in the E5 residential buildings - Left: fragment of donkey figurine carrying large vessel on its side (B. 949072, L.94911, E5 Topsoil), Right: sheep figurine (B.18E84A086, L.18E84A05, E5 Foundation trench) (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

urban centers. At Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, they were also an essential part of daily life for the inhabitants of Area E.

crumbly that it was impossible to lift them intact. Given this tentative interpretation, it would appear that they lived in a fairly dull architectural environment.

Body Decoration

Ritual

The inhabitants of the Area E buildings also likely decorated themselves. A number of pieces of jewelry were recovered in the excavations. These include beads made of steatite, faience, carnelian, shells, ivory, and other raw materials. For example, the ivory cylinder seal found in a vessel with other perforated beads is also perforated lengthwise (Figure 15c). As yet, it has not been determined if the ivory cylinder seal, and the faience, and carnelian beads were made from local or exotic sources (Eliyahu-Behar et al. 2016; Greenfield et al. 2020; Maeir et al. 2011).

Several kinds of ritual activities took place within these residential household buildings. These can be divided between two types. First, at least four (and we now think at least twice as many) complete skeletons of young female domestic asses (donkey—Equus asinus) were sacrificed and buried in shallow pits that were sealed by, and are beneath, the E5c house floors of at least two of the buildings as they were being constructed and/or renovated (Figure 5c). Given the associated material culture, the function of each of the buildings was likely residential (and not public). One was found in the central building on the east side of the alley in Courtyard 114503 of Building 134307 (Pit Locus 114506) and three more were found across the alleyway in Courtyard 17E82D08 of Building 17E82D08—Pits Locus 20E93A05, Locus 19E82D02, and Locus 19E83C09) (Greenfield et al. 2018). The head of one of them (Locus 114506 in Building 134307) was cut off and laid on its torso facing towards the rear of the animal. While the

Not only did they decorate themselves, the occupants of Area E may have also decorated their surroundings. While no evidence of painted motifs were found, the walls may have been covered by a thin layer of white paint to white-wash them. Thin white lines of sediment were repeatedly found in the matrix throughout the collapse layers of the buildings on one side of the collapsed mud brick walls. They were so thin and 151

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Figure 19. Photograph/illustration of two ground basalt stone vessel fragments. Basket 1143010 is from E5a, Building 94413, and Room 94413; Basket 20E83C165 is from E6 (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

donkey skeleton in Building 134307 was found lying on its right side but with the head pointing backwards, the three skeletons in Building 17E82D08 were lying on their left sides. While the body orientation is different, the heads of all four donkeys are pointing in the same direction—to the east where the sun rises over the Judean Mountains. All four of the skeletons belong to older subadults or young adults that were killed in the prime of their life. These are expensive animals since they cut directly into the reproductive potential of herds. No objects were associated with any of these interments. These can be considered foundation deposits that protected the inhabitants of the building complex (Greenfield et al. 2018, forthcoming).

Figure 20. Photograph of game board fragments and playing piece from the E5 Stratum (E5a Building 104311, Room104108, B.1440001, L. 144000). (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

Elsewhere, we speculate that the presence of the donkey figurines and the donkey sacrifices beneath the E5c floors of the residential buildings of Area E are indicative of the special role that donkeys played in the life of the occupants, and that this is a neighborhood inhabited by merchant families for whom the donkey was a very special animal (Greenfield et al. 2018, ; Shai et al. 2016). It was an animal important enough in the lives of the inhabitants to be sacrificed in the hope that this would ensure the well-being of the occupants of the buildings, and perhaps their travels. Elsewhere, it has been suggested that donkeys are a totem for EB Levantine merchants (Milevski 2011). It is possible that donkey burials beneath commoner residences are signatures for EB merchant residences since they are

found now in a wide variety of site throughout the Near East (Algaze et al. 2021; Greenfield et al. 2018). Several figurines of animals (e.g. donkeys and sheep) have also been recovered in the Area E excavations (Figure 18a-b). They are found all over and not in any special location that might suggest a function. It is difficult to know if they represent toys or ritual objects, or both at this time, and determining the functions of terracotta figurines is not possible within the limits of this chapter. Further evidence for ritual activity in households at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath comes from the presence of several 152

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Figure 21. Illustration of the proposed urban plan of based on the three rows of buildings visible in the Area E excavations (© Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project).

basalt vessel fragments (Beller 2017) (Figure 19). While such artifacts have also been associated with funerary contexts (Rosenberg and Chasan 2019; Rowan 1998), there is no evidence of this at the site.

Area E, unfortunately in secondary contexts (Figure 20). The playing surface of each is incised with similarly orientated vertical and horizontal lines, reminiscent of the Egyptian game of Senet (Albaz et al. 2017a, 2017b; Bardies-Fronty and Dunn-Vaturi 2012; Crist et al. 2016). They are probably locally produced since they are made of the same chalk as is found elsewhere on the site. Testifying to the popularity of the game in the southern Levant, such board games have been recovered from a number of southern Levantine EB sites (Sebbane 1991, 2001, 2012, 2016).

Recreation Life during the EB was not all dull and colorless. Fun activities, such as gaming are clearly present and a vital part of life during the EB of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath. The evidence for this comes in the form of game boards and playing pieces.

In addition, one chalk playing piece was found at the site that was likely used in Senet or some other game, though this is impossible to determine since they were

Fragments of three EB game boards represented on at least two different fragments have been recovered from 153

No Place Like Home not found together with the game boards. Several other possible playing pieces were recovered, as well from probable games of chance, such as dice. These are in the form of sheep and goat astragali recovered in situ in EB deposits. They are considered to be gaming pieces based on the use-wear polish and other surface modifications evident on them. None of the gaming pieces are found in association with any of the game boards (Albaz et al. 2017a, 2017b; Greenfield et al. 2018).

a large and continuous urban aggregation of structures separated by streets or alleyways. It is likely that it extended at least across the entire eastern end of the settlement. This is an issue that can only be investigated, however, by a future generation of archaeologists. Fortifications and the Household How do fortifications relate to household archaeology? The scale and nature of the EB fortifications suggest its construction and maintenance required a centralized authority. It follows the entire crest of the mound (Figure 4). The stone foundations are of similar dimensions around the entire exposed perimeter (preserved to a height of 2–3 m, and a width of 2 m), as are the stones selected for its construction (medium and large roughly shaped field stones). While the inner face of the wall is uniformly flat, the outer face is composed of a series of insets and outsets that are regularly spaced and the same dimensions (c. 2.7 m wide) along its entire exposed length. It was topped by a mudbrick superstructure that was likely an equivalent if not greater height once again (Shai et al. 2016).

Discussion Spatial Organization of the Neighborhood It is apparent that the buildings are organized in a similar manner—with a large and small room. At least three rows of buildings are visible, with two of the rows separated by a narrow alleyway. Row A (westernmost) has two exposed parts of buildings, followed by the alleyway, Row B (middle) has three more or less fully exposed buildings, and Row C (easternmost) has parts of three exposed buildings (Figure 21). The buildings in Row C are truncated by later intrusive deposits. Given the layout seen at other sites, and the uniform size and shape of the buildings here, we posit that there would be another alleyway just to the east of the Row C buildings that would allow the Row C inhabitants to exit their houses.

The existence of such a high, thick, and spatially extensive fortification system surrounding the entire tell is probably a reflection of the tumultuous political conditions at this time, and/or may have served as a means for the local elite to both protect and control the local population. Similar fortification systems appear on almost every major and minor tell site from this period (Douglas 2007; Greenberg and Paz 2005; Kempinski 1992; Miroschedji 2006, 2009; Nigro 2019). This is contrasted, however, by the dearth of evidence for weapons in the archaeological record (Ashkenazi 2016: 383). This lack is most simply explained by the near absence of burials during this time period since this is where such objects are most frequently found. While fortifications may suggest that warfare, or the fear of it, was endemic in early urban societies in the southern Levant, it also suggests that local elites were present and active in their leadership.

If the trajectory of the alleyway continues in a straight line, visitors will encounter the modern east-west path that crosses the site. It is interesting to note that this modern pathway exits the eastern end of the site through what was probably an ancient gateway since there are orthostats bordering at least one side of the entrance/exit. Could it be that the modern pathway overlays an original east-west route through the site? If so, then this would be evidence of a planned urban layout that extends back into the EB. The similar architectural orientation of EB remains in Area A would support this (see below). Neighborhood Extent

If individual households or neighborhoods were responsible for a particular section of the fortification, it is likely that there would have been much more variation in construction across the settlement. Hence, construction and maintenance does not appear to be the responsibility at the social level of the household, but was likely organized by the local leadership of the settlement.

There is evidence from the neighboring Area A excavations that the Area E neighborhood was much larger than originally anticipated. EB architectural and ceramic remains were excavated in a few probes beneath the main level of Area A. The top level of the EB horizon in Area A seems to be at a similar elevation in the neighboring Area E. The architectural layout within a small 2 × 2 m probe in Area A also appears to have a similar orientation to the diagonal pattern (in relation to the site grid) evident in Area E.

Where are the Elite or Public Buildings? It is important to discuss where the elite and public buildings would have been located at the site. Unfortunately, none of the excavations touched on any areas that included evidence of such large public

These data suggest that the buildings in the Area E neighborhood were not an isolated phenomenon at the east end of the settlement, but were likely part of 154

Haskel J. Greenfield et al.: Chapter 9. Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze III structures. The fortifications themselves are the only exposed examples of monumental architecture. Nevertheless, the changes in topography and local climate that occur from one end to the other across the site may suggest likely locations for future archaeologists to consider.

because of its rich textual record and broad exposures (e.g. Buccellati 2016; Buccellati et al. 2014; Pfälzner 2001; Smith 2016; Stone 1987; Tamm 2016; Ur 2014; Zelsmann 2016), the preliterate societies of the southern Levant can provide insights into alternative trajectories toward the formation of early urban society (Falconer 1995; Falconer and Savage 1995; Miroschedji 2018).

The topography changes quite dramatically from east to west. It is very low in the east and rises in a series of steps (terraces?) until the west end of the site is reached where there is a large acropolis-like formation. From this western pinnacle, the entire region is visible, as is every part of the site except where views might be hidden by buildings. From a strategic point of view, this is the optimal location on the site. It dominates the rest of the site and allows for an unimpeded view of the surrounding countryside in all directions (Figure 2).

The EB III settlement at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath is an important regional political and economic center. It is a very large and fortified urban center that dominated its hinterland and competed for goods, people, and power over resources with the other nearby centers such as Yarmouth (Miroschedji 2006, 2009). While no evidence for an elite or public quarter has been found yet at the site, it is likely deeply buried in areas that are still difficult to access. But, administrative or public quarters have been documented from several other sites in the larger region—Bet Yerah, Jericho, Megiddo, Yarmouth, Zarqa and others (Finkelstein et al. 2000; Greenberg 2011, 2014, 2019; Miroschedji 1993, 1999, 2003; Nigro 2010; Ussishkin 2018). The elites of the site organized the labor necessary for construction of the massive fortification system. The existence of a uniformity in domestic architecture further suggests the presence of an organized urban plan, with specialized architects and masons, likely arranged by the elites of the city.

The local climate also changes from east to west. The western face of the site is shielded from the early morning sun to some extent. More importantly, it receives a constant flow of fresh air since the wind blows from west to east off of the Mediterranean. In contrast, the east end of the site heats up early in the day. Also, the fresh early morning breeze dies down early in the day to the point where there is little or no wind until the sun begins to set. As a result of the discovery that the eastern end of the site is filled with domestic residences without any hint of elite or public structures, it is thought that it is more likely that they would be found located toward the western end of the site. Not only does the west end have a stunning view from where one can dominate any activities below, but it has a constantly blowing stream of fresh air. While it is tempting to theorize that palaces and temples would be located at the west end of the site, no evidence for such structures has been found as yet. This is not surprising given the thick later stratigraphic sequence overlying the EB at the western end of the site (from MB to modern times) (Chadwick and Maeir 2020; Maeir 2012). When the location of palaces and other large structures at other sites are considered, there does not seem to be any single consistent variable that explains the choice of elite locations. For example, while the palace at Megiddo is on the upper tell, it is located on the broad lower tell at Tell Yarmouth (Miroschedji 2012; Ussishkin 2018).

Later EB III (EB IIIC) domestic residences are small structures that are composed of a larger courtyard and smaller roofed-over room. The former is likely for cooking and other activities that would be unpleasant or difficult to do in a constricted roofed-over space (e.g., butchering, hide cleaning), while the latter is likely for sleeping, storage, and maybe weaving (although loom weights are noticeably absent in this time period, spindle whorls are found). Buildings were constructed according to a master plan, or template, in rows. Each row appears to be positioned atop a terrace in a sequence that descends in elevation. Each of the houses was constructed up against one another and had access to narrow streets or alleys on one side. Houses were used and maintained over extended periods of time. If we allow 30–50 years for each phase of mudbrick superstructure renovation, then the E5 Stratum lasted 100–150 years. Buildings were well maintained over this length of time as it would seem that there was nowhere else to build in the neighborhood. It was filled up by this time.

Conclusions

It is likely that each building was occupied by a single family unit as the means of production and storage of food is contained and repeated from building to building. The nature of activities within each building is largely of a domestic nature. There is no evidence for industrial activities within the buildings. Cooking took place in the courtyard with low fires from dung and wood. Animal food products were likely obtained

The results of our decade-long field research program at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath contributes significantly to our understanding of the nature of households and household activities during this early phase of urban development in the southern Levant. While most of the literature on the nature of early urban society for the Near East has focused largely on Mesopotamia, 155

No Place Like Home from specialist producers who lived elsewhere (e.g., herders or villagers in the surrounding countryside) and most of the animals were grazed within the local territory. The bulk of animal foods are sheep and goat, with far fewer cattle and even the occasional donkey. Most of the plant food also came from the immediate surroundings of the site and was cultivated as part of an intensive agricultural regime. Most of the tools for processing food are made of chipped and ground stone, since metal objects are still relatively soft, expensive, and likely used for display or ritual activities. The bulk of the chipped stone tools are locally sourced and produced, and were likely made within households on an ad hoc basis. In contrast, ceramic vessels were not made by households, but by local specialist workshops, as were the bulk of the chipped stone tools. Certain durable goods were provisioned to households by merchants bringing goods from afar (e.g., Canaanean blades, basalt ground stone, bitumen, copper, etc.). Life was not all mundane and colorless as people decorated themselves with beads and, perhaps, tentatively whitewashed the walls of their buildings. The occupants of these residences would appear to have access to exotic goods for quotidian purposes, sophisticated methods of recording ownership, and sacrificed expensive animals likely to ensure the safety and well-being of their homes and families.

Acknowledgements We acknowledge and thank the following organizations for their generous funding for our research at Tell eṣṢâfi/Gath—Bar-Ilan University and the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (PG# 895‐2011‐1005 and IG# 4102009-1303), The University of Manitoba, St. Paul’s College and Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology Laboratory of the University of Manitoba, Jewish and Catholic Foundations of Winnipeg, and a host of private individuals. We graciously thank the staff and team members of The Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath Archaeological Project and the host of colleagues and students without whose unstinting support this research would not have been successfully carried out. The overall excavations of the site are directed by A. M. Maeir, while the excavations of the Early Bronze Age occupation at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath are conducted as a joint operation codirected by H. J. Greenfield and A. M. Maeir. Itzick Shai, Tina Greenfield, Eric Welch, and Shira Albaz were Area E Supervisors from 2004–2017.

The advantage of taking a slow systematic approach to the recovery of excavation data has allowed us to begin to understand not only the architectural layout, but the nature of early urban households. While the location of Area E at the far end of the site originally suggested to us that it should be inhabited by the lowest class of society in the community, it is now clear that this was not the case. We propose instead that this was a neighborhood reflective of a more middle stratum lifestyle and one that likely included merchant families involved in both local and long distance transport and trade of goods; a situation that is posited elsewhere for Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age societies (Amiran 1985; Milevski 2016; Snell 1977; Stein et al. 1996; Weiss and Young 1975), but becomes more visible in later Bronze and Iron Age cultures (Aubet 2013: 414, 2016; Larsen 2015; Veenhof 1995).

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Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar: Structure SS1 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, Sultanate of Oman Jennifer Swerida

Household archaeology provides an increasingly diverse methodological and theoretical framework for accessing information on ancient communities, individuals, and lived experiences beyond the reach of conventional archaeological practice (Chesson 2012; Hendon 2004; Stokes 2020). Through detailed study of the remains of houses and the activities carried out within and around them, household archaeologists are able to identify elements of the everyday behaviors, economic/subsistence practices, and composition of the household that produced them (see Flannery 2002; Gillespie 2007; Tringham 2012). This bottom-up approach to understanding ancient societies provides a valuable, balancing counter-perspective to traditional top-down reconstructions. Regrettably, the remains of societies from many parts of the ancient world do not always provide the clarity necessary to identify discrete structures as houses or the behaviors that took place within them as those of a household. It is often the study of these archaeologically indistinct societies that would most benefit from the bottom-up insights provided by household archaeology. One example of such a society is found at the southern end of the ancient Near Eastern world in the Umm an-Nar period (c. 2700–2000 BC) of the Arabian Oman Peninsula (the modern Sultanate of Oman and United Arab Emirates) (Figure 1). Throughout the Near East, the Early Bronze Age is known as a period of growing complexity that saw the emergence of cities, states, and even empires. An Arabian variant of this trend is evident in the Umm an-Nar period through a dramatic increase in the number and scale of sites throughout the region in tandem with developments in monumental, mortuary, and technological traditions. The Umm anNar population is broadly understood as a kin-based or tribal society (Cleuziou and Tosi 2018; Magee 2014; Méry 2013). Due to a combination of relatively poor archaeological preservation, coarse temporal clarity, and the lack of a contemporaneous local textual tradition, however, it has thus far not been possible to define the Umm an-Nar house or household. As a result, the nature of Umm an-Nar period sociopolitical organization, its economic foundations, and how it No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 164–180

fits into the map of the Near Eastern Early Bonze Age remain matters of debate (Cleuziou 2002; Döpper 2018; Rouse and Weeks 2011; Swerida 2017, ND). Of the known Umm an-Nar centers, the site of Bat is lauded by UNESCO as home to an extensive collection of 3rd millennium BC settlements and necropolises (UNESCO 1988). Research at the site by the Bat Archaeological Project has uncovered an assortment of Umm an-Nar period structures that, while imperfectly preserved, can be tentatively considered as domestic in function (Swerida and Thornton 2019a, 2019b). Using the clearest surviving example among these buildings— Structure SS1—as a case study, this paper explores the utility of household archaeology as an interpretive framework for exploring the social group(s) that utilized built spaces with indeterminate functions. It is further argued that household archaeology is not only applicable to studies of indistinct sites/communities, but is particularly well suited to uncovering the types of data that may ultimately enable archaeologists to reconstruct the inner workings of atextual societies like the Umm an-Nar. Household archaeology and finding houses Now a well-established sub-discipline, household archaeology uses contexts of everyday, domestic behaviors to assemble bottom-up perspectives of ancient groups. Households—cross-culturally a society’s fundamental, decision-making unit— are understood to organize their members and membership in ways that reflect and react to the social norms, beliefs, and economic systems of the larger community (Douglas and Gonlin 2012; Hendon 2004; Stokes 2020). The household provides its members with a framework for individual practice, identity formation, and social negotiation (Chesson 2012; Tringham 2012). Intra-household interaction—the foundation of any community—influences and amplifies household decisions in ways that may perpetuate or alter social norms (de Lucia and Overholtzer 2014; Mac Sweeney 2011). Thus, by studying household contexts it is possible to gather information on a broad spectrum of

Jennifer Swerida: Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar

Figure 1. Map of the Oman Peninsula indicating the location of sites mentioned or referenced in the text (background after Esri Digital Globe, data by Jennifer Swerida).

archaeological studies. It has long been recognized that the structural confines of a house, however, do not necessarily reflect those of its occupant household(s) or vice versa (Flannery 2002; Gillespie 2007; Lawrence and Low 1990). Identification of these entities—social, physical, and the correlation between the two—remains a persistent issue in the field.

social characteristics—from individualized identity and daily practice of household members to communityscale complexity, organization, and social change (Hendon 2010; Stokes 2020). Underpinning household archaeology is the presupposition that contexts associated with a single household can be identified in the archaeological record. Just as archaeologists are quick to equate a community with the settlement (Mac Sweeney 2011; Stokes 2020), a household is often equated with the physical house in which it resides (Chesson 2012; Hendon 2004). Houses are, by definition, structures where domestic activities and interactions (e.g., food preparation/consumption, household-scale storage and craft production, sleeping, child-rearing, waste disposal) take place and, as such, are the primary subjects of, and settings for, household

In addition to providing space for basic domestic needs such as eating, sleeping, and taking shelter, houses may be the stage for a vast array of behaviors and activities (public and private, ritual and mundane, logical and illogical) not immediately recognizable as domestic (Douglas and Gonlin 2012; de Lucia and Overholtzer 2014; Tringham 2012). The nature of this multi-functionality—what activity is done where and by who—varies in accordance with the social 165

No Place Like Home norms, beliefs, socioeconomic status, and choices of the household. Further complicating matters are settlement buildings not utilized as residences (nonhouses) but that supported domestic-type behaviors; such as, workshops or temples with designated space for food preparation and consumption. These complicating nuances make identification of archaeological houses most reliable in settings where a large corpus of comparative data is available, and/ or where contemporaneous textual accounts provide supplementary insight into the domestic traditions in question. Household archaeologists studying atextual societies with limited preservation, in contrast, are inevitably faced with varying degrees of interpretive ambiguity and uncertainty.

reminder that it is the prescribed methods of household archaeology—in which interpretive attentions are focused on details of built space, its use, and how both space and use change over time—that provide the most promising framework for untangling fragmentary material and social remains. In such contexts, the exploratory process of distinguishing houses and households, with their substantial comparative and interpretive potential (Gillespie 2007; Stokes 2020), from other entities represented in the archaeological record is an essential part of reconstructing the ancient society in question from the bottom up. The Umm An-Nar Who were the people of Umm an-Nar period southeast Arabia? In the absence of local textual sources, scholars are left with archaeological remains and written accounts from other regions to support their interpretations.

Households are similarly versatile and difficult to pin down archaeologically without the assistance of textual accounts or ethnographic models. In composition, households vary in scale and extent of familial relationship (or lack thereof), while spatially they may occupy multiple, single, or shared buildings or they may exist in the absence of any permanent built space (Hendon 2010; Wright 2016). Archaeological identification typically relies on isolating collections of features or activity areas thought to reflect the needs of a single household, irrespective of their relationship to built space (Klucas and Schwartz 2015; Özbal 2012). Although challenging to detect, the logic of household organization is fundamentally important to the organization of the larger community (Gillespie 2007; Stokes 2020). Indeed, studies of religious, government, and economic institutions in various regions and periods of the ancient Near East, known through both archaeological and textual evidence, have found underlying household organizational structures and descriptive terminology (McCorriston 2011; Schloen 2001; Ur 2014). These institutions, while operating at much larger scales than traditional households, further illustrate the usefulness of household studies in attempts to reconstruct ancient societies.

Umm an-Nar sites are found throughout the Oman Peninsula’s varying geographic and environmental zones—from the peninsular coasts, through the rugged Hajar Mountains, and in the interior piedmont that grades into the Ru’b al-Khali desert. Settlement patterns are especially dense along the coastlines and in the

Amid the milieu of multifunctional settlement buildings and diverse possible household forms, it may not always be possible for archaeologists working in poorly preserved and/or atextual settings to reliably distinguish between house and non-house structures, or between households and other types of cooperative social groups (Özbal 2012). Yet the burden of proof for labeling a building a house and its occupants a household invariably rests on scholarly shoulders. In the ideal, all archaeological excavations would be conducted with the same precision, care, and attention to detail as is typically associated with household archaeological studies. In practice, the reality often falls short of the mark, especially when the interpretation of a building as a house is in doubt. This paper serves as a

Figure 2. Early Bronze Age chronologies of Mesopotamia and the Oman Peninsula (© Bat Archaeological Project).

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Jennifer Swerida: Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar

Figure 3. Examples of Umm an-Nar tower Kasr al-Rojoom (left) and restored tombs (right) at Bat (© Bat Archaeological Project).

mountainous foothills, where sites are composed of a combination of tombs, tower monuments, and clusters of small rectilinear buildings presumed to be domestic in function. While there is clear variation in the subsistence strategies practiced by occupants of Umm an-Nar coastal and inland oasis sites, material culture of the period is remarkably consistent throughout the 150,000 km2 region (see Magee 2014). The Umm anNar period is also characterized by an apparent shift in lifeways toward more permanent occupation than is seen in the preceding Hafit period (c. 3100–2700 BC) (Figure 2). The archaeological record shows a dramatic increase in the number and size of Umm anNar sites (Döpper 2018; al-Jahwari and Kennet 2010; Swerida 2021), as well as more widespread evidence for irrigation agriculture (Cleuziou 1996; Tengberg 2012) and interaction with foreign populations via the Arabian/Persian Gulf maritime trade network (Cattani et al. 2019; Cleuziou and Tosi 2000; Frenez et al. 2016). Such developments are understood as an acceleration of trends begun in the Hafit period (Cleuziou and Tosi 2018) and fit within the widespread pattern of growing complexity in the Early Bronze Age.

have favored interpretations of the Umm an-Nar as a segmented or tribal society (Cleuziou 2002; Méry 2013; Rouse and Weeks 2011). Although the small, rectilinear buildings found in many Umm an-Nar settlements are increasingly popular subjects of study, their function(s) have proved difficult to determine. Assumed to be houses by early scholars of the region (see de Cardi et al. 1976; Hastings et al. 1975), upon excavation the rectilinear stone or mudbrick structures are often found to contain few distinguishing characteristics or clarifying pieces of material culture (Azzarà 2018; Castel et al. 2020; Döpper 2018; Frifelt 1995; al-Jahwari et al. 2018; Schmidt 2018; Swerida and Thornton 2019a, 2019b). Exceptions to this trend, such as the buildings at the copper mining site of Maysar (Weisgerber 1980, 1981) or the coastal site of Ra’s al-Jinz (Azzarà 2018; Cleuziou and Tosi 2000), are characterized by ample evidence for craft production (smelting furnaces, pyrotechnic installations, debris from lithic or bead production) in addition to materials that may suggest mundane domestic activities (hearths, ovens, ceramic storage vessels, grinding stones, fishing hooks, rubbish pits/piles). While frequently discussed as houses, the general scarcity of use contexts and alternative interpretations as specialized workshops or multifunctional hybrids of workshop and house leave the anatomy of an Umm an-Nar settlement/community and house/household in doubt.

Umm an-Nar sites are known first and foremost by their monuments—c. 20 m wide circular stone and mudbrick towers are scattered across the peninsular interior and northern coasts while semi-subterranean tombs contain the remains of dozens and sometimes hundreds of individuals (Figure 3). The function of Umm an-Nar towers remains a matter of debate (see Cable and Thornton 2013), with interpretations ranging from fortified elite residences (Potts 2000; Weisgerber 1981) to markers of control over local resources (Esposti 2014; Mortimer and Thornton 2018) to ritual platforms (Orchard and Orchard 2008). Tombs contain a full population profile—men and women, young and old—with no apparent differentiation between the status of interred individuals (Méry 2010; Williams and Gregoricka 2020). Based on these patterns, scholars

Contemporary foreign textual accounts of Umm an-Nar period Arabia offer limited, and at times contradictory, insights into the social, political, and economic makeup of its society. Akkadian (2300–2100 BC) and Ur III (2100– 2000 BC) texts from Mesopotamia refer to the Oman Peninsula as the ‘Land of Magan,’ a region ‘across the Lower Sea’ rich in desirable precious metals and stones (Heimpel 1987). Akkadian rulers Maništušu (2269–2255 BC) and Naram–Suen (2254–2218 BC) both claimed to have campaigned in Magan. While Maništušu 167

No Place Like Home describes defeating ‘32 cities of Magan’ (Frayne 1993: 74–77), seeming to suggest a segmented society, only a generation later Naram-Suen boasts that he captured the single EN or ‘lord’ of Magan (Frayne 1993: 116–118), indicating the existence of a central ruler. In the following century, Ur III accounts document a substantial Gulf copper trade in which Magan is described with terms typical of a hierarchical nation—a place ruled by a lugal or ‘king’ and represented by an ensi or ‘governor’ (Neumann 1999; Steinkeller 2004).

The resulting impression of Umm an-Nar period society is thus one of a kin-based structure with communities centered around settlements and their accompanying monuments. The day-to-day lived experience and social norms within that structure, however, remain unclear. Settlements, as the stages for the minutia of daily life and interaction, can shed light onto aspects of social organization, economy, and lifeways that monuments, mortuary contexts, and foreign textual accounts cannot. As such, the imperfectly preserved and thus far under-explored settlement contexts of Early Bronze Age Arabia may provide the most promising source of information to illuminate the inner workings of Umm an-Nar society.

Of these varying accounts, Maništušu’s claim of defeating an assortment of ‘cities’—a campaign for which there is no corroborating archaeological evidence—most closely corresponds with the sociopolitical organization evidenced in Umm an-Nar settlement patterns and burial traditions (Cleuziou 2002). Archaeological attempts to identify the more hierarchical structure indicated in the later Mesopotamian texts have largely met with frustration (cf. Edens 1992; Reade 2008). Instead, these descriptions may be more reflective of the Mesopotamian world view than of the sociopolitical structure of Umm an-Nar period Arabia (Magee 2014: 118; Potts 1991: 148).

The site of Bat The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, located in the Wadi al-Hijr of the Hajar Mountains’ arid inner piedmont, offers a large and diverse archaeological landscape on which to study Umm an-Nar settlement and possible house/household traditions. Archaeological remains are documented across a 400 ha area that covers a swath of the wadi floodplain and the surrounding stone hills

Figure 4. Map of Bat (left) with sub-phased site chronology (right); Khutm settlement 3 km to the northwest of the Settlement Slope not shown (background after Esri Digital Globe, data by Jennifer Swerida).

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Jennifer Swerida: Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar of the Jebel Wahrah (Cable and al-Jabri 2018) (Figure 4). For millennia, the Bat oasis has supplied residents and visitors with fertile agricultural lands, a high water table, and easy passage through the nearby mountains (Desruelles et al. 2016; Janjou et al. 1986). While there is some indication of a Paleolithic presence (Swerida et al. 2020b), human occupation at Bat is securely dated to the Neolithic (Dollarhide 2019; Kondo et al. 2016; Swerida 2017), reached its greatest extent in the Umm an-Nar period (Swerida 2018), and continues to present (Young et al. 2018).

At al-Khafaji, in contrast, the known settlement is composed of three rectilinear stone buildings and multiple outdoor activity areas located next to a monumental tower and platform (Swerida and Thornton 2019a). All of these structures are situated atop a clay foundation mound that, in the Umm anNar period, elevated them above the surrounding landscape. Now buried beneath accumulated wadi silts, the settlement contexts at al-Khafaji are better preserved than those of the hillside settlements. The activity areas adjacent to the rectilinear buildings provide especially compelling evidence that domestictype behaviors (food production/consumption, smallscale storage, waste disposal) were regularly carried out at the site. While promising as potential houses and household contexts, the situation of these buildings and activity areas on a monumental tower foundation mound raises the likelihood that they may not be representative of normal Umm an-Nar settlement. The possibility exists that further settlement contexts are yet to be found in the area surrounding the Khafaji tower mound and elsewhere on the floodplain; however, the substantial build-up of silts in the wadi valley—up to 3 m of accumulation since the Bronze Age (Swerida and Thornton 2019a)—has thus far impeded identification of such remains.

The scale and visibility of the archaeological remains at Bat have drawn archaeologists to the site for decades (Böhme and al-Sarbri 2011; de Cardi et al. 1976; Castel et al. 2020; Frifelt 1985; Kondo et al. 2016; Schmidt and Döpper 2014). Umm an-Nar features include seven known monumental towers (Thornton et al. 2016), a necropolis with over 100 Umm an-Nar tombs (Cable and al-Jabri 2018; Swerida et al. 2020a), and at least three zones of settlement architecture and activity (Swerida 2018; Swerida and Thornton 2019a, 2019b). In recent years the Bat Archaeological Project, which has conducted surveys and excavations at the site since 2007 (Thornton et al. 2016), has pursued research questions targeting Umm an-Nar chronology and settlement. While the Umm an-Nar period is generally recognized as spanning a roughly 700-year time frame, it is not yet possible to define sub-phases within the period that are recognizable beyond a single site. The sub-phased chronology developed by the Bat Archaeological Project (Swerida et al. 2021; Thornton and Ghazal 2016) (see Figure 4) reveals that activity at the site shifted in location and intensity over the course of the Early Bronze Age. Agricultural production and the construction of Bat’s earliest tower monuments date to the Hafit and Early Umm an-Nar periods (Desruelles et al. 2016; Thornton et al. 2016), while settlement architecture does not appear until the Middle and Late Umm an-Nar (Swerida 2018).

Among the excavated samples of Umm an-Nar settlement at Bat, the area providing the highest quality preservation, density of finds, and probability of providing a representative sample of house and household, comes from the northwestern end of the Settlement Slope, where the hillside flattens to a gentle grade. Here, the archaeological contexts have suffered less erosion damage than the remains visible on the steeper sections of the hill, but are high enough on the landscape not to be buried beneath meters of wadi silts. While limited in size, this area provides valuable details that can be used to supplement understanding of the more fragmentary settlement contexts known elsewhere on the Bat landscape.

Of the three identified areas of Umm an-Nar settlement on the Bat landscape, two (the Settlement Slope and alKhutm) are located on the sides of steep hills and one (al-Khafaji) is located on the flat of the wadi plain. The Settlement Slope (Frifelt 1985; Swerida and Thornton 2019b; Swerida et al. 2020b) and al-Khutm (Swerida 2017) each feature collections of rectilinear stone architecture stretching along a length of hillside that boarders the wadi valley, situating the structures above seasonal flood waters and agricultural lands. Stone walling is visible on the modern ground surface, making it possible to record near-full building plans without the need for excavation. The erosion responsible for exposing the walling at these sites, however, also destroyed much of the contexts within and surrounding the buildings.

Structure SS1 The northwestern end of the Settlement Slope hill is home to a tower monument—Tower 1156—that was constructed and fell out of use within the span of the Early Umm an-Nar period and a subsequent multi-period assortment of tombs and rectilinear architecture (Mortimer and Thornton 2018; Swerida and Thornton 2019b). Excavations in this area by the Bat Archaeological Project from 2012 to 2014 uncovered a complex of several Early Bronze Age buildings (Figure 5) and accompanying artifacts and activity areas. Among these remains, Structure SS1 stands out as the most informative case study of a potential Umm an-Nar house so far encountered at Bat. 169

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Figure 5. Map of the Settlement Slope hill indicating the location of the northwestern excavations (top) and plan of the northwest Settlement Slope excavations (bottom) (background after Esri Digital Globe, data by Jennifer Swerida).

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Figure 6. Structure SS1 from the west (© Bat Archaeological Project).

SS1-1 SS1-2 SS1-3 SS1-4 SS1-5

Construction of Structure SS1exterior walls; clay and pebble floor in northwest interior; outdoor activity area southeast of building (Re)Construction of northeast wall; reinforcement of southeast wall’s interior face Addition of interior walls; clay and pebble floor and metallurgical activity in northwestern room Construction of Structure SS3 and Structure SS10; metallurgical activity in SS10; clay floor in southeast room of Structure SS1 Interior wall extended to form an inclosed northwestern room with a clay floor; southwest doorway blocked

SS1-6 Structure SS1 expanded to the west; eventual abandonment

c. 2500-2400 BC, Middle Umm an-Nar c. 2500-2400 BC, Middle Umm an-Nar c. 2400-2200 BC, Middle Umm an-Nar c. 2200-2000 BC, Late Umm an-Nar c. 2000-1900 BC, Early Wadi Sûq c. 1900-1600 BC, Wadi Sûq

Figure 7. Summary of the Structure SS1 use phases (© Bat Archaeological Project).

Structure SS1 is located on the flattest expanse of the Settlement Slope hill (Figure 6) and provides evidence of use and reuse stretching over 500+ years in the Umm an-Nar and subsequent Wadi Sûq periods (Swerida and Thornton 2019b). While spared from the worst of the erosion and collapse that destroyed archaeological remains elsewhere at the site, stratigraphy and use contexts within and around Structure SS1 survive with inconsistent clarity. The building’s multiphase architecture thus provides the most reliable framework for reconstructing and interpreting its

ancient social functions. Differences in the elevations of wall foundations and floor surfaces from one construction event to the next give both physical and temporal scaffolding to interpretations of each of the six identified use phases and their associated material culture (Figure 7). The discussion below focuses on the use phases dating to the Umm an-Nar period: SS1-1 through SS1-4. In its earliest phase, SS1-1, Structure SS1 was a rectangular open-plan building constructed of 171

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Figure 8. Plan of Structure SS1 in phases SS1-1 and SS1-2 (© Bat Archaeological Project).

this area served as a multi-functional, outdoor living space for the building’s occupants. It may be that a doorway once connected SS1 to this outdoor activity area; however, the fragmentary state of the building’s southeastern wall makes this impossible to verify.

unworked, dove-tailed limestone blocks set horizontally into a mud mortar (Figure 8). This construction style is typical of Umm an-Nar settlement buildings in the piedmont region (Castel et al. 2020; Dollarhide 2019; al-Jahwari et al. 2018; Schmidt 2018; Weisgerber 1981). Entry was unrestricted through a doorway in its southwestern wall, marked by a threshold stone. Opposite the doorway, excavation uncovered a small section of packed clay flooring and a hearth (2480-2315 cal. BC [2-σ]) level with the SS1-1 wall foundations. An activity area was located outside and immediately east of the building. In this space, a 10 cm layer of accumulated ashy silt, charcoal (2470–2315 cal. BC [2-σ]), and occupational refuse had accumulated on a clay and cobble surface. The fill contained a dense concentration of utilitarian ceramic sherds, oven fragments, copper scrap, and a fragment of a small clay crucible. Such an assemblage—including evidence for food preparation and craft production—suggests that

The second use phase of Structure SS1, SS1-2, is anchored by two alterations made to the northeastern and southeastern walls. A 3 m section of the northeastern wall was demolished and a slightly thinner, less regular version constructed it its place. Charcoal extracted from the mud mortar between the first and second courses of this replacement wall place it slightly later in the Middle Umm an-Nar period (2450–2265 cal. BC [2-σ]) than the SS1-1 dates. At approximately the same time, the inner face of the building’s southeastern wall was reinforced with a single row of stones. The foundation levels of both these additions are roughly the same as the SS11 walls and no other material culture can be securely 172

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Figure 9. Plan on Structure SS1-3; Middle Umm an-Nar storage jar (a) from central room (© Bat Archaeological Project).

associated with them. It is, nevertheless, tempting to interpret SS1-2 as a generational maintenance event, such as those that often occur when a house passes in ownership from one generation to the next (Amkreutz 2013; Foxhall 2000).

shallow charred depression containing copper prills, slag, and crucible fragments near to the door in the northwestern room indicates that the space was used for one or more stages of metallurgical craft production (e.g., melting, casting, fabrication). Presumably related metallurgical activity also took place at this level just outside and to the west of Structure SS1, where a stonelined semicircular installation—possibly the remnants of a small smelting furnace (Giardino 2019: 95–98)— contained a dense quantity of ash and copper prills. The central and most private room of SS1-3 housed a comparatively large concentration of jar sherds, including one decorated in the dramatic spiral patterns of the later Middle Umm an-Nar period (Swerida et al. 2021; Thornton and Ghazal 2016; see also Cleuziou 1989: Pl. 24 and 28; Méry 2000: fig. 76; Potts 1990: fig. 56, no. 2). Both the location and contents of this room suggest that it functioned as a private storage space, accessible only to those occupying or utilizing the building. The SS1-3 level in the southeastern room was disturbed by later construction activity. It is possible that the function of this room related to activities carried out in

The most significant change to the layout of Structure SS1 took place in phase SS1-3, when the interior space was subdivided into three rooms by the addition of two interior walls (Figure 9). The foundations of the new walls rest c. 20 cm above those of the SS1-1 and SS1-2 walls, marking a clear passage of time. These additions fundamentally changed the flow of movement through, and use of space within, the building. Access through the southwest doorway now led to a narrow room with a packed clay and pebble floor, while the central and possibly the southeastern room maintained a degree of privacy. Certain locational functions can be surmised for Structure SS1 based on the building layout and the few features and objects found at the SS1-3 floor level. A 173

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Figure 10. Plan of Structures SS1-4, SS3, and SS10; copper prills and crucible fragments from Structure SS10 (a); Late Umm anNar jar sherds (b and c), copper sickle (d), and copper pin (e) from Structure SS1-4 (© Bat Archaeological Project).

the adjacent outdoor space to the east of the building, where a fragmentary clay surface, fire pit (2470–2315 cal. BC [2-σ]), and collection of utilitarian ceramics were found level with the SS1-3 wall foundations.

area and a small, single-roomed building—Structure SS10—was added to the northwestern corner of Structure SS1. The foundations for both new buildings rest c. 15–20 cm above those of the SS1-3 walls. The northwestern end of Structure SS3 abuts and cuts into the southeast wall of Structure SS1; however, the SS3 walls are oriented on a slightly sharper northwestsoutheast alignment than those of its neighbor. While only a single room of this new building remains, the layout of the surviving walls and southwest-facing

In SS1-4, Structure SS1 evolved from a freestanding Middle Umm an-Nar building to the center of a Late Umm an-Nar complex (Figure 10). A now fragmentary building—Structure SS3—was constructed over the space previously used as the southeast outdoor activity 174

Jennifer Swerida: Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar doorway suggests that it may have originally followed a floor plan similar to Structure SS1 with multiple, long, interconnected rooms.

al. 2018; Schmidt 2018; Weisgerber 1981), however, it could be easy to leap to a premature identification of Structure SS1 as a house with an occupant household. In the bottom-up fashion of household archaeology, the structural and behavioral evidence uncovered in the Settlement Slope excavations must also guide interpretations of the social group(s) that utilized the building and their implications for Umm an-Nar period society.

Preserved SS1-4 contexts within Structure SS1 are limited to the southeastern room. Here, a packed gravel and clay floor was uncovered level with the foundations of the neighboring Structure SS3. While otherwise featureless, an assortment of artifacts recovered from the floor provide the phase with an approximate date and character. Sherds from two open-mouth jars painted with loose, undulating black lines between double-banded registers are stylistically typical of the Late Umm an-Nar at Bat (Swerida et al. 2021; Thornton and Ghazal 2016) and other phased sites in the interior piedmont, most notably Hili (Cleuziou 1989: Pl. 29; Méry 2000: figs. 78 and 80). Other objects from the SS1-4 floor level include a basalt grinding quern and mortar, a small collection of copper prills, a fragment of a copper sickle, and an unusual long copper pin with a spiraled shaft. Neither the sickle nor the spiraled pin yet have parallels at Bat or other Umm an-Nar sites. Far from providing a coherent picture of the behaviors once carried out in the SS1–4 space, this collection suggests possible connections with food production, metallurgical activity, or agriculture during Late Umm an-Nar period.

Situating Structure SS1 within its wider context, the Bat landscape is known to have been an active center throughout the Umm an-Nar period (Thornton et al. 2016; Swerida 2018). The site was the stage for a wide range of activities, including agriculture, craft production, mortuary ritual and interment, and monumental tower construction. The Settlement Slope hill, located at the northern edge of the wadi valley, has the longest known history of occupation at the site and is well situated for residents to access areas used for agricultural, mortuary, and settlement purposes (see Figure 4). Although archaeological remains are particularly dense at the tapered northwestern end of the Settlement Slope, traces of stone architecture stretching along the south-facing hillside indicate that many other buildings similar to Structure SS1 in scale and construction style once existed in the area (see Figure 5).

Finally, the small Structure SS10 appears to be an example of specialized built space. The building’s single room is oriented around two stone-lined fire pits, both of which contained numerous pieces of copper scrap and prills. Fragments of a clay crucible with copper adhering to their surface, comparable to crucible fragments found in settlement buildings at Maysar (Weisgerber 1980, 1981) and Ra’s al-Jinz (Giardino 2019: 69), were also found in the larger of the two features. The smelting and probable other metallurgical activities carried out within Structure SS10 can be tentatively associated with Structure SS1 due to the architectural link between the two buildings, the loss of the outdoor activity space east of Structure SS1 that hosted such behaviors in earlier phases, and SS10’s otherwise isolated location. Accepting the relationship between the two buildings, Structure SS10 can be understood as a small metallurgical workshop utilized by the occupants of Structure SS1.

Basic information on the social group(s) that regularly made use of Structure SS1 can be found in the building’s size and collection of artifacts and features. At 8 × 9 m, Structure SS1 could have accommodated only a small group. Estimates for the number of persons per m2 of roofed space reflect a resident population of between four and six individuals, with room for an additional person in the Late Umm an-Nar Structure SS10 (Byrd 2000; Naroll 1962). The total space utilized by the SS1 group expands significantly when the activity areas located just outside the building are considered. The distribution of finds and features indicate that both indoor and outdoor space were the settings for a variety of activities over the course of the building’s history— food production, metallurgy, storage, waste disposal, and presumably social interaction. Additionally, the presence of the copper sickle fragment in SS1-4 suggests that one or more of the building’s occupants participated in, or produced tools for, the agricultural activity known to have taken place elsewhere on the Bat landscape (Desruelles et al. 2016; Tengberg 2016).

Discussion The architectural and use phases described above provide a framework for interpreting the spatiotemporal context of, and behaviors carried out within and around, Structure SS1. With few comparable excavations of settlement structures available at Bat (Swerida and Thornton 2019a, 2019b) or other Umm an-Nar sites (Azzarà 2018; Frifelt 1995; al-Jahwari et

Changes made to Structure SS1’s layout and use of space shed further light on the behavioral organization practiced by its social group(s). During phases SS11 and SS1-2, the preserved sections of the outdoor activity area and open-plan building interior were multifunctional. In SS1-3, the subdivision of the 175

No Place Like Home building interior corresponds with new behavioral patterns that used indoor rooms and outdoor activity areas for specialized purposes: metallurgy in the northwestern room and western outdoor space, storage in the central room, and possible food preparation and waste disposal in the southeastern outdoor activity area. This functional compartmentalization shows that, at a certain point, the SS1 group(s) found it necessary to define and organize their production and living space. This pattern continued in SS1-4 with the addition of the single purpose production space in Structure SS10.

utilitarian pottery and grinding stones found in SS11, SS1-3, and SS1-4 are also comparable to those of domestic assemblages throughout the Near East (Kamp 2000; Watson 1979; Young et al. 2014). The storage jars clustered in the SS1-3 center room are of an appropriate scale to be reasonably understood as household storage (Klucas and Schwartz 2015) and domestic-style waste disposal is present in the SS1-1 and SS1-3 accumulations east of the building. Add to this the possibility that sleeping and socialization activities may have taken place on rooftops and Structure SS1 is well within the range of what might be considered a house.

In settlement contexts, developments in spatial and behavioral organization speak to the social systems through which individuals interact and resources are controlled. In the case of Structure SS1, the creation of function-specific rooms in SS1-3 altered the ways individuals moved through and interacted within the building. Certain spaces, such as the metallurgical crafting area near the southwestern doorway, remained accessible to outside groups while others, most notably the central storage room, were restricted to those occupying the building. By structurally distinguishing between public and private space, the SS1 social group(s) communicated behavioral cues and territorial authority to the Settlement Slope community (Banning 2010). The very existence of the storage room indicates that Structure SS1 was used by a social entity with a degree of economic independence (Klucas and Schwartz 2015). Such patterns of specialized use of space and privacy/territoriality have long been associated with increasing socioeconomic complexity (Flannery 2002; Kent 1990).

Although its group composition remains somewhat indistinct, the excavated contexts in Structure SS1 also provide sufficient clarity to understand the building as home to a single, economically independent group or household. The building’s estimated occupancy of between four and six individuals is approximately equivalent to the size of a nuclear family (Flannery 2002; Watson 1979), while its extended use-life is consistent with that of houses passed from one generation to the next as a function of household territory and lineage (Amkreutz 2013; Foxhall 2000). Furthermore, the delineation of property and single occurrences of food and craft production spaces in each phase reflect use by one group, rather than space shared by multiple groups (Banning 2010; Klucas and Schwartz 2015). The interpretation of Structure SS1 as a house with a resident household is challenged by the prevalent evidence for metallurgical production found in each of its use phases: the outdoor activity areas in SS1-1 and SS1-3, the SS1-3 northwest room, and the SS1-4 adjacent Structure SS10. Indeed, the workshop structures at Maysar contained a similar mix of metallurgical and domestic materials (Weisgerber 1980, 1981). The scale of metallurgical production reflected by the Structure SS1 remains—the size of its installations and crucibles as well as its quantity of byproducts—is modest, however, in comparison to those of the Maysar workshops. Rather than the activities of a specialized work group, the metallurgical remains found in Structure SS1 are better understood as those of a cottage industry that supplied the needs of a household and possibly those of its neighbors (Giardino 2019; Thornton 2009).

With the spatial and functional parameters of Structure SS1 established, the question of its tentative identification as an Umm an-Nar house can be addressed. Taken as a whole, the building contained relatively little in situ evidence for typical domestic activities (e.g., eating, sleeping, socialization). Instead, a large portion of the remains, in situ and otherwise, relate to metallurgical activities. Should Structure SS1 rather be interpreted as a metallurgical workshop, as has been argued for Umm an-Nar settlement buildings at Maysar (Weisgerber 1980, 1981)? Or is it not yet possible to distinguish between the behaviors of an Umm an-Nar household and those of an economically cooperative group of craftspeople?

Conclusions In contexts of well preserved domestic remains and textually attested social conditions, household archaeology has the potential to reveal remarkable information on ancient individuals, lifeways, and communities. This paper argues, however, that it is the study of poorly preserved settlements and little understood, atextual societies that has the most to gain from the application of a household archaeological

Despite the shortcomings in the Structure SS1 domestic assemblage, the case for understanding the building as a house is somewhat firmer than it may initially appear. Although slim, evidence for domestic behaviors is found in numerous contexts within and around the building. Food preparation is suggested by oven and hearth features in interior and exterior contexts in SS1-1 and in the SS1-3 southeast activity area. The 176

Jennifer Swerida: Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar perspective. The field’s bottom-up approach to understanding ancient groups supports the detailed investigation of daily practice that is necessary to identify relationships between domestic material remains (e.g., houses, material culture, activity areas) and lived social behaviors and organization (e.g., households). While it may not always be possible to distinguish between houses/households and other buildings/social groups in the archaeological record, household archaeology provides the interpretive framework best suited to clarifying and ultimately reconstructing such indistinct societies.

variation in settlement form and lifeways is evident in the archaeological record of the Oman Peninsula. As interest in Umm an-Nar settlement contexts grows (see Azzarà 2018; Castel et al. 2020; Döpper 2018; al-Jahwari et al. 2018; Schmidt 2018; Swerida 2021), the resulting regional bottom-up perspective will enable scholars to balance interpretations of this atextual Arabian society and better situate it within the Early Bronze Age map of the ancient Near East.

Few would disagree with the claim that the Umm anNar is a significant period in the prehistory of Arabia—a time during which technologies blossomed across the Oman Peninsula, the region strengthened its relations with overseas neighbors, and its residents engaged with their environment and with one another in increasingly complex ways. Yet, scholars have found the foundations of Umm an-Nar society difficult to access. The case study of Structure SS1 at Bat demonstrates how household archaeology, even when applied to contexts of an uncertain social function, can shed light on otherwise inaccessible social information. Behaviors within and around Structure SS1, argued above to be a Middle and Late Umm an-Nar period house, reflect those of an economically independent household group approximately the size of a nuclear family. Changes in those behaviors over time show the growing complexity of the norms governing social relationships in the SS1 household and the larger Settlement Slope community. This household-level perspective reveals growing social divisions between sub-groups of the Umm an-Nar population at Bat that are not visible in the monumental or mortuary record—possibly because the tombs and towers were used over long periods of time, but more likely because they represent a different scale of social organization. This study identifies a level of organization that has thus far been missing from the scholarly understanding of Umm an-Nar society at Bat and in the region as a whole.

References Cited Amkreutz, L. 2013. Home is where you build it: Characteristics of building and occupation in the Lower Rhine area wetlands (5500–2500 cal BC), in D. Hofmann and J. Smyth (eds) Tracking the Neolithic House in Europe: Sedentism, architecture, and practice: 229–259. New York: Springer. Azzarà, V.M. 2018. Exploring cultural, social, and economic complexification: Settlement life through the Umm an‐Nar period at Ras al‐Jinz RJ‐2, in S. Döpper (ed.), Beyond Tombs and Towers: Domestic Architecture of the Umm an‐Nar Period in Eastern Arabia: 97–120. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Banning, E. 2010. Houses, households, and changing society in the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic of the southern Levant. Paléorient 36(1): 49–87. Böhme, M. and B. al-Sabri 2011. Umm an-Nar Burial 401 at Bat, Oman: Architecture and finds. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 22 (2): 113–54. Byrd, B. 2000. Households in transition: Neolithic social organization within southwest Asia, in I. Kuijt (ed.) Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation: 63–97. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Cable, C.M. and S. al-Jabri 2018. The Wadi al-Hijr (Sultanate of Oman) in the third millennium BC. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 30: 15–31. doi: 10.1111. 12119. Cable, C.M. and C.P. Thornton 2013. Monumentality and the third-millennium ‘Towers’ of the Oman peninsula, in S. Abraham, P. Gullapalli, T. P. Raczek, and U. Z. Rizvi (eds) Connections and Complexity: New Approaches to the Archaeology of South Asia: 375–399. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. de Cardi, B., S. Collier, and D.B. Doe 1976. Excavations and surveys in Oman. Journal of Oman Studies 2: 101– 187. Castel, C., O. Barge, B. Besnard, T. Beuzen-Waller, J.E. Brochier, L. Darras, E. Réganon, and S. Sanz. 2020. First discoveries of the Bat/a-Arid Mission (Sultanate of Oman). Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 50: 71–84.

As the first of many such case studies to come, further research is necessary to confirm the identification of Structure SS1 as a house and to develop scholarly understanding of the Umm an-Nar household tradition at large. Buildings with similar layouts and use lives to Structure SS1 can be found elsewhere on the Settlement Slope (Swerida and Thornton 2019b; Swerida et al. 2020) and at Bat’s other Umm an-Nar settlement areas (Dollarhide 2019; Swerida 2017; Swerida et al. 2020b; Swerida and Thornton 2019a). While none of these examples can yet provide the same richness of finds or level of occupational detail, they will work towards establishing a pattern of the Bat Umm an-Nar house ‘type’ and household composition. Furthermore, regional 177

No Place Like Home Cattani, M., J.M. Kenoyer, D. Frenez, R.W. Law, and S. Méry 2019. New excavations at the Umm an-Nar Site of Ra’s al-Hadd HD-1, Sultanate of Oman (season 216-218): Insights on cultural interaction and longdistance trade. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 49: 69–84. Chesson, M. 2012. Homemaking in the Early Bronze Age, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 45–79. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Cleuziou, S. 1989. The chronology of prehistoric Oman as seen from Hili, in P.M. Costa and M. Tosi (eds) Oman Studies: Papers on the archaeology and history of Oman: 47–78. Rome: IsMEO. Cleuziou, S. 1996. The emergence of oases and towns in eastern and southern Arabia, in G. Afansas’ev, S. Cleuziou, J. Luckas, and M. Tosi (eds) The Prehistory of Asia and Oceania Colloquia 16: 159–165. Rome: UISPP. Cleuziou, S. 2002. The Early Bronze Age of the Oman peninsula from chronology to the dialects of tribe and state formation, in S. Cleuziou, M. Tosi, and J. Zarins (eds) Essays on the late prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula: 191–236. Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente. Cleuziou, S. and M. Tosi (eds) 2000. Ras al-Jinz and the prehistoric coastal cultures of the Ja’alan. Journal of Oman Studies 11: 19–73. Cleuziou, S. and M. Tosi (eds) 2018. In the Shadow of the Ancestors: The Prehistoric Foundations of the Early Arabian Civilization in Oman. Second edition with D. Frenez and R. Garba. Sultanate of Oman: Ministry of Heritage and Culture. Desruelles, S., E. Fouache, W. Eddargach, C. Cammas, J. Wattez, T. Beuzen-Waller, C. Martin, M. Tengberg, C.M. Cable, C. Thornton, and A. Murray 2016. Evidence for early irrigation at Bat before the advent of farming villages. Quaternary Science Reviews 2016: 42–54. Dollarhide, E. 2019. Mapping Magan: The ancient social landscape of north-central Oman. PhD dissertation, New York University. Döpper, S. (ed.) 2018. Beyond Tombs and Towers: Domestic Architecture of the Umm an‐Nar Period in Eastern Arabia. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Douglas, J.G. and N. Gonlin 2012. The household as analytical unit: Case studies from the Americas, in J.G. Douglas and N. Gonlin (eds) Ancient Households of the Americas: Conceptualizing What Households Do: 1–44. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Edens, C. 1992. Dynamics of trade in the ancient Mesopotamian ‘World System.’ American Anthropologist 94: 118–139. Esposti, M.D. 2014. Excavations at the Early Bronze Age site ‘ST1’ near Bisya (Sultanate of Oman): Notes on the architecture and material culture. Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East 3: 665–678.

Flannery, K. 2002. The origins of the village revisited: From nuclear to extended households. American Antiquity 67(3): 417–434. Frenez, D., M.D. Esposti, S. Méry, and J.M. Kenoyer 2016. Bronze Age Salūt (ST1) and the Indus Civilization: recent discoveries and new insights on regional interaction. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 46: 107–124. Frayne, D.R. 1993. Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2334–2113 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Frifelt, K. 1985. Further evidence of the third millennium BC town at Bat in Oman. Journal of Oman Studies 7: 89–104. Frifelt, K. 1995. The Island of Umm an-Nar, Vol. 2: The Third Millennium Settlement. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press. Foxhall, L. 2000. The running sands of time: Archaeology and the short-term. World Archaeology 31(3): 484–498. Giardino, C. 2019. Magan–The Land of Copper: Prehistoric Metallurgy of Oman. Sultanate of Oman: Ministry of Heritage and Culture. Gillespie, S.D. 2007. When is a house? in R. Beck, jr. (ed.) The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology: 25–50. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Hastings, A., J.H. Humphries, and R.H. Meadow 1975. Oman in the third millennium BCE. Journal of Oman Studies 1: 9–55. Heimpel, W. 1987. Das Untere Meer. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 77: 22–99. Hendon, J.A. 2004. Living and working at home: The social archaeology of household production and social relations, in L. Meskel and R. Preucel (eds) A Companion to Social Archaeology: 272–286. Malden: Blackwell. Hendon, J.A. 2010. Houses in a Landscape: Memory and everyday life in Mesoamerica. Durham: Duke University Press. al-Jahwari, N.S. and D. Kennet 2010. Umm an-Nar settlement in the Wadi Andam (Sultanate of Oman). Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 40: 161– 172. al-Jahwari, N.S., K. Douglas, M. al-Belushi, and K.D. Williams 2018. Umm an-Nar settlement at Dahwa (DH1), Oman: Preliminary results of the archaeological investigation, 2014–2016, in S. Döpper (ed.) Beyond Tombs and Towers: Domestic Architecture of the Umm an-Nar Period in Eastern Arabia: 29–50. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Janjou, D., L. Minoux, M. Beurrier, X. de Gramont, J. le Metour, and M. Villey 1986. Geological Map of ‘Ibri. Sheet NF40-2F. Sultanate of Oman: Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals. Kamp, K. 2000. From village to tell: Household ethnoarchaeology in Syria. Near Eastern Archaeology 63: 84–93. 178

Jennifer Swerida: Chapter 10. House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar Kent, S. 1990. A cross-cultural study of segmentaiton, architecture, and use of space, in S. Kent (ed.) Domestic Architecture and Use of Space: 127–152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerr, A.D.R. 2016. A house complex in Bronze Age Arabia: A study of ‘Umm an-Nar’ and ‘Wadi Suq’ domestic architecture at the Sttlement Slope, Bat (Oman). Unpublished MA thesis, Durham University. http:// etheses.dur. ac.uk/11730/ Kondo, Y., T. Miki, T. Kuronuma, Y.S. Hayakawa, K. Kataoka, and T. Oguchi 2016. Concurrent and sustainable development of a local-scale digital heritage inventory through action research at Bat, Oman. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 6(2): 195–212. Klucas, E. and G. Schwartz 2015. Spatial and Social Organization of Level 3, in G. Schwartz (ed.) Rural Archaeology in Early Urban Northern Mesopotamia: Excavations at Tell al-Raqa’i: 177–193. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Lawrence, D.L. and S.M. Low 1990. The built environment and spatial form. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 453–505. de Lucia, K. and L Overholtzer 2014. Everyday action and the rise and decline of ancient polities: Household strategy and political change in Postclassical Xaltocan, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 25: 441–458. Mac Sweeney, N. 2011. Community Identity and Archaeology: Dynamic Communities at Aphrodisias and Beycesultan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Magee, P. 2014. The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and social formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCorriston, J. 2011. Pilgrimage and Household in the Ancient Near East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Méry, S. 2000. Les céramique d’Oman et l’Asie moyenne: Une archaéologie des échanges à l’Âge du Bronze. Paris: CNRS. Méry, S. 2010. Results, limits, and potential: Burial practices and Early Bronze Age societies in the Oman peninsula, in L. Weeks (ed.) Death and Burial Arabia and Beyond: Multidisciplinary Perspectives: 33– 44. Oxford: Archaeopress. Méry, S. 2013. The first oases in eastern Arabia: Society and craft technology in the 3rd millennium BC at Hili, United Arab Emirates. Revue d’Ethnoécologie 4: 2–17. Mortimer, A.E. and C.P. Thornton 2018. Bronze Age towers and the control of water: New evidence from Bat, Oman. Journal of Oman Studies 19: 65–84. Naroll, R. 1962. Floor Area and Settlement Population. American Antiquity 27: 587–589. Neumann, H. 1999. Ur-Dumuzida and Ur-Dun: Reflections on the relationship between stateinitiated foreign trade and private economic activity in Mesopotamia towards the end of the

third millennium BC, in J.G. Dercksen (ed.) Trade and Finance in Ancient Mesopotamia, 43–53. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Orchard, J.C. and J.J. Orchard 2008. The third millennium BC oasis settlements of Oman and the first evidence of their irrigation by Aflaj from Bahla. Proceedings of the International Symposium: Archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula through the ages: 143–173. Sultanate of Oman: Ministry of Heritage and Culture. Özbal, R. 2012. The Challenge of Identifying Households at Tell Kurdu (Turkey), in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds.) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 321– 346. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Potts, D. 1990. Excavations at Tell Abraq, 1989. Paléorient 15(1): 269–271. Potts, D. 1991. The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Potts, D. 2000. Ancient Magan: The secrets of Tell Abraq. London: Trident Press. Reade, J. 2008. The Indus-Mesopotamia Relationship Reconsidered, in E. Olijdam and R.H. Spoor (eds) Intercultural Relations between South and Southwest Asia: Studies in Commemoration of E.C.L. During Caspers (1934–1996). Oxford: Archaeopress. Rouse, L.M. and L. Weeks 2011. Specialization and Social Inequality in Bronze Age SE Arabia: Analyzing the development of production strategies and economic networks using agent-based modeling. Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 1583–1590. Schloen, D. 2001. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Schmidt, C. 2018. The Umm an-Nar Settlement of alZebah, in S. Döpper (ed.) Beyond tombs and towers: Domestic architecture of the Umm an‐Nar period in eastern Arabia: 87–96. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Schmidt, C. and S. Döpper 2014. German Expedition to Bat and Al-Ayn, Sultanate of Oman: The Field Seasons 2010 to 2013. Journal of Oman Studies 18: 187–230. Steinkeller, P. 2004. Toward a Definition of Private Economic Activity in Third Millennium Babylonia, in R. Rollinger and U. Christoph (eds) Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World: Means of transmission and cultural interaction: 91–111. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Stokes, R.J. 2020. Communities and Households in Southwestern Archaeology, in R.J. Stokes (ed.) Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest: 3–26. Louisville: University Press of Colorado. Swerida, J. 2017. Housing the Umm an‐Nar: The settlements and houses of Bat. Unpublished PhD dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University. Swerida, J. 2018. Bat and the Umm an‐Nar settlement Tradition, in S. Döpper (ed.) Beyond Tombs and Towers: Domestic Architecture of the Umm an‐Nar Period in Eastern Arabia: 51–70. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 179

No Place Like Home Swerida, J. 2021. Revisiting ‘Settlement’: A case study of terminology and its implications in Early Bronze Age southeast Arabia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 65 (2022) 101382 Swerida, J. and C.P. Thornton 2019a. al-Khafaji Reinterpreted: New Insights on Umm an‐Nar Monuments and Settlement from Bat, Oman. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 30: 1–16. Swerida, J. and C.P. Thornton 2019b. Umm an‐Nar Architecture and Society at the Bat Settlement Slope, Sultanate of Oman. Journal of Oman Studies 20: 78–111. Swerida, J., C.M. Cable, and E.N. Dollarhide 2020a. Survey and Settlement at Bat: Preliminary results of the Bat Archaeological Project’s 2019 field season. Journal of Oman Studies 21: 82–101. Swerida, J., E.N. Dollarhide, and C.M. Cable 2020b. Bat Archaeological Project Preliminary Report of the 2019–20 Season. Report on File, Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Muscat, Oman. Swerida, J., E.N. Dollarhide, and R. Jensen. 2021. Settlement and Chronology in the Early Bronze Age of Southeastern Arabia: The view from Bat, Oman. Paléorient 47(2):47-68. Tengberg, M. 2012. Beginnings and early history of date palm cultivation in the Middle East. Journal of Arid Environments 86: 130–147. Tengberg, M. 2016. Archaeobotanical studies at Bat: A short summary and recommendations, in C.P. Thornton, C.M. Cable, and G. Possehl (eds) The Bronze Age Towers at Bat Sultanate of Oman: Research by the Bat Archaeological Project 2007–2012: 263–268. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. Thornton, C.P. 2009. The emergency of complex metallurgy on the Iranian Plateau: Escaping the Levantine paradigm. Journal of World Prehistory 22(3): 301–327. Thornton, C.P., C.M. Cable, and G. Possehl (eds) 2016. The Bronze Age Towers at Bat Sultanate of Oman: Research by

the Bat Archaeological Project 2007–2012. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. Thornton, C.P. and R. Ghazal 2016. Typological and chronological considerations of the ceramics at Bat, Oman, in C.P. Thornton, C.M. Cable, and G. Possehl (eds) The Bronze Age Towers at Bat Sultanate of Oman: Research by the Bat Archaeological Project 2007–2012: 179– 216. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. Tringham, R. 2012. Households through a digital lens, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 81–120. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. UNESCO. 1988. Archaeological Sites of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn: Description, viewed 14 November 2020, < https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/434/>. Ur, J. 2014. Households and the emergence of cities in ancient Mesopotamia. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24: 249–268. Watson, P.J. 1979. Archaeological Ethnography in Western Iran. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Weisgerber, G. 1980. …und Kupfer in Oman. Der Anschnitt 32: 62–110. Weisgerber, G. 1981. Mehr als Kupfer in Oman— Ergebnisse der Expedition 1981. Der Anschnitt 33: 174–263. Williams, K.D. and L.A. Gregoricka 2020. A path forward to an integrated study of bioarchaeology in southeastern Arabia, in K.D. Williams and L.A. Gregoricka (eds) Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Bronze Age Arabia: 1–19. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. Wright, J. 2016. Households without houses: Mobility and moorings on the Eurasian Steppe. Journal of Anthropological Research 72(2): 133–157 Young, R., A. al-Jassassi, S. al-Shaqsi, S. al-Jabri, O. Batchelor, K. Dance, N. de Leon, A. Humes, H. Hunt, A. Riaz, S. Taha, C. Cable, C. Thornton, S. Zauner 2018. Bat Oasis Historical Archaeology Project: Interim report on 2014 field season. Journal of Oman Studies 19: 1–18.

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Chapter 11. A Closer Look: The Houses on the Southeastern Hill of Jerusalem in Economic Perspective1 Margreet L. Steiner Since the 1990s household archaeology has become an integral part of archaeological research in the Levant. For the Iron II period in Israel most research has been directed to the smaller provincial towns such as Tell en-Nasbeh (Brody 2011), Tell Halif (Hardin 2010) and Beer Sheba (Singer-Avitz 2011), with a focus on the four-room house (Bunimovitz and Faust 2003). Special studies include food storage (Frank 2018), and figurines (Darby 2014).1 The city of Jerusalem in the Iron II period has hardly been touched. This is surprising as many houses have been completely or partially uncovered. On the southeastern hill, now called the City of David, more than a dozen Iron II house complexes, containing over 50 rooms, were excavated between 1961 and 1985 by Kathleen Kenyon and Yigal Shiloh (Figure 1). Current excavations are yielding many more houses, but I will focus on these complexes as they have already been published, although not completely. From 1961 until 1967 Kathleen Kenyon excavated several sites in and around the Old City, then under the authority of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with a focus on the southeastern hill. In 1978 Yigal Shiloh started his project in the same area. Kenyon had excavated (parts of) six houses in and around her Trench I (Steiner 2001a: 54–111), while Shiloh excavated one of these houses more completely as well as (parts of) two more houses in the same area, his area G (Shiloh 1984: 15–21). Together eight houses have thus been completely or partially excavated here with (parts of) some twenty rooms. These houses all date from the end of the 8th till the beginning of the 6th centuries BC. Lower down the hill Kenyon uncovered three houses with eight rooms from a slightly earlier date, from the end of 9th and the 8th century BC (Franken and Steiner 1990). Finally, in area E1, Shiloh uncovered Doing research in the time of Coronavirus, with libraries closed and excavation documentation unavailable, is no easy task. I want to thank several colleagues who provided me with articles, and especially Alon de Groot for sending me the publication on Shiloh’s area E and giving me permission to use illustrations from Yigal Shiloh’s excavation reports.

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eight building complexes incorporating more than twenty rooms dating to the 8th and 7th centuries BC (de Groot and Bernick-Greenberg 2012a, 2012b; Shiloh 1984: 9–15). Therefore, all in all on the southeastern hill, 19 Iron II house complexes with some 50 rooms have been uncovered by Kenyon and Shiloh, and most of these have been published, with Shiloh’s houses in Area G as a regrettable exception. Even from the houses that were published, however, not all material has yet been reported. In this article I will discuss the eight houses excavated by Kenyon and Shiloh in what is now called the ‘Royal Quarter’: Kenyon’s squares AI–III, XXIV, and Trench I and Shiloh’s area G. The focus will be on two aspects of these houses: the architecture and the economic activities performed in them. The architecture and lay-out of the buildings give insight into the wealth of the households inhabiting the houses and of the activities performed there. I will not go into the complicated question of what constitutes a household, but will for convenience’s sake, assume that the inhabitants of the buildings consisted of a nuclear or extended family, possibly including servants and slaves. For a discussion on what constitutes a household, see discussions by Hardin (2010), Brody (2011), and Routledge (2013). Then I will focus on the economic activities as deduced from some of the excavated objects: tools and raw materials, including textile production tools; weights; texts; seals and seal impressions; high status artifacts; and storage vessels for food and other materials. Other objects such as household pottery, bread ovens, and figurines will not be discussed. Disclaimer Tackling the archaeological evidence of Jerusalem’s soils is always a daunting undertaking, and applying the methods of household archaeology to these houses involves many difficulties. Most houses were only partly excavated; in the ‘Royal Quarter,’ only the so-

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Figure 1. Air view of Jerusalem from the south, taken in the 1930s. On the right is the line of the Kedron Valley, and left of it is the southeastern hill or City of David. The black arrow points to the so-called ‘Royal Quarter’where the houses were excavated discussed in this paper (Public domain).

called House of Ahiel was uncovered in its entirety, and this house has yet to be completely published. Not all materials found in the buildings have been studied yet by specialists, including animal bones (except for fish bones), botanical samples, the pottery from Shiloh’s excavations in area G (except for the complete vessels found in the Bullae house), and the ground stone material and loomweights from Kenyon’s excavation.

All this of course affects the kind of research that is possible and the reliability of the results. For those who would insist on waiting for the final publications of all buildings and all excavated material, I must assert that eventually even the most patient scholar will reach the end of her tether. Kenyon started her excavations in Jerusalem in 1960, over sixty years ago, while Shiloh took up his investigation of the same area in 1978, more than forty years ago. I think it is worthwhile to explore what information can be gleaned from the data that are available, keeping in mind the incomplete nature of the source material.

Not all of Kenyon’s pottery was available for study either. She saved only a selection of the sherd material from the floors and discarded the rest after noting the types and numbers on so-called type-cards and phasecards. With the progression of the excavation, she often adjusted the phases and the types, without taking the time to change the types on the phase-cards and the phases on the type-cards. So, the information on these cards is not very helpful.

The buildings Eight houses were unearthed in what is now called the ‘Royal Quarter,’ a serious misnomer as I hope to show: Buildings I–VII and the Bullae house (Figure 2). Except for Buildings VI and VII, these were all constructed directly on top of the `stepped stone structure’ built in Iron IIA, which in itself is a remarkable architectural feat (Figure 3). Between the houses ran streets 2–3  m wide, with underground drains and stairs leading to upper stories or to houses located higher up the slope.

Furthermore, both excavations were quite coarsegrained in their approach, focusing on the artifact assemblies of the rooms, but not on the exact findspot of the objects. Nor were micro-biological samples taken of floors. 182

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Figure 2. Plan of the eight houses in the so-called ‘Royal Quarter’ in the City of David (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.67).

These houses all date from the end of the 8th till the beginning of the 6th centuries BC; they were destroyed by the Babylonian attack on Jerusalem in 586 BC.

probably closed inner hall or courtyard. Of the other five buildings much less was excavated and/or less material was uncovered within them and they will be only succinctly described.

I will describe the architecture and inventory of three buildings of which large parts were excavated and/or from which a large number of objects were retrieved. They also represent three types of houses. Building I was a four-room house with an annex; Building III consisted of several rooms on different levels built to one side of a large open courtyard, while Building VII is a much sturdier building with rooms around a

Building I / Ahiel’s house The only complete house was excavated partly by Kenyon and partly by Shiloh (Figures 4 and 5). It is called Ahiel’s house because an ostracon bearing that name was found inside. Its walls still stood up to 2  m high with door frames built with ashlars, while the rest 183

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Figure 3. House IV built on top of the stepped stone structure, looking southwest (courtesy City of David Excavations 1978–1985).

Figure 4. Houses I–IV and the Bullae House (adapted from Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.27).

of the walls were erected with roughly hewn stones. A wooden door can be assumed in its south wall as iron nails and fittings lay scattered nearby. The house itself was 9 m long and 8 m wide (outer dimensions) and is of the so-called four-room type, with three long rooms parallel to each other and a transverse room in

the back. It is unclear if the central room was roofed. Behind the house were some auxiliary rooms (4 × 5 m in total) built on two levels. Its total surface area was thus some 90 m2. Ahiel’s house has captured the imagination of many, and several reconstruction drawings can be found on the internet. 184

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Figure 5. From left to right Building II, Building I (Ahiel’s house) and Building IV (Shiloh 1984: fig. 20; courtesy City of David Excavations 1978–1985).

Kenyon only excavated parts of rooms 8 and 9 and stopped when she reached the uppermost floor level. As described above, the pottery was mostly discarded and only a few objects were retrieved from the floors. Shiloh excavated the rest of the house, but his work here has not been fully published. The information can be found in Shiloh (1984: 18–20) and Steiner (2001a: 63–64).

the room.’ This seems unlikely as Kenyon had already excavated the upper part of the pit. Lernau and Lernau enumerate the finds in the pit: 76 bones of fish from the Nile, the Mediterranean, and the Sea of Galilee; pottery; figurine fragments; two seals; mammalian bones; several kinds of woods; wheat seeds; grape, olive and date pits; and a pomegranate peel. Except for the fish bones this material has not yet been published. This feature obviously functioned as a refuse pit, but it is unlikely that that was its original function, as the inhabitants of the house would not construct a wellplastered, possibly stone-lined pit in a living room just to dispose of garbage. It may have originally functioned as a storage bin.

Room 8 was the main room of the house (5 × 6 m interior dimensions), with three wings separated by two stone pillars at the west side and a small wall at the east side. Kenyon registered only a few objects from the floor: two scarabs and two metal rods. No further information of these objects is available.

Room 9 (2.5 × 6 m) was the transverse room at the northern end of the building, accessed through room 8. It seems there was another door at the other end of the room opening into the courtyard (see below). A hole was cut into the stepped stone structure, which functioned as its western wall, contained two small bowls, some animal bones, and an iron tool (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.13).

In the southwestern corner of room 8 she excavated a pit with plastered walls (designated A15.13 in reports) in which she found some pottery and animal bones. Shiloh seems to have excavated more of the same pit, which is described by Lernau and Lernau (1992: 135). According to them it is a stone-lined pit in the southwestern most corner of the room, ‘sealed over by the latest floor of 185

No Place Like Home At the north side of the house an annex was built, consisting of three small auxiliary rooms. Room L818 (2 × 3.5 m) cannot be entered from the house itself but only from street 12. In this room 37 complete storage jars were found, of many different types (Shiloh 1984: 18). A very large grinding installation was built into its floor; two more lower grinding stones and an upper grinding stone were found in the same room (Hovers 1996: 182). The exact location of these additional stones is not known, so it remains unclear if they were in use or stored there. This room may have functioned as a storage space attached to the house. It seems strange to have a storage space, however, that was inaccessible from the house but only from the street. Who would store their valuables that way? The grinding installation is larger than the common grinding stones used to grind grains for household use. Also, no bread oven or cooking installation was found in or near the house. Is it possible that the annex was a small shop selling ground things, say minerals or spices? It is worth mentioning that two more upper grinding stones and two lower grinding stones were found on the floor of Ahiel’s house in L783 and L790 which are described as ‘floor of four-room house’ (no further information available; Hovers 1996: 182). Of course, what we find is the final stage of the building, when Jerusalem had been besieged for months by the Babylonians and starvation was rampant. It may not accurately reflect the situation in more peaceful periods.

Figure 6. View of Ahiel’s house, looking northeast. In the foreground room 8, with room 9 in the background. The black arrow points to a doorway in the back of this room leading to the courtyard (Shiloh 1984: 30:1; courtesy City of David Excavations 1978–1985).

to be accessed from the house through the courtyard (no locus number) behind the house (Figures 6 and 7).

Room L818 has a doorway giving access to a very small room to its west (L792—1.5 × 2 m), which is not further described in the 1984 publication. A decorated limestone whorl was found here (Shamir 1996: 150).

In this courtyard a small installation, possibly a silo (W365), can be seen on the plans, while several holes in the stepped stone structure may have functioned as storage places (Shiloh 1984: pl. 29.1). The silo contained one of the three south Arabian inscriptions that were found in the City of David (Shiloh 1987).

The most startling find was a stone toilet seat in another small room L789 (1.5 × 1.5 m) of the annex, the floor of which was almost two meters above the floor of the other two rooms and at the same level as the floor of the house itself. The seat was located above a deep cesspit L793, the contents of which have been analyzed (Cahill et al. 1991).2 Most reconstructions assume the toilet was accessed from room L818 bordering the street, with a ladder presumably going over the many store jars and the grinding installation. Even ancient Jerusalemites, however, must have considered this to be unhygienic. I think that the situation was different. The photos (Shiloh 1984: plates 30:1 and 31:1) very clearly show that there were doorways in the back room of the house and in the toilet room, making it possible for the toilet

Ahiel’s house is a quite large and well-built structure with ashlar masonry. The objects and botanical remains found in the house and the annex (functioning toilet, imported fish bones, scarabs) suggest that the inhabitants were well-to-do. They may have been traders, running a shop providing ground materials. Its storage capacity, as far as can be deduced from the published remains, seems to surpass the average capacity of some houses researched by Frank (2018: 148). In Ahiel’s house the 37 storage jars in L818 and the storage bin in room 8 alone (not counting possibly unpublished jars) would generate over 1500 liters of storage capacity for foodstuff (very roughly estimated according to the data in Katz and Faust 2011). This is large compared to contemporary houses in Tel Batash Stratum II from the 7th century BC, which yielded 1095 liters (House 950) and 592 liters (House 743); at Tel Halif, House F7 had a storage capacity of 1415 liters and House K8, 805 liters; while that of houses in

2  Three more stone toilets have been found in Jerusalem, one in Building VII (below), one in Shiloh’s area E and one in Macalister and Duncan’s excavations (Chapman 1992; Shiloh 1984: 10, Pl 31:1; Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.51). It is possible that Macalister’s toilet seat was found in rubble in his trench in front of the Maccabean tower, which is located between Buildings II and III. He also excavated south of the Maccabean tower, however, and exposed part of the stepped stone structure there with houses on top of it (Macalister and Duncan 1926: 57). This area is located south of House III.

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Margreet L. Steiner: Chapter 11. A Closer Look courtyard, so about 82 m2. Given its thin walls, it seems unlikely that this building had a second story. In rooms 13, 16 and 17 an interesting collection of objects was found. The finds that received the most attention were a collection of stone weights (Eran 1996: 217–220; Scott 1985; Steiner 2001a: 66–70). These are the well-known dome-shaped weights, mostly made of limestone, many with an inscription on top. A total of 39 weights were excavated, 22 of which were inscribed with their weight, mostly in shekels, with a few in payim or neseph. These weights were used on a balance scale. The find of 39 weights is exceptional. I do not know of any other building in the Levant that has yielded so many weights. The find attests to the selling of precious, small objects; be it perfume, silver or bronze jewelry, or linen textiles. The other objects found in Building III were helpful in determining what was going on in the building (Figure 8). Besides fourteen hammer and polishing stones, a limestone trough coated with a light brown deposit on the interior was excavated, as well as an oblong block of limestone with grooves worn on two sides and a small pyramid shaped block of limestone, 12 cm long. Several bronze objects were recovered as well: a bracelet, a ring, part of a chain, a cube of bronze weighing 10gr, and a nice handle. Iron objects include a cube of iron weighing 38 gr, a fragment of a bar, three arrowheads, and a knife. Lastly there was the usual household array of pottery vessels, loom weights, bone spatulas and awls, spindle whorls, stone querns, figurine fragments, and four pot stands. Luxury objects include a fragment of an alabaster bowl in the courtyard, a nicely worked shell and a faience bead in room 16, and a carnelian bead in room 17 (Steiner 2001a: figs 6.14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 23).

Figure 7. Room with toilet L789, looking west. The black arrow points to the doorway giving access to the courtyard (Shiloh 1984: Plate 31:1; courtesy City of David Excavations 1978–1985).

Lachish Stratum III (8th century BC) ranged from 202 to 455 liters. Building III

How to interpret these finds? The number of stone weights clearly points to a commercial enterprise of some sort. The hammer and polishing stones may have been used in many activities such as the crushing of materials for temper to make pots, the formation of basalt tools, all kinds of household activities involving the pounding and crushing of food stuffs, and the polishing of wood and pottery. These kinds of stone tools, however, are also used for other activities, including the hammering and polishing of objects of copper or bronze.

This house at the south side of the area was excavated almost completely by Kenyon (Figure 4). It had been constructed on two levels, with some walls still standing up to a height of 2.40 m. It consisted of a large, probably open courtyard (area 10—c. 4.5 × 4.5 m as excavated) with a large hearth at the north side. South of it, a series of small rooms, 2.5–3 × 2.5–3 m, was attached at two levels. The lowest two rooms 13 and 14 are at the level of courtyard 10, while rooms 16 and 17 were 2.0– 2.5 m lower down. Room 15 was not excavated down to its floor.

To understand how the stones were used and how the complex of Building III may be understood, we have to dwell briefly on how bronze objects were produced. The first step in the process is the mining of the ore and the smelting process which took place near the mines. The copper ore was smelted in small ovens to extract the copper. Archaeologists usually find the remains of this

Street 20 was another 2 m lower down from rooms 16 and 17, and a staircase led from the street up to the rooms at both levels. The top of the staircase, area 19, is at the level of the uppermost rooms. No clear doorways could be distinguished. All in all the building was 11 × 7.5 m as excavated (outside dimensions), including the 187

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Figure 8. Some of the finds in room 13 of Building III (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.18).

process as heaps of ash and slag, remains of ovens, and blow pipes or bellows.

used two kinds of stones: a rounded one for hammering, and one with a flat surface for polishing. Pincers, chisels and engraving-needles of bronze or iron were used for engraving the bracelets and rings.

The copper is then refined by melting it in a crucible and mixing it with tin to produce bronze. This is cast into ingots or hammered into sheets of metal. The excavated remains exist of some slag, fragments of crucibles and casting molds, heaps of ash, and tuyeres (the ceramic blow pipes used in bellows). The final products are ingots or sheets of bronze.

Where does the Jerusalem workshop fit in? In Building III no heaps of slag have been found, no ovens, no crucibles, no casting molds, and no bellows or blowpipes. This means no smelting, melting or casting was done there. The last stage of the process, the production of vessels and jewelry from sheets of bronze demands a hearth or open fire, anvils of wood or stone, hammer and polishing stones, and sheets and scraps of metal. All these requisites are present in Building III, as well as some of the final objects such as a bracelet, parts of a chain, and a bucket (?) handle. Pincers, chisels and engraving needles have not been found; and neither

These ingots and sheets then serve as raw materials for the production of the final objects, a process that mostly takes place in workshops near the customers. Ingots were used for the casting of statues or pendants, while sheets of bronze were made into vessels or small bracelets and rings. The smiths making these vessels 188

Margreet L. Steiner: Chapter 11. A Closer Look have stone molds for jewelry or a supply of bronze or iron, except for some small pieces of these metals. This may of course be due to the higher value of these tools; the craftsman would have taken these with him into exile. The pyramid-shaped stone may have been used as a small anvil, while the stone trough, filled with pitch, may have functioned as a cushion for the decoration of bronze vessels. This building may thus be interpreted as the workshop of a bronze smith, who made vessels from sheets of bronze, and small jewelry and chains from strips of bronze. This is, as far as I know, the only bronze workshops of its kind dating to Iron II found in the Levant (Golani 2013: 54). Many Iron II towns have yielded quarters where craftsmen were concentrated, but a bronze workshop has not yet been documented. The only possible, but not very close, parallel can be found in Tell Mishrifeh (Qatna) in Syria where an artisan’s quarter was excavated specializing in the production of textiles and pottery; here a jeweler’s workshop was uncovered with an oven, a bronze crucible, scraps of bronze metal, beads of both glass-paste and stone, basalt tools and a bone spatula, indicating jewelry manufacture (http://www.qatna.org/en-history-iron.html). Please note that I interpret Building III as the workshop of a bronze smith and not that of a jeweler. No traces of objects of silver have been found, though silver jewelry is abundantly found in the Levant in the Iron II, nor were beads or pendants of glass or faience produced there, as far as the archaeological record shows. Here lived a professional who made objects of bronze such as the buckets found in Building VII (below), as well as bracelets and rings.

Figure 9. Reconstructed pithos from room 28 in Building VII (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.52:7).

Building VII The last building to be discussed is House VII, excavated by Kenyon (Steiner 2001a: 93–101). Only two rooms were partly uncovered, but they yielded a lot of information (Figures 2, 9-12). This was a building with remarkably thick walls and sturdy floors, made of beaten earth over crushed limestone, unlike the floors of the other buildings discussed. It seems that one entered House VII through a courtyard (room 28), which functioned as both a reception and a storage area. From this room, one could go into one other room (at least in the excavated area): room 29. In view of the thick walls and the heavy mudbrick debris on its floors, this building may have had an upper story.

published from the ‘royal building’ on the Ophel (Mazar and Mazar 1989: 29ff.), while one item was found in the annex room L818 of Ahiel’s house (Shiloh 1984: pl. 30:2). These pithoi could contain between 150 and 250 liters (Katz and Faust 2011: 176), which generate a total of 2400–4000 liters of storage capacity for room 28 of Building VII alone—and please note that only part of this room was uncovered. This far surpasses the needs of an average family (Frank 2018: 148). Was Building VII a public building of some sort, possibly a public storage building, or were these pithoi also used by private persons? Here one would assume the latter, in view of the large quantities of cooking pot rims in the debris of room 28, pointing to domestic use of the area. The find of two ‘foot baths’ (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6-52:6) may indicate that this room was an (open or closed) courtyard where guests and clients were received, and

The floor of room 28, which was 2.75 m wide and at least 5 m long, was covered with pithoi fragments, but only one pithos was restored during the excavation (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6-52:7) (Figure 9). Fragments of fifteen more pithoi were recorded by Kenyon (1967: 67). In Jerusalem, twelve similar pithoi have been 189

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Figure 10. Plan of Building VII (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.48).

which was further used for storage of the goods that were sold.

to light (Figure 11). Hidden here was a large bronze bucket with an iron handle, in which a smaller bronze bucket with a bronze handle and a bronze juglet were found; beside the bucket several iron implements were also hidden (Steiner 2001a: figs. 6.53–55). More metal objects, among which was a bronze fibula, were found in the debris on street 30 (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.60:1).

In the rubble on top of the floor of this room a stone toilet seat was discovered, quite similar to the one discovered in Ahiel’s house (Steiner 2001: fig. 6.51). It was not found in situ and may have come from another part of the building or from a house higher up the slope.

A jar handle with rosette impressions found in room 28 was amongst the pottery shipped to Leiden, which gave us the possibility to analyze it (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.52:6). In contrast to locally made wares, the clay of

Only a small strip of room 29 could be excavated, but this area yielded a surprising find. While digging a niche in its southern wall, several metal objects came 190

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Figure 12. Some of the loomweights found in street 30 (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.59).

precious belongings in time before the Babylonian destruction. The fact that little erosion took place here in comparison with buildings located higher on the slope, should also be taken into account. Thus, building VII may give a better impression of the luxury in which the inhabitants of this part of Jerusalem lived than the other buildings excavated.

Figure 11. Bronze buckets with bronze juglet found room 29 in Building VII (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.54).

The Other Buildings

this jar contained large quantities of mica. The same temper occurred in imported pottery from the postIron Age period (Franken 2005: 147–148). This suggests that this jar came from the Aegean, which questions the general hypothesis that all rosette jars were ‘royal jars,’ successors of the LMLK-jars. Franken’s research showed that at least some rosette jars were imported, probably containing wine. In room 29 another two or possibly three rosette impressions were found but these have not been analyzed (Steiner 2001a: fig. 6.56).

Building II (rooms 1–4) is located south of Ahiel’s house (Figure 2). It was severely eroded and could not be completely excavated. Not many objects were retrieved from its floors (Steiner 2001a: 58–60). Building IV was excavated by Shiloh who called it the ‘burnt room’ (Shiloh 1984: 19). It actually consisted of several rooms, of which only very small parts could be uncovered. In the burnt room lumps of carbonized wood were found (Fahn and Werker 1992). These include unworked pieces of wood coming from the ceiling beams as well as fragments with palmette relief and a carved staff. The decorated pieces were all made of buxus wood which is not indigenous in the region and had to be imported from northern Syria or Turkey.

A total of 128 loom weights were found in the debris in room 28 and the street bordering the building (area 30) (Figure 12). These objects probably came from the upper story of this building. The large quantity of loom weights found together in one spot is remarkable. This, as well as the presence of several stone weights, indicated that the building was used for commercial activities, textile production being one of them. The craftsman or trader that inhabited the house must have been quite wealthy. In none of the other buildings has such a large quantity of luxury objects been found. This included the large pithoi, an imported wine jar with rosette impression, several other rosette handled jars, the bronze and iron objects under the wall, a bronze fibula, and a toilet seat. That so many of these objects could be retrieved should be ascribed to the inhabitants of the house who had the foresight to hide their

Only a small strip of 7 × 1 m of the House of the Bullae was excavated (Shiloh 1986). On the uppermost floor a number of objects were found, among which were 51 clay sealings or bullae (Shoham 1994). Shiloh interpreted this as a state archive, but the bullae were found among broken household pottery such as storage jars, juglets and cooking pots, and other small objects indicating family life: an iron knife, a bronze earring, a stone pestle—thus an interpretation as a private archive seems more plausible. The owner of the house 191

No Place Like Home may have been a tradesman corresponding with other traders in the country and possibly beyond.

no evidence, as far as I can see, for state intervention or state organization of these workshops and shops (Steiner 2001b).

Building V (rooms 22–25) was located east of the Buildings I–IV, on a terrace almost 3 m lower than the floor of the House of the Bullae. Not much remained of this building and no objects were registered from its floors (Steiner 2001a: 81–83).

The inhabitants of this quarter ate fish brought in from the Mediterranean and the Nile, drank wine imported from Greece, decorated their houses with furniture and inlays made of buxus wood that is indigenous to northern Syria and southern Turkey, and used stone toilet seats. They may not have been part of the kingly court and their entourage, but they certainly belonged to the economic elite.

Building VI (rooms 26–27) was built on bedrock against a tower of the stone stepped building dating to Iron Age IIA which was no longer in use (Steiner 2001a: 83–84). Its uppermost floors were some 6 m below the floors of Building V. Only one room could be excavated (room 26) which was a large (5.5 × 3 m) open or closed hall, giving access to at least one other room (that was not excavated). The floors are described as ‘hard white’ which means they were plastered with lime plaster. Most objects found here are of a domestic nature. Outside room 26 was a courtyard or street (area 27).

If we compare this town quarter with that excavated by Shiloh in his Area E, some 100 m to the south of the ‘Royal Quarter,’ the situation is quite different (De Groot and Bernick-Greenberg 2012a, 2012b). Here a densely occupied residential quarter was built in stratum 12, at the beginning of the 8th century BC. In stratum 11, dated to the first half of the 7th century BC, the area went into decline, however, and most buildings were abandoned. In stratum 10, from the second half of the 7th century BC until the end of the Iron Age, only three buildings were in use here: the large Ashlar House, Building 2011, and Building 1355 (De Groot and BernickGreenberg 2012a: fig. 8).

A quarter of traders and artisans If I am correct in my interpretation of the eight houses in the so-called ‘Royal Quarter,’ a picture emerges of a quarter of wealthy traders and artisans, living and working in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in the town, on top of the stone stepped structure. This location is special; the stone stepped structure used to be a large fortification guarding the entrance to the only water source of the town, the Gihon spring. A large public building must have been located on top of the structure, although it is doubtful this was king David’s palace (Steiner 2009). When a town wall was erected lower down the hill at the end of the 8th century BC, this structure became obsolete and was converted into a residential/commercial quarter. Architecturally this was a difficult undertaking, the location, therefore, must have been worth the effort.

The Ashlar House, so named because of the use of ashlars, was 12 × 13 m in size, or 156 m2. It was built over earlier houses on a platform erected on the steep slope. Finds in the rooms do not indicate the use of the rooms, and De Groot and Bernick-Greenberg assume the building had a public function because of its size and the energy put into the construction of its architecture (De Groot & Bernick-Greenberg 2012a: 166). Building 2011 consisted of two long rooms. A stone window balustrade was found in one of the rooms (De Groot and Bernick-Greenberg 2012a: fig. 10.2). Of Building 1355 not much could be retrieved. Not enough was found inside these buildings to indicate their use. In area E, therefore, the densely occupied quarter of the 8th century BC was abandoned, and a sole public building with some auxiliary buildings was located there at the end of the Iron Age.

The houses were quite large and built partly with ashlar masonry: Ahiel’s house was 92 m2 in size, while Building III was at least 82 m2. They are all freestanding with streets and small alleyways connecting them. Some were four-room houses with mud-plastered floors (Building I); others had a different plan (Buildings III and IV), some with elaborate lime-plastered floors (Buildings VI and VII). All the houses had been in use for a long time, as the superimposed floors indicate.

The ‘Royal Quarter,’on the other hand, was much more densely occupied then, and had been so from the end of the 8th century BC (when area E went into decline). This means that the location was a good one and that the traders and artisans ran profitable businesses. This town quarter permits us to catch a glimpse not only of the economic activities conducted there but also of the entanglement of these retailers with the wider world. There is evidence of contact with Arabian traders, who lived and worked in Jerusalem itself or sent their goods to local traders in the town. Imported luxuries from Greece (wine), norther Syria or southern Turkey (wood), Transjordan (bronze), and the Nile and

The finds show that artisans, traders, and shopkeepers lived and conducted their business there. Building I housed a shop selling ground materials; in the Bullae House dwelled a trader of unknown goods; a bronze workshop was located in House III, and a textile workshop and possibly a shop in House VII. The workshops were family-oriented; we are talking cottage industry here, not large-scale enterprises. There is 192

Margreet L. Steiner: Chapter 11. A Closer Look Mediterranean (fish) show that during the 7th century BC Jerusalem took an active part in the globalizing economy of the Assyrian koinè (Mazzoni 2014: 697). The inhabitants of the quarter were neither farmers living in the town and producing agricultural produce, such as wine or olive oil, as in Tel Halif, Tell en-Nasbeh, and many other smaller towns; nor were they artisans working for the royal court and the administrative elite. They were part of a middle class of traders and artisans, living in a prestigious location and producing objects for the inhabitants of Jerusalem while engaging with the wider world.

Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Volume III, Stratigraphical, Environmental and Other Reports: 106–115. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Frank, T. 2018. Household Food Storage in Ancient Israel and Judah. Oxford: Archaeopress. Franken, H.J. 2005. A History of Pottery and Potters in Ancient Jerusalem; Excavations by K.M. Kenyon in Jerusalem 1961–1967. Sheffield: Equinox. Franken, H.J. and M.L. Steiner 1990. Excavations in Jerusalem 1961–1967, Vol. II. The Iron Age Extramural Quarter on the South-east Hill. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Golani, A. 2013. Jewellery from the Iron Age II Levant. Fribourg / Göttingen: Academic Press/Vandenhoeck Ruprecht. Hardin, J.W. 2010. Lahav II: Households and the Use of Domestic Space at Iron II Tell Halif: An Archaeology of Destruction. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Hovers, E. 1996. The groundstone industry, in D.T. Ariel and A. de Groot (eds) Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Volume IV, Various Reports: 171–189. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Katz, H. and A. Faust 2011. Distribution and use of Storage vessels in the Kingdom of Judah, in I. Finkelstein and N. Naʾman (eds) The Fire Signals of Lachish; Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period in Honor of David Ussishkin: 175–184. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Kenyon, K.M. 1967. Excavations in Jerusalem (preliminary report). Palestine Exploration Quarterly 99: 65–73. Lernau, H. and O. Lernau 1992. Fish remains, in A. de Groot and D.T. Ariel (eds) Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Volume III, Stratigraphical, Environmental and Other reports: 131– 148. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Macalister, R.A.S. and J. Garrow Duncan 1926. Excavations on the Hill of Ophel, Jerusalem, 1923–1925. (Publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund.) London: Office of the Fund. Mazar, E. and B. Mazar (eds) 1989. Excavations in the South of the Temple Mount: The Opel of Biblical Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Mazzoni, S. 2014. The Aramean states during the Iron Age II–III periods, in M.L. Steiner and A.E. Killebrew (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant, c.8000–332 BCE: 683–705. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Routledge, B. 2013. Household archaeology in the Levant. Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research 370: 207–219. Scott, R.B.Y. 1985. Weights from the 1961–1967 excavations, in A.D. Tushingham (ed.) Excavations in Jerusalem 1961–1967, Vol. I: 197–212. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum.

References Cited Brody, A.J. 2011. The archaeology of the extended family: A household compound from Iron II Tell en-Nasbeh, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R. Ebeling and L. Mazow (eds) Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond: 237–254. Leiden: Brill. Bunimovitz, S. and A. Faust 2003. Building identity: The Four Room House and the Israelite mind, in S. Gitin (ed.) Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the past: Ancient Israel and its Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestineae: 411–423. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Cahill, J., K. Reinhard, D. Tarler and P. Warnock 1991. It had to happen: Scientists examine remains of ancient bathroom. Biblical Archaeology Review 17: 64–69. Chapman, R.A. 1992. A stone toilet seat found in Jerusalem in 1925. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 124: 4–8. Darby, E. 2014. Interpreting Judean Pillar Figurines: Gender and Empire in Judean Apotropaic Ritual. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. De Groot, A. and H. Bernick-Greenberg 2012a. Excavations at The City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh: Volume VIIa: Area E: Stratigraphy and Architecture. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. De Groot, A. and H. Bernick-Greenberg 2012b. Excavations at The City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh: Volume VIIb: Area E: The Finds. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Eran, A. 1996. Weights and weighing in the City of David: The early weights from the Bronze Age to the Persian period, in D.T. Ariel and A. de Groot (eds) Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Volume IV, Various Reports: 204–256 (Qedem 35). Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Fahn, A. and E. Werker 1992. Macrobotanical remains. Section B, in A. de Groot and D.T. Ariel (eds) 193

No Place Like Home Shamir, O. 1996. Loomweights and whorls, in D.T. Ariel and A. de Groot (eds) Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Volume IV, Various Reports: 135–170. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shiloh, Y. 1984. Excavations at the City of David I, 1978– 1982. Jerusalem: The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shiloh, Y. 1986. A group of Hebrew bullae from the City of David. Israel Exploration Journal 36: 16–38. Shiloh, Y. 1987. South Arabian inscriptions from the City of David, Jerusalem. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 119: 9–18. Shoham, Y. 1994. A group of Hebrew bullae from Yigal Shiloh’s excavations in the City of David, in H. Geva (ed.) Ancient Jerusalem Revealed: 55–61. Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society.

Singer-Avitz, L. 2011. Household activities at Tel Beer Sheba, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R. Ebeling and L. Mazow (eds), Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond: 275–302. Leiden: Brill. Steiner, M.L. 2001a. Excavations by Kathleen M. Kenyon in Jerusalem, 1961–1967, Vol. III. The Settlement in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Steiner, M.L. 2001b. Jerusalem in the 10th and 7th centuries BCE: From administrative centre to commercial city, in A. Mazar (ed.), Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan: 280–88. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Steiner, M.L. 2009. The “Palace of David” reconsidered in the light of earlier excavations. Website Bible and Interpretation: https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/ articles/palace_2468

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Chapter 12. The Daily Bread at Tell Halif: An Overview of Food Production and Consumption Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Tim Frank, and Oded Borowski The excavations at Tell Halif provide archaeologists of the southern Levant and scholars of the Hebrew Bible material to better understand the daily lives of the average man, woman, and child in Iron Age IIB Judah. Tell Halif is uniquely situated in a liminal zone between the Shephelah and the Negev regions. The Shephelah can be seen as ordered civilization, while the Negev is the chaotic desert. Tell Halif could also be seen as being situated in a social or political liminal zone between Judah and Philistia. Judah as the ‘us,’ Philistia as the ‘other,’ or ‘them.’ Patterns of food production and consumption at Tell Halif show commonalities and differences across social, political, and geographic spheres. They give insights into important aspects of daily life. This overview describes the pertinent artifacts at Tell Halif indicating their relevance as they are studied in their particular contexts. Site background Tell Halif is a 12-acre mound located on the southern edge of the Shephelah between the rolling hill country and the Negev desert to its south. About 20 km (or 12 mi) south of Tell Halif lies the settlement of Beer-Sheva, a major city of the Negev. Tell Halif is situated on a key road from the Via Maris to the hill country of Judah. In biblical times, Tell Halif was more than likely known as Rimmon or En Rimmon (Josh 15:32, 19:7) (Borowski 1988: 25; Hardin 2010: 84). The Lahav Research Project (known as LRP) was initiated in 1976 with the excavations of Tell Halif occurring in four phases: The excavation of Phase I began under the direction of Joe D. Seger (Cobb Institute of Archaeology/ Mississippi State University). The most recent phase, Phase IV (2007–2009, 2014–2016), is under the direction of Oded Borowski and explores the remains of the 8th century BC in order to better understand the nature of daily life in that period (Borowski 2010). Archaeological excavations at Tell Halif were carried out in the following fields: Field I, which is located on the eastern slope; Field II is located on the summit; Field III is situated on the northwestern end of the tell; both Fields IV and V are located on the southwestern No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 195–203

edge of the tell adjacent to one another; and at different locations outside the settlement, such as the Eastern Terrace and the Iron Age II cemetery southwest of the tell (Figure 1). From the excavation of these fields, archaeological remains spanning the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age I (Strata XIX–XVI, 3500–2900 BC) through the Roman/Byzantine periods (Stratum III, 200–600 AD) have been identified (Borowski 2017:103–105). Even though Tell Halif was a relatively small town during the Iron IIB period, its archaeological data, as well as biblical and extra-biblical sources, suggest that Halif was one of the many towns destroyed by the military campaign of King Sennacherib, when in 701 BC the Assyrian army marched through Judah in order to put an end to the rebellion led by King Hezekiah of Judah. The archaeological record of Tell Halif ’s Stratum VIB clearly shows the remains of Sennacherib’s destruction including: destroyed buildings that are covered with a thick layer of ash; mudbricks calcified by hot fire; carbonized organic material; and the remains of military weapons including numerous arrowheads, sling stones, and other armaments uncovered in the context of destruction. It appears that Iron IIB Tell Halif was abandoned quickly since most of the buildings and their contents remained in situ (Borowski 2005: 24). Textual sources concerning this event include the Hebrew Bible, which records in 2 Kings 18:13 that, ‘In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, King Sennacherib of Assyria attacked and captured all the fortified towns of Judah,’ and in 2 Chronicles 32:1 ‘… that King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah and encamped against the fortified towns….’ Additionally, Sennacherib’s prism claims ‘I laid siege to 46 of his [Hezekiah’s] strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth-) ramps, and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) (combined with) the attack by foot soldiers, (using) mines, breeches as well as sapper work’ (Borowski 2018; Pritchard 1969: 288). The archaeological survey of the Shephelah by Yehudah Dagan indicates that the Assyrian campaign into Judah caused the decrease of settlements between the Iron IIB and Iron IIC periods: The number of sites declined

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Figure 1. Location of Fields on Tell Halif (© Shafer-Elliott, Frank and Borowski).

from 289, covering a total area of 1029 acres (416.4 ha, or 4,165 dunams), in Iron IIB, to 85, covering an area of 343 acres (139 ha, or 1,388 dunams), in Iron IIC (Dagan 2004: 2683, 2013). Tell Halif must have been one of these settlements, even though it was not as large or wellfortified as some of the other cities in the Shephelah, such as Lachish.

and regularities through the detailed mapping, both vertical and horizontal, of the dwelling and the remains found within it (Hardin 2010: 26–27). In order to achieve a more exhaustive collection of artifacts and spatial data, detailed three-dimensional mapping was used at Halif, including the total sifting of all excavated materials and the use of a mini-grid labeled the ‘magic square.’ The magic square was used on floor materials in Fields IV and V and allowed artifacts to be collected within horizontal, 50-cm, square increments. The mini-grid was used in addition to the vertical positioning (relative to sea level) of the artifact.

Household archaeology at Tell Halif The methodology of household archaeology was utilized in the Phases III and IV excavations at Tell Halif. Household archaeology can be characterized as the archaeological study of the physical dwelling unit, and the social and behavioral components of the household members. In other words, the physical remains excavated from the dwelling reflect the shape and activities, and thus the behavior, of the household (Shafer-Elliott 2016: 162–163). Archaeologists use spatial analysis to recognize and understand patterns

The latest excavation phase focused on Halif ’s Iron IIB period (Stratum VIB; 800–700 BC), which is conveniently close to the surface of the tell and could be easily exposed. Several Iron IIB houses (known as the so-called ‘four-room’ or ‘pillared’ house) have been excavated at 196

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Figure 2. Excavated areas in Field IV and Field V at Tell Halif. (Photo by Seung Ho-Bang, LRP.)

Halif. The excavated houses are attached to one another and are built around the interior periphery of the city in Fields IV and V (Figure 2), which are located on the western edge of the settlement and appear to use the casemates of the city wall as part of the back broad room of the house. Unfortunately, in some cases the back end of the house is difficult to recover because of its close proximity to the western edge of the tell, which had partially eroded away. The Halif houses contained domestic assemblages that illustrate what daily life was like in Iron IIB Judah.

IV and two in the K8 house at the southern end of Field IV. These ovens and the hearth can be clearly set within households, because the overall plan of these houses could be determined. The Field IV K8 house had two ovens. One was in an annex to the east of the house. This might represent something like the huts found in ethnographic accounts, which were often outside the house and sometimes even at the outskirts of a village (Dalman 1935: 77, 89– 90; Ebeling and Rogel 2015: 335; Parker 2011: 611). As in such baking huts, the space housing this oven had few other artifacts. The other oven was on one side of the central long-room of the four-room house. According to the pottery distribution it was at the edge of a busy food preparation and food storage area. The K8 house, therefore, had two ovens—one in the central long-room and another one in an annex outside the main house.

The spatial analysis conducted revealed much about daily life in Iron IIB Halif; however, this paper concentrates on some of the remains found related to food preparation: ovens, grinding stones, floral and faunal remains. Artifacts of food preparation

The Field IV F7 house had an oven and a hearth. But there is a question mark regarding whether the oven was in use. It was surrounded by many LMLK-type jars and other storage jars, so that there would have been little space for food preparation. The hearth in the Field IV F7 house was built against a pillar. It was surrounded by a small wall. It is particularly the charred remains in that installation that led the excavators to identify it as a

Ovens In Fields IV and V a total of six ovens (tawabin/tannurim) and one probable hearth have been found. They are spread across Field IV and the northern part of Field V stretching from Areas A to E. An oven and a hearth were found in the F7 house at the northern end of Field 197

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Figure 3. Oven in Field V Area E7. (Photo by O. Borowski, LRP.)

hearth. Several cooking pots with clear soot marks were found near the installation. Maybe, in this household cooking was mainly done over a hearth, while in other households the oven was also used for this task.

Grinding Stones The second object type related to the food preparation category is grinding stones. We have examined the distribution of pounders, mortars, grindstones, and saddle querns. Studies have shown, often in conjunction with ethnographic observations, that many of these stone tools were used for food preparation. In particular, the presence of saddle querns (slabs) and grindstones (hand stones) has been linked to grinding grain in the southern Levant.

Three ovens were found in Field V. The first oven (in Area I5), while well preserved itself, is not in a wellpreserved context. In contrast, the immediate context of the second oven in Field V (Area E7) was well preserved, but the full extent of the house is not yet known. This oven was in a food preparation area (Figure 3). Next to it was a large stone slab, which might have been used to prepare dough for baking. A large jug, an open krater, and a small holemouth jar might have also been used in food preparation. Not far from the oven was a large loom as indicated by loom weights found in rows. Several large storage jars surrounded the oven and other artifacts partly separated it from the rest of the room. Grinding stones, a quern, and a possible grinding installation were nearby. The third oven (in Area A8) was only poorly preserved, with mainly fragments being found. Several dark, ashy patches were uncovered on the floor in the vicinity of the oven.

There were 52 grindstones, 49 pounders, seven mortars and five saddle querns from Stratum VIB in Fields IV and V. Looking at the distribution of the stone tools, the large number of stones in one small room in Field V is noted. Here there were 25 pounders, 11 grindstones, one mortar and one saddle quern. That is about half of all pounders found in the two fields (Figure 4). It should also be noted that this room was generally full of artifacts. Here botanical food remains were also concentrated.

It is noteworthy that adjacent to two ovens in Field V there were upright stones. These may have been used to support any vessels or tray put over the fire and also strengthened the walls. This and the soot marks indicate that the fire was lit inside the oven, not outside. It, therefore, would have been used more like a tannur than a tabun oven.1

is placed on the floor to bake. A tannur (plural tannaneer), on the other hand, is a conical or beehive-shaped clay oven about 1 m (3.2 ft) tall. Unlike the tabun, the bread is baked in a tannur by slapping the dough onto the interior walls to bake. Archaeological reports often use the term tabun to describe excavated ovens; however, this is chronologically inconsistent since the tabun style of oven is not found in archaeological contexts any earlier that the seventh century AD; furthermore, the term tabun is not found in the Hebrew Bible or the Talmud; whereas the term tannur is found in the Hebrew Bible fifteen times, seven of which refer to an oven used to bake bread (Exod. 8:3; Lev. 2:4; 7:9; 11:35; 26:26; Hosea 7:4, 6–7) (Ebeling and Rogel 2015: 328– 30; Shafer-Elliott 2013: 219).

1  tabun oven (plural tawabin) is a low, truncated, dome-shaped oven made of clay and stands between 25 and 50 cm tall. In a tabun, dough

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Figure 4. A pounder (Object 3783). (Photo by Seung Ho-Bang, LRP.)

This room was adjacent to a larger space that contained an oven (tabun/tannur), remains of a loom and many other artifacts that point towards food preparation and food storage. Amongst them were six pounders, nine grindstones, one mortar (Figure 5), and one saddle quern. There was also an installation, which is similar to grinding installations found elsewhere, but no stone tools were found immediately in the feature.

Figure 5. A mortar (Object 3811). (Photo by Seung Ho-Bang, LRP.)

grindstone. No saddle quern was found in the building, but one was found on the surface immediately to the north of the F7 house. In the southern part of Field V (Areas F7 to N2) grindstones and pounders were found throughout, but usually only one or two in a given space. No saddle querns were found there.

In the latest excavation season, we found a grinding installation in Field IV Area L8 (Figure 6). The saddle quern was still inside this installation, nicely illustrating the use of these features (a similar installation was found in Field III showing that this one was not unique). Two pounders were found on the floor near the installation.

It is noteworthy that only relatively few querns were found in Fields IV and V, but many grindstones were discovered. Were the grindstones also used in ways that did not require a lower stone? Were grindstones replaced as they wore out while querns continued in use? The phenomenon is not unique to Tell Halif, and has been observed at other sites. Also, many of the grindstones were found in spaces not close to querns. Perhaps households shared a common grinding quern and retained their own handstone?

In the Field IV K8 house, in contrast, very few stone tools were recorded. A saddle quern was found above some wooden material. The excavators discussed whether this should be interpreted as roof beams or whether this was a wooden grinding installation. Interestingly, not far from the saddle quern, a stone and mud installation was discovered. Other stone tools recorded were two pounders, a grindstone and three mortars.

While stone tools are sometimes found near ovens, this is not always the case. It seems that food preparation activities were not all carried out in the same space, but rather separated across the house (Frank 2018: 98–146).

Few grindstones were also reported for the Field IV F7 house. There were four grindstones and one pounder in the southwestern room associated with textile production. Two grindstones were also reported for the ‘living room’—one part of the broad-room at the back of the house, which contained evidence for hospitality and cultic activities. A grindstone and a pounder were found in a storage room. In the large central room a mortar was set in the floor. There were also two pounders and a

Innovative Cooking A particular discovery related to food preparation made in our last field season proves that Judahites did 199

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Figure 6. The grinding installation in Area L8 with saddle quern. (Photo by O. Borowski, LRP.)

not live by bread alone. While the Halifites did their normal daily cooking using the common vessels of the period, i.e., a variety of cooking pots, one vessel stands out (Figure 7). It was recovered from the floor of the kitchen area in the A8 House and was identified as a food steamer (for a preliminary report of this vessel and the possible method of usage, see Bang and Borowski 2019). If indeed this vessel was a food steamer, the Iron IIB inhabitants of Tell Halif practiced a creative and healthy way of food preparation.

associated with it. The identification of so many botanical remains from this one area is partly because of issues of preservation, but may also indicate that a higher quantity of plant-based material was present here immediately before the destruction of the site. Much of the botanical remains were taken from between a number of bowls stacked on top of each other against a wall. During excavation, it was noted that botanical food remains had been encountered here and we called it a ‘stack of dirty dishes’ (Figure 8). The botanical material here included lentils (Lens), vetch (Vicia), unidentified legumes, olive (Olea europaea), barley (Hordeum), grape (Vitis) and wild grass. Well over half of the seeds came from some legume (unidentified legume, lentils or vetch). The high number of olive pits should also be noted. The contents of one of the bowls also included bone fragments, and further small bones were identified in the remains. Could a dish made up of legumes, barley, olives and meat have been consumed here? It is generally thought that olives were only pickled in the southern Levant from the Roman period onwards (Borowski 1987: 123–124; Dalman 1935: 198). Does the presence of so many olive pits among other food remains challenge this, or can they be otherwise explained?

Plant and Animal Remains Plant Remains In the 2007–2009 seasons, soil and charcoal samples for botanical analysis were collected from living surfaces and from destruction layers on floors when wood or seeds were visibly present. The matrix inside of whole vessels was also sampled. Collection therefore was not systematic, but depended on the judgment of excavators. Also, the size of the samples collected was not uniform, but depended on the extent of the immediately charred material or the size of the vessel. The soil samples were analyzed by Dr. Peter Warnock. For each sample, the seeds, if present, were identified and the number of seeds given.

Overall, the seed found most frequently in the samples was barley. About half of the samples containing barley seeds were collected from or close to a semi-circular stone installation that was built against a pillar and a

The majority of identifiable organic material came from a room or the destruction layer immediately 200

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Figure 7. The food steamer. (Photo by Seung Ho-Bang, LRP.)

Figure 8. Bowls stacked against Wall E7012, the ‘stack of dirty dishes.’ (Photo by O. Borowski, LRP.)

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No Place Like Home dividing wall (Area C8). This bin might have been used to store barley for human or animal consumption, with the excavators noting considerable burned organic material in the installation. No wheat was identified in the samples. While this may be related to differential preservation, the remains nevertheless clearly indicate that barley was used at Tell Halif in Iron Age IIB, and most probably was used for food. In Ottoman Palestine barley was not the preferred grain for bread, but was eaten by the poor and in times of need (Dalman 1932: 251–255). A similar impression of the value of barley is given by comments in the Mishnah. In the Hebrew Bible barley is often mentioned as food, though it is not as valuable as wheat flour (2 Kings 7:16). It should be noted that barley is more tolerant of harsh soil and climate conditions than wheat (Borowski 1987: 91–92) and was preferred by modern-day Bedouin farming in the Tell Halif region.

The large number of donut-shaped, clay loom weights and other objects, such as spindle whorls, suggest very strongly that one of the by-products of these animals was wool/hair used in the local textile industry. No pig (Sus scrofa) remains were identified in the Iron II strata, although a small pig representation is found in other strata (Namdar and Sapir-Hen 2020). The faunal analysis suggests that the animals were raised at Halif, exploited for their meat as well as their secondary products, and butchered on site. According to the archaeozologists, the inhabitants relied on their own sources for livelihood (Sapir-Hen 2015: 175; Namdar and Sapir-Hen 2020). Contributions to the study of the Shephelah During the 8th century the Assyrians imposed heavy tribute on the kingdom of Judah, which was then levied onto the local towns and villages. The extent to which this affected the lives of the residents in the outlying and liminal areas of Judah is still investigated. At this time the residents of Tell Halif were to a large extent self-sufficient (Shafer-Elliott forthcoming). This may be a continuation of previous economic patterns or may represent a move to a more localized economy towards the end of the 8th century BC.

Zooarchaeological Remains Recent zooarchaeological reports on the Phase IV field seasons analyzed the faunal remains from Tell Halif, where Stratum VIB and Post-Stratum VIB (Iron IIB) are crucial for the present study (Namdar and Sapir-Hen 2020; Sapir-Hen 2015). The most abundant species are caprines (goat [Capra hircus] and sheep [Ovis aries]) with a small number of cattle (Bos taurus) and a smaller number of gazelle (Gazella gazella). When separation between sheep and goat is possible, goat is more representative than sheep. Caprine body parts representation is relatively equal for all elements, with both meat-rich and meat-poor parts present. The mortality profile shows that caprine survivorship is low, between birth to six months. Another decrease in survivorship occurs after one year of age, but it is not drastic, and 60% of the animals survive to older than four years. This curve fits with the expected curve of exploitation for milk, when young male caprines are culled, and the milking females are used for dairy production (Namdar and Sapir-Hen 2020). Generally, high frequencies of caprines may suggest a specialized husbandry for milk and wool (Namdar and Sapir-Han 2020).

Food production and consumption were closely integrated with other household activities. Detailed analysis of the artifacts and contexts will provide more information on household organization and the relationships between different activities. While there are clearly similarities between households, the data so far indicate that in food production there were discernible interhousehold differences as well. These differences may also be reflected in other household activities. There seem to be indications of cooperation between households, which can inform conclusions about social structure in Iron Age Judah. The excavations at Tell Halif provide data on diet in southern Judah to contribute to a rounded picture of daily life at the time.

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Cynthia Shafer-Elliott et al.: Chapter 12. The Daily Bread at Tell Halif Frank, T. 2018. Household Food Storage in Ancient Israel and Judah. Oxford: Archaeopress. Hardin, J.W. 2010. Households and the Use of Domestic Space at Iron II Tell Halif: An Archaeology of Destruction (Reports of the Lahav Research Project Excavations at Tell Halif, Israel Volume II). Winnona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Hardin, J.W. 2012. Household Archaeology in the Southern Levant: An Example from Iron Age Tell Halif, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 519–556. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns. Namdar, L. and L. Sapir-Hen. 2020. The faunal remains from Tell Halif. Unpublished report of the 2014– 2016 seasons. Parker, B.J. 2011. Bread ovens, social networks and gendered space: An ethnoarchaeological study of tandi ovens in southeastern Anatolia. American Antiquity 76: 603–627. Pritchard, J.B. 1969. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sapir-Hen, L. 2015. Faunal remains from Tel Halif, in O. Borowski (ed.) Lahav Research Project Phase IV 2014 Season Report: 167–178. Atlanta: Emory University. Shafer-Elliott, C. 2013. Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield: Equinox/Acumen. Shafer-Elliott, C. 2016. Household archaeology, in C. Shafer-Elliott (ed.) The Five Minute Archaeologist in the Southern Levant. 161–164 Sheffield: Equinox. Shafer-Elliott, C. forthcoming. Putting one’s house in order: Household archaeology at Tell Halif, Israel, in C. Shafer-Elliott, K. Joachimsen, E. Ben Zvi, and P. Viviano (eds) The Hunt for Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of Diana Edelman. Sheffield: Equinox. Ussishkin, D. 2013. Lachish, in D.M. Master (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oxford Biblical Studies Online. 28 Oct 2016.

References Cited Bang, S.H. and O. Borowski 2019. An iron age ‘steamer’ from Tel Ḥalif. Israel Exploration Journal 69: 20–39. Borowski, O. 1987. Agriculture in Iron Age Israel. Boston (MA): American Schools of Oriental Research. 2002 reprint. Borowski, O. 1988. The biblical identity of Tel Halif. Biblical Archaeologist 51: 21–27. Borowski, O. 2005. Tell Halif: in the path of Sennacherib. Biblical Archaeology Review 31(3): 24–35. Borowski, O. 2010. Tell Halif, in The Bible and interpretation. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/halif357921 Borowski, O. 2017. Tell Halif in the Late Bronze and Iron Age, in O. Lipschits and A.M. Maeir (eds) The Shephelah during the Iron Age: Recent Archaeological Studies: 103–114. Winona Lake (MI): Eisenbrauns. Borowski, O. 2018. “…I besieged forty-six of his strong, walled cities… and took them…”: Sennacherib in Judah: The devastating consequences of an Assyrian military campaign. Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies (Lawrence E. Stager Volume), Volume 43: 33–40. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Dagan, Y. 2004. Results of the survey: Settlement patterns in the Lachish regions, in David Ussishkin (ed.), The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), vol 5, (Monograph series of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, no. 22): 2674–2692. Tel Aviv: Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology. Dagan, Y. 2013. Shephelah, in D.M. Master (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology Volume 2: 361. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalman, G. 1932. Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina, Band II: Der Ackerbau. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann. Dalman, G. 1935. Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina, Band IV: Brot, Öl und Wein. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann. Ebeling, J. and M. Rogel 2015. The tabun and its misidentification in the archaeological record. Levant 47: 328–49.

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Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home: Workshops and Workplaces in Romano-Egyptian Houses Anna Lucille Boozer Social archaeologists often define households as the minimal social unit that allowed certain basic personal and social needs to be filled. In order to access the material remains of households, archaeologists tend to study whatever physical residential space they can identify (Nevett 2011). Usually this residential space is a house, but it might also be an apartment or some other type of living arrangement such as communal religious dwellings. When studying a house, social archaeologists often consider the individual people, or types of people, who made up the household as well as the mutually constituting relationships between the occupants and the house itself. In this article, I suggest that a social archaeology of houses must also take practice into account when examining a house, its surroundings, and its occupants. By this I mean that we must go beyond identifying what households—or even individual household members —do and where they do it. Instead, we must grapple with the meaning of everyday actions as part of a process of creating and defining social relations and identities. This type of analysis helps us to understand how household-level activities and social relations inform the constitution of societies and social change. In particular, work activities provide access to the most pervasive of everyday household practices. Domestic production must be included as part of any study of domestic practice since it is among a household’s core needs (Santley and Hirth 1993). Production can be defined as the ‘making of things, tangible if sometimes ephemeral products of human work or activity’ (Hendon 2007: 163). This chapter draws from archaeological and documentary evidence to explore workshops and workplaces within Romano-Egyptian houses, most of which date to the 1st through 4th centuries AD. This focus on archaeological data is novel within Romano-Egyptian studies. A lapse in sustained archaeological attention to houses entails that there are few refined publications on houses, their associated work areas, and their assemblages. To date, only one Romano-Egyptian house has been analyzed contextually in a comprehensive excavation report (Boozer 2015b). Additionally, while papyri contain significant information about the social and economic contexts of production, little scholarship No Place Like Home (Archaeopress 2022): 204–218

has been done to connect them to the published material evidence of everyday work. Moreover, these papyri contain few mentions of the everyday labor required for sustaining the household. In recent years archaeologists have generated new and detailed preliminary reports on workshops and workplaces at settlements such as Kellis, Trimithis, and Elephantine that encourage cross-disciplinary connections (e.g., Ballet and Mahmoud 1987; Boozer 2015b; Bowen 2001; Cromwell 2020; Eccleston 2002; Hope 1980, 1987). These recent excavations also help us to make sense of legacy data from sites such as Karanis and Tebtunis, where desirable contextual and stratigraphic information is lacking (e.g., Allen 1985; Davoli 1998: 187; Langellotti 2020: 13; Rondot 2004: 184–187). Because the archaeological data available on houses and production is preliminary, this chapter combines this material evidence with papyrological sources and recent theoretical advances to suggest significant areas for future research on domestic production in Roman Egypt and beyond. Archaeologies of production The social significance of production cannot be underestimated. People spent a considerable amount of time working, which in turn shaped their identity as individuals and as members of a group. Work was often a family affair in Roman Egypt; spouses interwove tasks and frequently passed their vocations down to their children (Boozer 2021). If a household wished to improve their circumstances, they might send a child out to apprentice in the domestic workshop of a master craftsman (Pudsey 2017: 217; Vuolanto 2015b: 99–100). These work arrangements, in turn, shaped the domestic life of two households: the one that the apprentice left behind, and the one that the apprentice temporarily joined. This single example succinctly demonstrates that an exploration of work practices is essential for understanding home life. In this chapter I focus on practice, materiality, ideology, and identity instead of on craft specialization per se, or the relationship between this process and social ‘evolution’ (the traditional focus of production specialization studies). This focus on the relationship

Anna Lucille Boozer: Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home factors; such as, material resources or labor, but also through intangibles; such as, the identities that are defined and inscribed through routinized quotidian and periodic action (Joyce 2000; Tringham 1994). An approach oriented by practice theory and agency can shed light on how gender, age, class, and other factors intersect to shape these identities.

between domestic work and social life, while common in some regions, falls by the wayside in others. Archaeologists who study Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the American southwest, in particular, have dwelt on household production whenever they have examined a physical house (e.g., Brumfiel 1991; Crown and Wills 1995; D’Altroy and Hastorf 2001; Hendon 1999; Joyce 1993). Scholars of the Roman Mediterranean—and Roman Egypt in particular—have shown less interest in domestic production, as Mikho Flohr has lamented (2019).

For this reason, an analysis of the production, exchange, and use of ‘ordinary goods’ (Smith 1999; Pauketat 2000), rather than solely trade or prestige goods, creates a more complete understanding of both domestic work practice and social life. These mundane products can be equally as significant as prestige goods in the creation and maintenance of multiple group identities and affiliations. Even seemingly simple and utilitarian actions, such as food preparation and refuse disposal, contribute to social identity construction. Indeed, spontaneous and habitual thoughts and actions are particularly important to scholars of practice theory. This idea of unreflective, non-ideological knowledge builds upon the idea of ‘tradition’ found in earlier phases of archaeological scholarship (Willey and Phillips 1958: 37). Concepts of habitual thought and action as a kind of tradition mesh especially well with domestic work, because much domestic work becomes routinized in the body and is passed down from parent to child (see Bourdieu 1977).

In the following pages I draw selectively from practice theory in order to explore production as a socially embedded activity. Pierre Bourdieu, a French theorist, developed the concept of a deeply internalized habitus to describe how socially and bodily ingrained attitudes, mannerisms, and skills shape how agents perceive and act on the world around them (Bourdieu 1977).1 The socially intertwined relations between people, things, and action later became known as practice among many social theorists (Ortner 1984, 2006: esp. 19–41; Schatzki 2001). According to the recent theoretical framework developed by Theodore Schatzki, change corresponds to the constantly evolving arrangement of orders (e.g., people, portable objects, architecture) and practices (e.g., activities) within sites of the social (the spatial context) (Schatzki 2002: esp. xi–xii). In other words, we must examine the entanglements between people, places, objects and activities in order to understand how social changes develop. Here, I am most interested in exploring practices involving work, but many different types of activities could be similarly examined. For example, an exploration of domestic ritual practices could help inform the embodied ways that individuals sustained and changed their relationships to religion and magic in the home.

These dynamic everyday activities, which varied from house-to-house and person-to-person, helped to shape household identities at least as much as the work people did for trade and prestige goods. It is altogether reasonable to suppose that individual households responded to the immediate concerns impacting their household (Wilk 1997: 30) and that their decisions created both intended and unintended consequences at the macro-scale. In sum, I suggest that a focus on domestic production underscores the importance of understanding social processes at the domestic level in order to fully understand them at larger scales of analysis.

A study of household production helps to shed light on the function of the household and its role in social change. It also informs us about some of the ways people define and embody social identities, and shows how human and material agents (the house itself, material culture) enact their roles and contribute to social change through practice (Schatzki 2016, 2019). The objects that people used are marked with the gestures and habits of their production and use. Inscribed by their life histories—their creation, use, re-use, and discard—these material goods inform us of part of a broad suite of social processes (McCall 1999: 18).

Domestic work in Roman Egypt Crafts abounded in Roman Egypt. A typical village of several thousand inhabitants, for example, would have had wool merchants, linen weavers, goldsmiths, dyers, fullers, salt merchants, oil makers, carpenters, tailors, embroiderers, bakers, barbers, wine merchants, and so on (e.g., Tebtynis in the 1st century, or Aphrodito in the 6th century). According to papyri, people produced and sold such wares in commercial spaces, periodic fairs, or in the workshops themselves (Venticinque 2016: 3). Although little has been published of the material evidence of everyday work in Roman Egypt (Flohr 2019: 71), occasional mentions in papyri and attestations in the archaeological record suggest that

The household represents one level of social relations and interaction where differences in relations of power are enacted not only through the control of tangible Bourdieu’s scholarship is deeply rooted in Marcel Mauss’s early work. See also Giddens 1979, 1984.

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No Place Like Home people integrated workshops and storefronts into the home (Droß-Krüpe 2016: 335; Boozer 2021: 5, 9, 25-26, 38-39, 116-117, 199, 211).

Kharab) found two wooden codices, wooden spindle whorls, two carpentry mallets, and a piece of partially worked acacia wood in Room 4, a small barrel-vaulted room located in the center of the 4th century AD house (Hope 1997: 9).2 Excavators found additional wooden offcuts elsewhere in House 2, and the workmanship suggests that of a professional carpenter (Hope and Bowen 2022). A written archive, which was probably stored in ceramic jars kept on the roof, repeatedly mentioned a man named Tithoes (Hope and Bowen 1999: 107). One of these documents described him as ‘Tithoes, son of Petesis, carpenter,’ (P.Kellis Gr. 8 [ca. 360 CE, Kellis]). Tithoes lived during the second half of the 4th century CE, and his family can be traced back for approximately three generations. Another individual, Pausanias son of Valerius, also may have lived in the house during the mid-4th century CE. The Kellis project director, Colin Hope, is cautious about connecting the carpentry tools and codices directly to Tithoes. It cannot be proven that he was the final occupant in the house and responsible for abandoning the tools and codices (Hope 1997: 9–10. See also Nevett 2011). It is probable, however, that House 2 was both the home and workplace of a carpenter, and more than likely that the carpenter was Tithoes. We can suppose, too, that Tithoes’s decedents might also have been carpenters, since vocations tended to be hereditary in Roman Egypt (Boozer 2021: 79). This contextual evidence from Kellis helps us to make sense of legacy data from sites such as Karanis where archival photographs indicate that excavators also found clusters of carefully worked wooden horse pull-toys in a home (KM Negative 5.2396. On this photograph, see Wilfong 2012: 237–38, fig. 14.16).3 Carpenters may have regularly worked within the home to create and even market their wares.

Among the scant papyrological scholarship on craft work, we know more about the ‘public’ face of production than embodied practices. For example, Philip Venticinque explored the documentary sources that illuminate the lives of craftsmen, merchants and association members; the activities of associations; and the interleaved economic administration of the Roman world (Venticinque 2016). His source material included association charters, contracts, work orders, business receipts, accounts, petitions, tax documents, and private letters. Associations were either professional groups of craftsmen, merchants, and farmers or herders; or religious or cultic groups (Venticinque 2016: 9). Usually there were 10 to 25 members in each association (Venticinque 2016: 17). Inscriptions, literary sources, and legal codes also preserve information about associations and its members. Associations often depended upon shared household or family connections to sustain their businesses (e.g., Harland 2003: 29; Kloppenborg 1996: 23–26). In sum, this written evidence confirms the interweaving of household identity with production. Moreover, analyses such as these are helpful for understanding how producers contracted work, plied their wares, and used social connections to further their ambitions within a larger socio-economic framework. I build upon this prior scholarship by exploring the everyday practices of work life—food preparation, weaving, carpentry, and so on—that filled the lives of most people. Scraps of evidence for such work comes to us through occasional, terse mentions of work in papyrological documents, such as the Kellis Agricultural Account Book (Bagnall 1997). Here we find lists of various forms of production such as bedmaking (KAB 612, 761), fulling (KAB 368, 998, 1012, 1216, 1217), and cobbling (KAB 146, 1009, 1216, 1260, 1290, 1486, 1528, 1535, 1550/1551). Occasionally a letter suggests the presence of work within a home, which provides us with a richer social context. For example, a 4th century CE letter from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 59.4001) was addressed to a ‘surgery’ (Greek: iatreion). Here the letter-writer, Eudaimon, and three-generations of his family, lived together in a house that they also used for medical consultations (Draycott 2012: 95). Presumably, there was a small room set aside specifically for the medical practice, which may or may not have been accessible from a separate entrance (Draycott 2012: 27).

On other occasions, archaeology alone provides evidence of the everyday tasks required for sustaining a household. Our reliance upon archaeological data is particularly the case for the most mundane tasks completed in the home. For example, procuring, preparing, processing, preserving, storing, cooking, serving, and cleaning up food took up an immense amount of time and effort, especially for the female members of the household. The archaeological evidence of such work abounds and can be found wherever houses have been excavated together with their courtyards, as I discuss in more detail below. Documentary sources rarely mention such activities and so we are almost entirely dependent upon the material record to reconstruct them.

The archaeological evidence of workshops and workspaces sometimes acts in concert with documentary sources, enabling us to bridge from brief textual mentions to the arena of practice. For example, the excavators of Area A, House 2 at Kellis (Ismant el-

On the distribution of the wooden spindle whorls, see Hope 1987. The in situ photograph is of structure BC72, room K (2nd to 3rd centuries CE, Karanis). 2  3 

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Anna Lucille Boozer: Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home In the following pages I focus on five attributes relevant to thinking through a social archaeology of domestic production: (1) an intersectional consideration of the people involved in production; (2) an appreciation of the spatial emplacement of work within the home and settlement; (3) a recognition that time passed differently and more fluidly in antiquity than it does in the contemporary world; (4) an emphasis on the materiality of production; and (5) a focus on the nature and meaning of everyday production practices rather than solely the products of production. Throughout this analysis I emphasize the variability of households (Hendon 1996). Although data gained from a few apertures into domestic work in Roman Egypt cannot be readily extrapolated to other houses or regions, this framework should help to make sense of the unique form that work life took in a variety of regional and temporal frameworks. It also provides us with a road map for future research into domestic production.

the everyday tasks required to sustain the household. The term mistress of the house (Egyptian: nbt-pr; Greek: despoina), which was used in both Dynastic and Roman times (Stefanović and Satzinger 2015), underscores the equivalence that Egyptians made between women and the home. Women’s tasks included procuring food and beverage supplies, cooking, tending to small animals, grinding grain, sweeping, mending, child rearing, and so on. Since documentary sources rarely preserve details about these kinds of everyday work, we are almost entirely dependent upon the archaeological record to reveal such activities. Archaeologists, however, have rarely published refined data regarding these varied tasks. Children also participated in everyday domestic labor (Vuolanto 2015a). Cross-cultural comparisons suggest that many children begin to become helpful household members from the age of three onward; their tasks and responsibilities grow with them over the years (e.g., Hawke 1989 [1988]; Strange 1982). This work, while not a formal apprenticeship, also socialized children to their expected roles later in life (Boozer forthcoming, 2021).

Participants in production Social archaeologists who have examined household production usually aim to understand whose labor was involved, how it was controlled, where it took place, and the social significance of dividing labor among different types of people (e.g., Tringham 1991). Producers may be involved in production as well as the exchange and use of their products, as we know was often the case in Roman Egypt.

The elderly, another neglected category of persons, continued to participate in work life to the degree that their bodies permitted. For example, documentary sources record the important role of grandmothers in the lives of their grandchildren, particularly if one or both parents were absent (Pudsey 2013: 494–500, Table 24.4; BGU 2.380 [3rd century AD—after 212] Arsinoite, translated and discussed in Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 258–59). Their continued work in other forms of production remains invisible in the archaeological record because we cannot easily distinguish the elderly through material remains alone.

In Roman Egypt, papyrological evidence provides a critical resources for identifying the key participants in craft production on the basis of gender, age, and status. Most studies of production focus upon craftsmen, the adult male producers of goods. While adult men certainly occupied a central role in craft production, documentary sources also record the participation of women and children (Clarysse and Thompson 2006: 201–203; Saller 2003: 193–197; Treggiari 1979). For example, the association of linen weavers in late 3rd century Oxyrhynchus noted the participation of wives and children in the production of items contracted by the local council (P. Oxy. 12.1414 [AD 271–272], cited in Venticinque 2016: 16). Women might also run their own business, as a woman named Tehat appears to have done with her garment manufacturing establishment in her home at Kellis in the 4th century CE (Bowen 2001). A study of apprenticeships also shows how craftsmen socialized youths into the habitual bodily practices necessary to succeed in a particular type of production (Boozer forthcoming; Vuolanto 2015b).

Spatial distribution of work spaces An analysis of the spatial distribution of craftwork reveals a great deal about everyday practice and social values. We are fortunate to have numerous papyrological resources with which we can identify the spatial distribution of workshops across settlements. Although refined archaeological studies of craft areas are rare, the current evidence provides key insights into select workshops and certain aspects of everyday work life about which the papyrological sources are silent. Three large tax registers dating to AD 276 from Ptolemais Euergetis, capital of the Arsionoite nome, preserve information about various craftsmen and the distribution of their domestic workshops across settlements (BGU 1.9, 4.1086, 12.2280; cited in DroßKrüpe 2016: 334). Kerstin Droß-Krüpe analyzed the

Documentary sources provide less information about roles that appear to have typically fallen to women. In addition to assisting with or running their own craft production endeavors, women typically took charge of 207

No Place Like Home documents to determine the spatial placement of textile workshops. She found that craftsmen conducting the same work were spread across the city (Droß-Krüpe 2016: 335) and that most neighborhoods had at least one or two craftsmen of varying types living and working there (Droß-Krüpe 2016: 336).

offering bearers (choachytai), belonged to a family business (see Diod. Sic. I.91.3. Also discussed by Derda 1991: 20, 25), thereby entailing that their lives were circumscribed and separated socially and physically from those who lived in the settlement. In this way, the special living arrangements required of certain necropolis workers mirrored the separation of the deceased from the living, amplifying the distinctive and ritualized nature of mortuary production. I discuss the distinct status of mortuary production in more detail below.

Droß-Krüpe compared her results for Ptolemais Euergetis with textual evidence from Panopolis (SB 24.16000, early 4th century AD), Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 46.3300, AD 71–72), and Antinoopolis (SB 14.11978, late 2nd century AD), finding that craftspeople were also distributed across these cities. People working in very different professions, craft and otherwise, could be found next to one another (Droß-Krüpe 2016: 337– 339). In other words, her research demonstrated that craftsmen lived in the same areas of town as people who did different kinds of work and as people who belonged to different socio-economic strata (Droß-Krüpe 2016: 337).

The location of work spaces within and around houses, as shown by archaeological data, reveals a great deal about everyday practice. Much of the everyday work of the ancient world was highly mobile and could be done anywhere. Activities such as spinning, weaving, and carpentry could be done in spaces also used for other purposes, such as eating, socializing, and sleeping. Workers could move their activities easily and according to changes in the weather, season, or social circumstance. We see some evidence of this mobility in the wide variety of rooms and courtyard spaces in which material goods associated with weaving were found in Kellis and Trimithis in the Dakhleh Oasis (Boozer 2015c; Bowen 2001).

Results from Colin Hope’s excavations at Kellis, a village in the Dakhleh Oasis, compliment DroßKrüpe’s documentary findings for Nile Valley cities. His team found that various types of craftwork, such as carpentry and weaving, were distributed across the settlement.4 Weaving, in particular, appears to have been a ubiquitous domestic craft and therefore provides the best archaeological evidence of sitewide distribution patterns. Excavators found various combinations of loom weights, spindles, spindle whorls, loom beams, shuttles, combs, and unspun yarn in nearly all of the houses that they excavated (Bowen 2001). Much of this craftwork was destined for domestic consumption, but some appears to have been traded to the Nile Valley (P.Kellis. 1.51, middle of the 4th century AD). In sum, the excavators found that certain types of craftwork were evenly distributed across the village. At present, the evidence does not indicate that crafts were concentrated in specific neighborhoods as is commonly associated with medieval and later phases of urban development (compare to Flohr 2019).

Other forms of production, such as ceramics production, baking, and fulling, were less mobile. Households also incorporated this type of production into their domestic space, adapting and reserving fixed places within their homes for specialized work activities. Highintensity activities were often restricted to particular rooms in the house and were segregated from family and social space. The residents living in House B from Eileithyiaspolis (Elkab), for example, devoted over half of their domestic space to dedicated ceramic production (Hendrickx 1988). Only the largest cities, such as Rome and Alexandria, developed a specialized form of ‘commercial architecture’ separate from dwelling spaces (Flohr 2019). In other words, a great deal of manufacturing and commerce took place in houses, along their street frontages, and in their courtyards. Some of these activities left more permanent material signatures than others.

Mortuary work offers an exception to the even distribution of certain types craftwork across RomanoEgyptian settlements. In some regions, embalmers (Greek: taricheutai) might be found within settlements, but in Thebes (and perhaps other settlements) the law required them to live and work in the necropolis rather than in the settlement (Derda 1991: 20). Many necropolis workers, such as the embalmers and

Movement through interior and exterior spaces, degrees of visibility, and the design of houses and other living areas help domestic space to become a meaningful locale (Meskell 2002). Such analyses are especially telling when considering the work spaces where people spent a considerable proportion of their time. For example, women took on some of the most repetitive everyday work in and around the home. Archaeological evidence suggests that they did most of their work in the courtyards found adjacent to many houses.

4  A preliminary report on metalworking identified the working of copper and iron as well as possibly the smelting of iron from the 1st to 4th centuries CE in Area C/2 (Eccleston 2002). The social organization of production, however, required further excavation to identify the structures. A site-wide analysis of metal production byproducts has not yet been completed.

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Figure 1. Map of Karanis showing a granary (C113) and three houses (C101, C84, and C111). C113 provided twenty grain bins shared between the three houses. A courtyard (C113N) was connected to C84E on the north by a doorway (Husselman 1979: Map 11. Courtesy of the Kelsey Museum).

had to keep an eye on to ensure they did not attack the birds. Dogs often joined the domestic menagerie, serving as pets, guard animals, or shepherds for agricultural labor (Boozer 2021: 41-42; 104). As women went about their chores, they could easily toss the leftover food and scraps they created during food preparation to feed these animals while disposing of food waste. Aside from these animal companions, neighboring women may have visited at certain times of the day or to help with specific tasks since many courtyards and storage areas were shared between

These open courtyard spaces must have offered up a cacophony of sights, smells, sounds, and sensations. Small animals, such as chickens, pigeons, and pigs, often lived in these spaces or on rooftops as evinced by the pens, feeding troughs, and storage bins for grain and fodder that excavators found in numerous Karanis courtyards (Husselman 1979: 49, 51–53).5 Many homes also had cats to keep pests at bay, which women 5  Chickens and pigeons in particular often reside together with people in modern Egyptian mudbrick houses; see Correas-Amador 2013: 125, and Appendix, document 9.

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Figure 2. Plan of Trimithis House B2 (Courtesy of the Amheida Project).

houses (Husselman 1979, 49) (Figure 1).6 Children, too, may have spent time in the courtyard accompanying adolescent and adult women at work (Boozer 2012, 2013). If houses shared a courtyard between them, as many at Karanis did (Husselman 1979: 49), the interactions between women, children, and animals must have been incessant.

one area was used for baking bread (Room 7) and the other was used for a more expansive suite of cooking tasks (Room 5), these two spaces seem to have been used simultaneously rather than at different times of the year (compare to Kramer 1979, 1982). The reason for the different spaces appears to have resulted from the bread oven requiring an opening where the draft hole could catch the strong north wind opposite to it; a common requirement for domestic bread ovens in Roman Egypt (Depraetere 2002) (Figure 3).

Some late Roman houses incorporated cooking areas into the house itself rather than placing it in the courtyard. For example, House B2 at Trimithis had two locations for preparing food within the same house (Rooms 5, 7; see Figure 2) (Boozer 2015b; see also Boozer 2015a for additional comparisons). Since

The placement of cooking areas inside of the home shifted domestic rhythms and sensations. When dwellers integrated cooking areas into the home, women spent more time inside of it. Some women may have found the change to interior cooking areas socially isolating; it cut them off from their neighbors

One area within Karanis, south of CS405 and east of CS400 appears to have had a complex of interrelated houses (Husselman 1979: 19, Map 13).

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Figure 3. Trimithis House B2, Room 7, bread oven with its draft hole positioned opposite to the prevailing wind. (Courtesy of the Amheida Project).

and reduced their interactions with the animals that populated courtyards. Others may have preferred these more private indoor spaces. Whether or not this change entailed more interaction with other household members depended on the amount of time these other individuals spent at home.

craftwork, also held a predictable pattern of ebbs and flows of demand. By contrast, many female tasks were repetitive and unchanging: cooking, cleaning, clearing away, weaving, mending, and child minding formed the daily sequence of constantly repeating essential tasks. Sometimes women’s labor expanded temporarily, such as during peak agricultural seasons or during festival seasons.7 These episodic demands added to their everyday labors, which required them to keep their household fed and cared for.

Work time In the ancient world, people measured time loosely and inconsistently. Their work and recreation patterns followed life’s rhythms. An individual’s work responded to what was required at the time, rendering it intermittent, irregular, and interspersed with recreational breaks (Papakonstantinou 2019: 159).

Time also varied according to the focus individuals were permitted to pay to their work. Male tasks might be more focused on one job at a time, such as completing a time-sensitive harvest, throwing a pot, or shaping a bed frame. By contrast, female labor required multitasking, such as minding children while cooking and weaving, usually within the cacophonous space of a courtyard which might, as noted above, bring interruptions in the form of animals, neighbors, or changes in sounds, smells, temperatures, and sights.

The ratio of work-time regularity was unequal between men and women. The agricultural calendar set the work pattern for most men across Egypt, and it reverberated inside of the home. Men’s schedules shifted dramatically according to the seasons. Even outside of peak seasons, many men probably left home early to reach the fields and animals that required their attention. If agricultural labor kept a husband away for long periods, the rest of the family had to compensate by taking on his domestic chores and filling in the emotional void left by his absence. Other forms of production that were done at home by men, such as

A wall painting detail from the Tomb of Petosiris (Tuna el-Gebel, late 4th–early 3rd century BC) shows a woman and child harvesting (Rowlandson 1998: fig. 26). On a woman’s preparations for a festival, see P.Oxy. 48.3406 (mid-4th century CE, Oxyrhynchus). Translated and discussed in Bagnall and Cribiore 2006: 213–14.

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No Place Like Home The matter of production Producers and the materiality of the goods they produced become entangled with one another during the production process. In particular, archaeologists working on other world cultures have observed that the production of politically and religiously important objects confers enhanced social status on the producers (Hruby 2007). By restricting or privileging certain forms of production knowledge, people cultivate their value and status in society. People who produced ordinary goods, by contrast, tend to gain less status from their work. In the case of figurines used for religious or ritual purposes, Roman Egypt provides a counter-example to Hruby’s observation. Here, religious objects acquired their potency separate from the circumstances of their production. The terracotta figurines of Roman Egypt were neither economically valuable nor produced in special religious contexts (Allen 1985; Ballet and Mahmoud 1987; Nicholson 2013). Nonetheless, their owners valued them highly (Barrett 2015) and may have activated the connection of these terracotta figurines to the sacred through activities now lost to us. An intriguing possible exception to this production pattern can be found at a few sites, such as Ain el-Gedida in the Dakhleh Oasis. Here, excavators found signs of ceramic and terracotta production in an abandoned temple (Aravecchia 2012, 2018). While the choice of this location may have been purely pragmatic—it offered some large, well-built open areas—it is also possible that the previous sacred charge associated with the temple space conferred additional significance to the materials people produced there.8 A comparison between this type of production area with one emplaced within a house could reveal a great deal about social values and how one material or activity could achieve different meanings in different socio-historical contexts.

Figure 4. Trimithis House B2, Room 5, shallow dish to hold coals (Courtesy of the Amheida Project).

corpse and transforming it into a reified form, allowing it to be reborn. This unique form of production may have what informed the spatial separation required between Theban mortuary workers and the rest of the populace. On the more ‘ordinary’ end of the work spectrum, the domestic tools for preparing food were very basic and often multifunctional. Most houses had a simple fireplace and sometimes a bread oven. A fireplace could be made by stacking two bricks on top of one another on either side of hot coals or by creating a shallow dish to hold the coals, as excavators found in Room 5 in Trimithis House B2 (Boozer 2015b) (Figure 4). Firedogs, which were portable ceramic stands, might also be used in similar fashion (Aston 1989). Regardless of their style, women placed large pots directly on embers to make their stews and porridges. Bread ovens, which excavators usually find in the corner of a courtyard with their draft hole opposite the prevailing wind, were more specialized than hearths (Depraetere 2002. See also Boozer 2015b: 167–70; Husselman 1979: 49; Yeivin 1934) (figure 3). Bread loaves could be plastered up against the side of the ovens to cook quickly (Boozer 2015b: 169). Manure, gathered from donkeys and other animals, served as fuel. It was often readily available from the domestic animals that shared these courtyard spaces. Some households, especially those without such animals close at hand, may have stockpiled dung on their rooftops.

Corpses offer a distinctive type of matter to consider. Necropolis workers (Greek: entaphiastai) in Roman Egypt performed a particular type of production associated with heightened emotions and ritual observance (Derda 1991). In order to understand the special sort of production involved in mortuary rituals, it is helpful to turn to the work of Tristan Carter who explored the mortuary production of lithics for Early Cycladic burial arenas. Carter argued that mortuary production becomes a performance, something to be observed, and is thus more flamboyant and theatrical than what we usually think of production as being (Carter 2007). This suggestion is pertinent to Roman-Egypt where necropolis workers also engaged in a special type of performance production that involved preserving a

Most households possessed a range of inexpensive cooking utensils, including oven covers, pots, strainers, storage vessels, baskets, fans, and brushes (Figure 5). Mortars and pestles, which are made from stone, were more expensive items (Figure 6). Even if they were made from reused materials, as many were, shaping them into the proper form took time and expertise.

Pauketat and Ault 2003 provide a useful theoretical overview of sacred space and memory.

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Anna Lucille Boozer: Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home The processes and practices of production The processes involved in production might impact where household producers could live and work. Indus researchers commonly use a classification system to group productive activities by certain features of the processes involved such as extraction or reduction, use of heat (pyrotechnology) or chemical agents to transform materials, or combinations of these processes (Miller 2007). This analysis categorizes archaeological data differently from ones most archaeologists use elsewhere. It offers a useful vantage point on production that may have mirrored ancient forms of thought or, at least, offers another way for us to view archaeological data since it places a strong emphasis upon practice. Figure 5. Palm fiber broom from Karanis. KM inv. no. 3508. (Courtesy of the Kelsey Museum).

It is noteworthy that Heather Miller, an archaeologist working on the Indus civilization, observed that certain ‘common sense’ assumptions about the logical distribution of craft locations do not pertain to Indus cities. For example, types of production that resulted in very different end products but employed similar techniques, such as extraction-reduction, might be found together. Production requiring the use of heat was not relegated to edges of settlement or located in such a way as to reduce the impact of the heat, smoke, or smells it generates on other inhabitants. Miller suggested that where production took place reflects ideas about how a city should be laid out and about where people who do different things should live (Miller 2007). Her case study demonstrates that Indus peoples did not consider production processes to be significant determinants of city layout. Miller’s analysis corresponds with Mikho Flohr’s assessment of craft distribution in Roman settlements (Flohr 2007, 2019). He found that people did not seem to have restricted craft production that contemporary western society might consider to be hot, loud, or odorous to the outskirts of the settlement. It also compliments Kerstin Droß-Krüpe’s findings for dyeing and fulling workshops in Roman Egypt. Both of these industries created strong and unpleasant odors, but they were not confined to the edges of settlements (Droß-Krüpe 2016: 335–336). Ceramics production areas in Roman Egypt can also be found integrated into habitation areas, subjecting their neighbors to heat and smoke as archaeologists found in one area of Trimithis (Boozer 2015b: 96, 193; Hope 1980: 303, 307– 311) (Figure 7). In sum, the ‘common sense’ assumption that certain craft activities might have been disruptive or unpleasant to neighbors often seems to have been irrelevant to their placement within a settlement. The advantages of integrating working and living spaces as well as the economic and social benefits of spreading industries across settlements may have outweighed the physical discomfort caused by the odors, heat, and smoke produced by certain types of craftwork.

Figure 6. Mortar from Karanis House C51 with pestle from Karanis House BC 39 (from Husselman 1979: pl. 87a. Courtesy of the Kelsey Museum).

The quantity and quality of additional vessels for serving and consuming food varied according to the economic status of the household, as can be determined from a comparison between Houses B1 and B2 at Trimithis (Boozer 2007). Wealthier families might have been able to serve food and drink using glassware and imported terra sigillata vessels or one of its imitators, such as North African red slip ware and locallyproduced oasis polished ware, as found in Trimithhis House B1. Humbler families relied more significantly on crude local wares similar to the ones they used for food preparation, as found in Trimithis House B2 (Cervi 2015; Dixneuf 2015). In addition to signaling differences between households, the distinction between who could handle what types of crockery and at what stages of the process may have signaled status differences among women within a single household. 213

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Figure 7. Plan of Trimithis Area 1 detail showing the proximity between ceramics kilns and House B2 within a mixed-usage area of the site (Courtesy of the Amheida Project).

individuals working on otherworldly affairs required abodes that separated them from ordinary life.

Roman Egypt offers at least one category of work that does not fit this model; mortuary work. As previously noted, necropolis workers in some regions were required to conduct their craft outside of the city proper. Their production processes involved not simply the use of chemical agents to transform the physical body, but also a religious performance to support the intangible components of personhood. The requirement that mortuary workers dwell and work away from the settlement suggest that people who did this sort of transformative work must separate themselves from the living. A less clear case of separation concerns the dwellings of priests, which can often be found adjacent to temples (e.g., Tebtynis) rather than distributed across the settlement (Langellotti 2020). These houses were not quiet refuges from religious life in the temple. Priests may have been visited by individuals looking for medical cures or answers to questions. Although the placement of their houses separated some priests from other people, it was not as absolute as in the case of the Theban mortuary workers. These preliminary examples suggest that it would be worthwhile investigating if

Within the home it seems that specialized crafts were segregated from everyday domestic life and work by either time (e.g., carpentry) or space (e.g., ceramics production). By contrast, mundane domestic tasks seem to have been clustered in spaces to suit the person working, namely the female producer. Usually the woman of the house had to multitask rather than focus all of her attention upon a single chore. For this reason, many of her tasks were grouped together in exterior courtyards, as we saw above, enabling her to turn her attention back-and-forth between cooking, childcare, animal care, weaving, and so on. Conclusions and suggestions for future research This brief exploration of working at home draws our attention to the themes of people, places, time, matter, and production processes. Since little work has been done on domestic production or even proper contextual 214

Anna Lucille Boozer: Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home ceramics workers had dedicated spaces to produce their craft.

analyses of individual houses in Roman Egypt, the results of this study serve as preliminary suggestions for future research on domestic production.

Fifth, dwelling and work space patterns may reveal ideological beliefs about certain types of work. Mortuary workers worked and dwelled away from the rest of the settlement in Thebes and possibly other settlements in Roman Egypt. Other small-scale producers were enmeshed within neighborhoods regardless of the unpleasant side-effects that some forms of their production might generate. Women’s work, in some cases, shifted from open-air courtyards that were often shared between households to more isolated interior spaces in later phases of Roman rule. This change surely impacted everyday social interactions. The reasons for this change are not clear at this time, but would be worth examining in more detail when more houses become available for study.

First, we must remain attentive to the intersectional identities of those who performed work. Individual roles varied from one household to the next and evolved over time, even though scholars can discern common patterns from a broad vantage. Gender appears to have been a significant factor in determining an individual’s labor, tools, and work spaces. Second, the absence of clearly clustered crafts within settlements suggests that craftspeople were neither physically nor socially isolated from people with different vocations or from different socio-economic strata. The distribution of craftwork across settlements made life more convenient for inhabitants who might need to acquire a wooden toy for a child or a cloak for a spouse; they would not have to travel far from home to obtain most goods. This arrangement also enabled craftworkers to benefit from social connections with their neighbors and relatives. The main exception to this pattern appears to be mortuary workers.

These preliminary suggestions about the people, practices, matter, time, and spaces of domestic work reveal social perspectives upon how people thought things should be. They hint at the association of positive or negative values within economic actions and interactions (Hendon 2000). Here, it seems that households whose vocations involved disruptive smells, temperatures, and smoke might have been less concerning to neighbors than households whose vocations involved dealing with otherworldly matters as we saw in the case of necropolis workers. Equally the multiple roles a woman took on during the day were reflected by her multipurpose tools and workspaces. Craftsmen, and those who trained with them, were more likely to have had the privilege of dedicated spaces and tools for doing their work without undue interruptions relating to other household matters.

Third, while craft specialists such as necropolis workers and ceramicists often worked in dedicated spaces, women tended work in multifunctional spaces. The variability between households must be kept in mind; however, even domestic production tools might become more differentiated once more contextual analyses of Romano-Egyptian houses become available.9 For example, it is already clear that wealthier households had specialized serving vessels and a wider range of crockery than those used by women from lower socioeconomic strata, as can be seen by the comparison between Trimithis House B1 and House B2, as detailed above (Boozer 2007).

These preliminary findings echo what we ourselves have discovered when much of the contemporary world returned to living and working at home to manage the coronavirus pandemic. Once again households began to negotiate who gets to work in which domestic spaces, what tools each person has at their disposal, and how much focused time each person is allotted. Disparities have arisen on the basis of gender, age, socio-economic group, and geographic location. Societal values have once again appeared most forcefully in the home.

Fourth, the range in the specialization of tools and work spaces appears to be mirrored by the amount of focused time that people were able to dedicate to their work. Women, who may have been expected to multitask, usually concentrated their variety of work tools and equipment within courtyard spaces. These spaces allowed them to turn their attention from weaving, to animals, to children, to cooking, and so on. By contrast,

At the time this book went to press the only contextual excavation report of a Romano-Egyptian house is Boozer 2015b, as noted above.

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No Place Like Home Boozer, A.L. 2021. At Home in Roman Egypt: A Social Archaeology. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boozer, A.L. forthcoming. Spaces and places. In V. Vuolanto and C. Laes (eds) A Cultural History of Youth in Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowen, G.E. 2001. Texts and Textiles: A Study of the Textile Industry at Ancient Kellis. The Artifact 24: 18–28. Brumfiel, E.M. 1991. Weaving and Cooking: Women’s Production in Aztec Mexico, in J.M. Gero and C.M. Wright (eds) Engendering Archaeology: Women in Prehistory: 224–251. Oxford: Blackwell. Carter, T. 2007. The theatrics of technology: Consuming obsidian in the Early Cycladic burial arena. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 17(1): 88–107. Cervi, A. 2015. Glass vessels, in A.L. Boozer (ed.) A Late Romano-Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis: Amheida House B2: 319–340. New York: ISAW and New York University Press. Clarysse, W. and D.J. Thompson. 2006. Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt. Vol. I: Population Registers (P. Count). Vol. II: Historical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Correas-Amador, M. 2013. Ethnoarchaeology of Egyptian Mudbrick Houses: Toward a Holistic Understanding of Ancient Egyptian Domestic Architecture Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Durham. Cromwell, J. 2020 Domestic textile production in Dakhleh Oasis in the fourth century AD in M. MossakowskaGaubert (ed.) Egyptian Textiles and their Production: ‘Word’ and ‘Object’ (Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods): 139–149. Lincoln, NE: Zea Books. Crown, P.L. and W.H. Wills. 1995. The Origins of Southwestern Ceramic Containers: Women’s Time Allocation and Economic Intensification. Journal of Anthropological Research 51(2):173–186. D’Altroy, T.N. and C.A. Hastorf (eds) 2001 Empire and Domestic Economy. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers. Davoli, P. 1998. L’archeologia Urbana nel Fayyum di età ellenistica e romana (Vol. Monografie 1). Bolognia: Generoso Procaccini. Depraetere, D.D.E. 2002. A comparative study on the construction and the use of the domestic bread oven in Egypt during the Graeco-Roman and Late Antique/Early Byzantine period. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Institutes Abteilung Kairo 58: 119–156, Plates 115–116. Derda, T. 1991. Necropolis Workers in Graeco-Roman Egypt in the Light of the Greek Papyri. Journal of Juristic Papyrology 21: 13–36. Dixneuf, D. 2015. La Céramique de la Maison B2, in A.L. Boozer (ed.) A Late Romano Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis: Amheida House B2: 201–280. New York: ISAW and New York Univeristy Press.

References Cited Allen, M.L. 1985. The Terracotta Figures from Karanis: A Study of Technique, Style, and Chronology in Fayoumic Coroplastics, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Aravecchia, N. 2012. The Church Complex of ‘Ain elGedida, Dakhleh Oasis, in R. S. Bagnall, P. Davoli, and C.A. Hope (eds) The Oasis Papers 6: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis: 391–408. Oxford: Oxbow. Aravecchia, N. 2018.‘Ain el-Gedida: 2006–2008 Excavations of a Late Antique Site in Egypt’s Western Desert. New York: ISAW and New York University Press. Aston, D. 1989. Ancient Egyptian “fire dogs” — A new interpretation. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 45: 27–32, Tafel 21. Bagnall, R.S. (ed.) 1997. The Kellis Agricultural Account Book (P.Kell. IV Gr. 96). Oxford: Oxbow. Bagnall, R.S. and R. Cribiore 2006. Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt 300 BC - AD 800. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ballet, P. and F. Mahmoud. 1987. Moules en terre cuite d’Éléphantine (Musée copte): Nouvelles données sur les ateliers de la région d’Assouan à l’époque byzantine et aux premiers temps de l’occupation arabe. Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 87: 53–72. Barrett, C.E. 2015. Terracotta figurines and the archaeology of ritual: Domestic cult in GrecoRoman Egypt, in S. Huysecom-Haxhi and A. Muller (eds) Figurines grecques en contexte: Présence muette dans le sanctuaire, la tombe et la maison: 401–419. Villeneuve d’Ascq, France: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. Boozer, A.L. 2007. Housing Empire: The Archaeology of Daily Life in Roman Amheida, Egypt. (PhD Unpublished Dissertation), Columbia University, New York, New York. Boozer, A.L. 2012. A Preliminary Report on Courtyard C2. Retrieved from http://www.learn.columbia.edu/ amheida/html/field_reports.html: Boozer, A.L. 2013. A Preliminary Report on Courtyard C2C. Retrieved from Amheida.org: https://www. amheida.org/inc/pdf/Report2013_Reading.pdf Boozer, A.L. 2015a. Inside and Out: Romano-Egyptian Housing from the Fayyum and the Dakhleh Oasis, in A.A. Di Castro, C.A. Hope, and B.E. Parr (eds) Housing and Habitat in Ancient Mediterranean: Cultural and Environmental Responses: 187–200. Leuven: Peeters. Boozer, A.L. 2015b. A Late Romano-Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis: Amheida House B2. New York: ISAW and New York University Press. Boozer, A.L. 2015c. Woven Material, in A.L. Boozer (ed.) A Late Romano-Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis: Amheida House B2: 397–405. New York: ISAW and New York University Press. 216

Anna Lucille Boozer: Chapter 13. Living and Working at Home Droß-Krüpe, K. 2016. Spatial Concentration and Dispersal of Roman Textile Crafts, in A. Wilson and M. Flohr (eds) Urban Craftsmen and Traders in the Roman World: 234–351. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Draycott, J. 2012. Approaches to Healing in Roman Egypt. Oxford: BAR Archaeological Reports. Eccleston, M. 2002. Metalworking at Kellis: A preliminary report, in C.A. Hope and G.E. Bowen (eds) Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998–1999 Field Seasons: 143–149. Oxford: Oxbow. Flohr, M. 2007. Nec quicquam ingenuum habere potest officina? Spatial contexts of urban production at Pompeii, AD 79. BABESCH - Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 82(1): 129–148. doi:10.2143/bab.82.1.2020765 Flohr, M. 2019.Work and Workplaces, in E. Lytle (ed.) A Cultural History of Work in Antiquity: 57–72. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Giddens, A. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Harland, P. 2003. Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis: Fortress. Hawke, D.F. (1989 [1988]) Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Hendon, J.A. 1996. Archaeological Approaches to the Organization of Domestic Labor: Household Practice and Domestic Relations. Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 45–61. Hendon, J.A. 1999. Multiple sources of prestige and the social evaluation of Women in Prehispanic Mesoamerica, in J.E. Robb (ed.), Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory: 257–276. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University. Hendon, J.A. 2000. Having and Holding: Storage, Memory, Knowledge, and Social Relations. American Anthropologist 102(1): 42–53. Hendon, J.A. 2007. Production as Social Process. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 17(1): 163–168. Hendrickx, S. 1988. Habitations de potiers à Elkab à l’époque romaine, in W. Clarysse and H. Willems (eds) Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur: 1353–1376. Leuven: OLA 85. Hope, C.A. 1980. The Dakhleh Oasis Project: Report on the study of the pottery and kilns. Journal for the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 10: 283– 313, Plates XVII–XXIX. Hope, C.A. 1987. The Dakhleh Oasis Project: Ismant elKharab 1988–1990. Journal for the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 12(4): 157–176. Hope, C.A. 1997. The find context of the Kellis Agricultural Account Book, in R.S. Bagnall (ed.), The Kellis Agricultural Account Book: 5–14. Oxford: Oxbow.

Hope, C. A., and G.E. Bowen 1999. The archaeological context, in I. Gardner, A. Alcock, and W.-P. Funk (eds) Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis Volume 1: 96–111. Oxford: Oxbow. Hope, C. A., and G.E. Bowen (eds) 2022. Kellis: A Roman Period Village in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hruby, Z.X. 2007. Ritualized chipped‐stone production at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 17(1): 68–87. Husselman, E.M. 1979. Karanis Excavations of the University of Michigan in Egypt, 1928–1935: Topography and Architecture: A Summary of the Reports of the Director, Enoch E. Peterson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Joyce, R.A. 1993. Women’s Work: Images of Production and Reproduction in Pre-Hispanic Southern Central America. Current Anthropology 34(3): 255–274. Joyce, R.A. 2000. Girling the Girl and Boying the Boy: The Production of Adulthood in Ancient Mesoamerica. World Archaeology 31: 473–483. Kloppenborg, J.S. 1996. Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy, and Membership, in J.S. Koppenborg and S.G. Wilson (eds) Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World: 16–30. London: Routledge. Kramer, C. 1979. An Archaeological View of a Contemporary Kurdish Village: Domestic Architecture, Household Size, and Wealth, in C. Kramer (ed.) Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology: 139–63. New York: Columbia University Press. Kramer, C. 1982. Village Ethnoarchaeology: Rural Iran in Archaeological Perspective. New York: Academic. Langellotti, M. 2020. Village Life in Roman Egypt: Tebtunis in the First Century AD. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCall, J.C. 1999. Structure, Agency, and the Locus of the Social: Why Poststructural Theory is Good for Archaeology, in J.E. Robb (ed.) Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory: 16–20. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University. Meskell, L. 2002. Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Miller, H.M.L. 2007. Associations and ideologies in the locations of urban craft production at Harappa, Pakistan (Indus Civilization). Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 17(1): 37–51. Nevett, L.C. 2011. Family and Household, Ancient History and Archaeology: A Case Study from Roman Egypt, in B. Rawson (ed.) A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds: 15–31. Malden: Blackwell. Nicholson, P.T. 2013. Working in Memphis: The Production of Faience at Roman Period Kom Helul. London: Egypt Exploration Society. Ortner, S.B. 1984. Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(1): 126–166. 217

No Place Like Home Ortner, S.B. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Papakonstantinou, Z. 2019. Work and leisure, in E. Lytle (ed.) A Cultural History of Work in Antiquity: 159–171. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Pauketat, T.R. 2000. The Tragedy of the Commoners, in M.-A. Dobres and J.E. Robb (eds) Agency in Archaeology113–129. London: Routledge. Pauketat, T.R. and S.M. Ault 2003. Mounds, memory, and contested Mississipian history, in R.M. Van Dyke and S.E. Alcock (eds) Archaeologies of Memory: 151–179. London: Routledge. Pudsey, A. 2013. Children in Roman Egypt, in J.E. Grubbs and T.G. Parkin (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Children and Education in the Greco-Roman World: 484–509. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pudsey, A. 2017. Children’s cultures in Roman Egypt, in L. Grig (ed.) Popular Culture in the Ancient World: 208– 234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rondot, V. 2004. Tebtynis II. Le temple de Soknebt- ynis et son dromos. Le Caire: Institut français dʼarchéologie orientale du Caire Rowlandson, J. (ed.) 1998. Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saller, R.P. 2003. Women, Slaves, and the Economy of the Roman Household, in D.L. Balch and C. Osiek (eds) Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue: 185–204. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans. Santley, R.S. and K.G. Hirth (eds) 1993. Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica: Studies of the Household, Compound, and Residence. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Schatzki, T.R. 2001. Introduction: Practice Theory, in T.R. Schatzki, G. Knorr Cetina, and E.V. Savigny (eds) The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory: 1–14. London: Routledge. Schatzki, T.R. 2002. The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schatzki, T.R. 2016. Practice Theory as Flat Ontology, in G. Spaargaren, D. Weenink, and M. Lamers (eds) Practice Theory and Research: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Life: 28–42. London: Routledge.

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Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional?: An Ubaid Period Burnt Structure at Kenan Tepe, Turkey Marie Hopwood Can a house fire ever be described as ‘simple?’ Archaeologically, burnt structures represent incredible levels of preservation as fire transforms organic matter into carbonized remains that can survive for thousands of years. In our own lived experiences we recognize the immediacy required by an uncontrolled domestic fire to evacuate and get to safety. When we come across evidence of a burnt dwelling archaeologically, particularly in smaller sites with limited numbers of dwellings, it is compelling to assume that the fire must

have been accidental since who would want to risk their own space and belongings, as well as those of their close family or community members? If an ancient structure fire was accidental, then the evidenced preserved in carbon may suggest the last moments of occupation. Perhaps the hurried evacuation of a home, grabbing items in flight, with the majority of surviving evidence remaining in the place (or close to it) it was last used or positioned by those who lived there. The charred evidence of an archaeological house fire provides

Figure 1. Kenan Tepe is located along the banks of the upper Tigris River, with the Ubaid Period settlement eroding out of the hillside facing the river (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

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Figure 2. The Burnt Structure is located in the southern portions of Area D on the eastern side of the tepe overlooking the Tigris River (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

significantly more information than those structures that were systematically abandoned, the occupants relocating their belongings and even sweeping the corners clean before moving on. Because archaeological interpretations are often shaped by our own modern understanding of the rarity of intentional house fires, or at least the extreme consequences and implications of this type of destruction as being severe to the point of unthinkable by most, we tend first to believe ancient house fires were accidental. Yet not all house fires today are accidental, and the same was true for the ancient past. Some fires are, and were, intentional, signifying a meaningful and ritualized event.

was built up to a height of 32 m (Figure 2). Evidence of the Ubaid-period occupation was eroding out of the eastern side of the tepe, which was also clearly an issue for the inhabitants during their lifetimes, as evidenced by a significant retaining wall buttressing the structures on that side of the slope (Figure 3). The full extent of the Ubaid-period occupation cannot be gauged due to an extensive overburden at the top of the hill prohibiting complete exposure. Over the course of seven excavation seasons, however, numerous houses, storage rooms, and work areas were uncovered with radiocarbon dates placing village occupation at a roughly 40–year time span between 4700–4660 BC (Parker 2012: 295). Sometime close to 4660 BC a house fire broke out in Building #4, creating the preservation of what came to be called the ‘Burnt Structure’ (Figure 4).

Indeed, just such an intentional fire occurred in the 5th millennium BC at the Ubaid-period settlement of Kenan Tepe, in what is today southeastern Turkey (Figure 1) (Parker 2012; Parker and Dodd 2005; Parker et al. 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009). The initial settlement was established on a naturally occurring low rise along the Tigris River, which, over the course of generations,

When the Burnt Structure was consumed by fire it does not appear that the surrounding structures were affected (Parker 2012: 295). The ruined building was 221

No Place Like Home (2012) hypothesized that the fire was accidental, and all subsequent interpretations have built upon that assumption (Graham and Smith 2013; Kennedy 2020; Kennedy and Hopwood forthcoming). However, in an examination of evidence for food preparation in the Burnt Structure focusing on ground stone tools, it was surprising to discover a significant absence of this material within the otherwise astounding bounty of archaeological preservation (Kennedy and Hopwood forthcoming). The combination tool sets of grinding slabs/querns with handstones, as well as mortars and pestles, are basic to a household’s sustenance to the point of being diagnostic of domestic spaces. The near absence of ground stone tools in and around the Burnt Structure was therefore glaring. If the Burnt Structure was a domestic building, as all other evidence pointed to, where are the grinding stones requisite to provide food for the inhabitants? Was the food processed elsewhere? Is it possible that if the house fire was accidental that the inhabitants were able to save certain valuable items before the structure collapsed? Alternatively, if the fire was instead intentional, could the ‘missing’ artifacts point to items having been removed before the destruction? These questions are explored here with the goal of elucidating the presence or absence of ground stone food preparation tools as evidence for a planned abandonment prior to the ritual closing of a home. The importance of ground stone tools Sometimes the simplest tools are anything but. Ground stone food processing tools can appear ‘simple’ due to their often roughhewn form and evidence of daily, routine battering. The tandem tool sets are not known for their nuance, but instead for their crushing power. Whether using a handstone/grinding slab or mortar/ pestle, the central purpose is to aggressively pulverize materials and reduce their basic particle size (Adams 2010, 2013, 2014; Rosenberg 2004; Wright 1991, 1992). This reductive task of food processing using ground stone tools has been integral to households throughout the Neolithic era (and still today) largely due to the region’s well documented obsession with certain grass seeds (Atalay and Hastorf 2006; Ebeling and Rowan 2004; Hastorf 2012; Kuijt and Goring-Morris 2002; Peterson 2002; Rowan and Ebeling 2016). Wild forms of emmer and einkorn wheat, as well as barley, grew in fantastic profusion along the waterways where many settlements began. Inedible raw, these seeds required processing in order to be digestible. Similar dependences can be seen with rice and maize-based agricultural societies, as evidenced in the archaeological signatures of food processing in other regions of the world (Brumfiel 1991; Liu et al. 2007).

Figure 3. The steep slope of the tepe affected the structure of the village itself where they built an extensive stone retaining wall to support that area of the village (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

knocked down, leveled out and the space was never built upon again, even though the village itself would continue for generations. The preservation from the Burnt Structure is unparalleled at Kenan Tepe, providing a glimpse of activities and community choices not otherwise seen. Impressions of basketry, remnants of a pile of chaff heaped against a wall, and even collapsed roofing materials were preserved showing evidence of previously unknown roof construction. Two forms of material culture that were anticipated to also have survived the conflagration were pottery and ground stone tools, the ubiquitous evidence of living as seen through meal preparation and consumption within or near a household. As was expected, pottery from the Burnt Structure was abundant, uncovered in contexts not otherwise seen in the Kenan Tepe Ubaidperiod village (Kennedy 2020; Kennedy and Hopwood forthcoming; Parker and Kennedy 2010). In the initial publication discussing the Burnt Structure, Parker

Despite the often intense processing requirements, these grass seeds were deemed so desirable that a 222

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Figure 4. Rooms 1-3 make up the Burnt Structure (or Building #4) from the Ubaid Period village (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

mutual dependence formed between plants and people, transforming and domesticating both groups over the millennia. As we have seen, food, unless under dire situations, is rarely only about survival, but instead is about life in all of its abundant cultural diversity (Atalay and Hastorf 2006; Bray 2003; Hopwood 2010, 2012, 2013; Hopwood and Mitra 2012; Pollock 2003, 2012). Ancient experimentation with these erstwhile wild seeds lead to sprouting, malting, roasting, boiling, crushing, grinding, fermenting, baking, or otherwise transforming the grain into a myriad of foods. These were no basic ingredients, but culturally-imbued foods that not only supported a group’s nutritional needs, but their cultural desires as well. Food nourishes more than just the body, and grain-based foods did that for people of the Ubaid-period village at Kenan Tepe.

This also begs the question of how much grain would be required to feed a Neolithic community. Eitam et al. (2015: 5) suggest an approximate three liters of grain required per person each day at Neolithic sites. To provide this quantity of grain in an edible form, even for a small group, would require intensive labor in harvesting, storing, cleaning, processing, and preparing the cereal grains. Many of these tasks were likely carried out simultaneously. For instance, some grain could have been germinating before entering the beer fermenting process while the building’s inhabitants were sharing a meal, eating bread baked earlier that day, and drinking beer that had been brewed a few days earlier. The various stages required to feed a household on a daily basis would take up a good deal of time and energy. Processing and preparing the grain into a cooked grain or porridge, a soup, a loaf of bread, or a bowl of beer, are only a few of the possibilities available to these ancient providers. Yet all of these foodstuffs require ground stone food processing tools at some stage in their transformation from being inedible to delicious.

The implications of the reliance on cereal grain-based foods were felt daily, as multiple levels of processing and preparation were practiced in ancient domestic multi-tasking. Graham and Smith (2012) detail the various stages of grain processing as carried out in both activity and storage areas at Kenan Tepe, with a focus specifically on evidence of spikelet cleaning (See also Graham 2011). Based on ethnoarchaeological data, Graham and Smith suggest a relatively regular processing of stored grain in the husk to remove the hulls and clean them to spikelet form. There is no evidence at Kenan Tepe of the grain being processed to remove the bran; therefore, once the grain was crushed or ground into flour releasing those oils, the resultant foods would have had an extremely short window of freshness in order to be consumed.

While processing cereal grains with ground stone tools was de rigeur, that is not the extent of these tools’ food preparation potential. Writing after Bollinger (1993), Goldstein (2008: 41) discusses the ethnographic use of ground stone tools by living Andean communities in which mano and metate (hand- and grinding slab tool sets) are used daily for a variety of food processing tasks including: fine-milling of flours from grains and tubers, the extraction of oils from vegetables and seeds, as well as pressing and mincing vegetables for cooking. Spherical handstones, similar to Kenan Tepe’s chert 223

No Place Like Home pounders, were also used by the Andean women to tenderize meat (Johnsson 1986: 47). With these ground stone tools, we can see evidence of meals, as shaped and given meaning through culture, and how they structure the lives of the cooks as well as those who eat the meals (Atalay and Hastorf 2006: 283). It is not only food that is shaped by culture, but the culinary tools as well. Through association with the meals and foods being prepared, the ground stone tools themselves take on meaning linked to their use, as well as to their users (Appadurai 1988; Hodder 2000; Ingold 2007; Kopytoff 1988). Ethnographically, it is women’s labor that is most commonly associated with culinary ground stone tools, and therefore through those tools evidence of women’s activities is also preserved (Adams 2010; Arthur 2010; Brumfiel and Robin 2008; Goldstein 2008; Graff 2012; Peterson 2002, 2010). We can therefore understand our humble ground stone tools as not only symbolizing women’s generative labor in a household, but actually embodying that labor in all of its nuances. This suggests that the ground stone food processing tools at Kenan Tepe were also most likely wielded by women. Thus it would be their generative labor that was slowly ground into the hard surface of the tools, shaping them with every meal prepared. The social lives of the stone culinary tools take on these identities, for good or otherwise, standing for the household and its sustenance (Rucks 1995: 126; Rosenberg 2013). This can be taken further to suggest that the grinding stones, and other artifacts as well, may not only carry meaning, but are intrinsically meaningful (Bray 2009: 358). One way of understanding this meaning and being of objects was explored by Bray (2009) through the Andean concept of camay, or the force that suffuses and enlivens everything. Thus a rock, tree, or ground stone tool does not simply represent an idea, but in fact is the idea. The tools therefore become the labor they embody, mobilized by human actors who are in turn the household and all of the cultural connections that hold that unit together.

Figure 5. A ground stone fishnet weight (D4.4113.50.1) was partially burnt in the fire that consumed the Burnt Structure (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

to smooth out, taking on the shape of the lateral or circular gestures used to process grains. As the surfaces began to smooth out, the stones slowly lose their grip on the materials being processed. When this happened at Kenan Tepe, the surface areas of the tools were pecked to roughen the surfaces again, and then their usage continued. Other times, instead of roughening the surface, the user flipped the stone over, using the obverse face as a grinding slab in its original state of roughness from lack of use. Over time this surface also would smooth out and require roughening, the center mass eventually becoming so thin that further usage threatened to break the stone entirely. When a grinding slab or quern was nearing this level of thinness, it was generally retired from food processing and repurposed.

The value of the ground stone culinary tools for the Ubaid-period community at Kenan Tepe is clearly evident through the extreme use and reuse the tools experienced. While multiple stone types at Kenan Tepe were used for grinding stone creation, including calcareous stone, sandstone, and river conglomerate, it is basalt that was clearly the valued option (See Table and Figures). The characteristic pores or vesicles that permeate this stone, combined with its hardness and durability, make it preferred for ground stone tools wherever this type of stone exists. The vesicles are an original form of grating or crushing apparatus, as materials are either ground laterally through abrasive push/pull motions or pulverized through vertical crushing between surfaces. Over time the sharp edges and overall surface area of these stone tools begins

One such usage was that of a fishnet weight (Hopwood forthcoming). As a tool type, fish net weights are often geometric in form, having been pecked and ground into circular, ovoid, rectangular, or triangular shapes (Figure 5). Each face was ground as smooth as basalt could be, with a biconically drilled hole piercing the center. When examining these weights closely, it became evident the smooth surfaces had been created through previous use as grinding stones. In this form they continued to sustain the community through their use to enable the procurement of sustenance. When not used as a fishnet weight, these retired food processing ground stone tools were often reused in walls or other structures. Rosenberg (2013) suggests a transference of meaning when ground stone tools are 224

Marie Hopwood: Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional? reused as wall cobbles. Through this interpretation, food processing tools reused as cobbles would retain their meaning through social memory as they became part of walls, houses, or other features. These apotropaic powers of protection, creation, and production were created by the common memory of the people using that space, not dissimilar to the apotropaic power of in-floor burials (Hodder and Cessford 2004; Rosenberg 2013). The burial of food processing tools inside a wall would not only be an example of thrifty ‘waste not, want not’ behavior, but also of embedded protection in a structure (Rosenberg 2013: 186). An example of this can be seen at Kenan Tepe in the extensive retaining wall built to the southeast of the Burnt Structure. A substantial number of ground stone tools were found reused within that wall as construction elements, many more in fact than had been recovered either inside or around the Burnt Structure (Kennedy and Hopwood forthcoming).

grinding stone tool sets have been recovered from the site (Hopwood forthcoming), none were recovered from the Burnt Structure or from the activity area directly to the south of its only exterior exit. The Southern Work area is an open area leading up to the entrance in Room 2 that leads into the Burnt Structure. There is a cooking installation set into this area just to the southwest of the structure, and a broken, reused grinding slab was used in this feature (D.6.199.3). Four other ground stone tools were found grouped in the middle of this work space: two small grinding slabs, one quern, and one spherical pounder were found placed together. Instead, we are left with a structure full of evidence of domestic activities preserved in ways not seen elsewhere on the site (Parker 2012), yet this integral toolkit for basic sustenance and meaningful living within a community is missing. Three potential reasons for the absence of the ground stone food processing tools are explored here. First, there is the potential that the ground stone tools were never in the Burnt Structure in the first place. Second, if the fire that destroyed the structure was accidental, then perhaps the valuable ground stone tools were hastily removed during evacuation. Lastly, if the fire was intentional, perhaps the tools were purposefully removed before the setting of the fire.

Exploring the embedded meaning and being of ground stone tools at Kenan Tepe can also be seen in an example of the sealing of an infant burial at the site. Just to the south and slightly earlier than the Ubaid-period Burnt Structure, an infant burial was uncovered. The child died likely close to the time of its birth or at most a few months afterwards, and the burial was carried out in the hamlet’s traditional way (Hopwood, D. 2008). The baby was wrapped in a woven textile, placed in a pot, and buried in a pit dug underneath a work area outside of the home. What set this burial apart from other child burials was the capping of the burial pot with a grinding stone, something not seen before at Kenan Tepe where grave goods are extremely rare for infants (Hopwood, D. 2008). This particular grinding tool, having been used extensively on both sides, was well-worn and had become thin in cross-section. As demonstrated above, even if the tool was too fragile for use in cereal grain processing, there were other functions it could fulfill. Instead of being reused as a fishnet weight that would still provision the living, however, or even used in a structure to shelter the community, this specific stone was given to the dead. Thus, as seen with camay, the stone can be viewed as not only representing the concept of household, or family, or sustenance, it actually becomes those concepts. Not only a physical protection for the child or a representation of food; the tool serves to feed both the body and the spirit.

A place to begin with the question of whether or not ground stone culinary tools should have been present in the Burnt Structure, would be the evidence of the need for these tools in the first place. The dependence on cereal grains as a part of physical and social life has already been established, but is it possible that the processing of these foodstuffs was simply carried out elsewhere and not within the Burnt Structure. Graham and Smith (2012, 2013), as well as others (Graham 2011; Kennedy 2020; Kennedy and Hopwood forthcoming; Parker 2012) have established the evidence of substantial levels of storage and cleaning of wheat and barley on the rooftop of the Burnt Structure, as well as in surrounding work areas. The lack of grinding stones, therefore, is not resultant from a lack of grain to be processed. Store rooms around the Burnt Structure contained grain, in addition to the evidence from the structure itself, featuring piles of chaff and burnt baskets of grain, resulting from the initial stages of grain cleaning on the roof top. With dried and potentially malted grain available (Graham 2011) and being processed at that structure, a reasonable assumption would be that the rather heavy processing tools were nearby as well. At least after the fire, however, these tools were not present.

Exploring the absence of ground stone tools With this understanding of ground stone food processing tools as at least representing, if not outright being, a woman’s overt care and protection for her household, the sparse representation of these tools both inside and around the Burnt Structure is surprising (Kennedy and Hopwood forthcoming). While large

Goldstein (2008: 41) and Weismantel (1988) suggest that the absence of grinding stones in a household could be a line of evidence indicative of a building’s stage of life, and not only that reflecting abandonment. Seen ethnographically in Andean regions, when a young 225

No Place Like Home couple first starts their own household in a structure separate from their parents, they may not yet have procured a set of grinding tools of their own (Goldstein 2008: 41). To carry out her routine food processing activities, the young woman visits her parents’ house daily to use her mother’s culinary tools until her own household is established. This suggests that the absence of ground stone tools from what otherwise appears to be a domestic space could indicate a beginning in a building’s history rather than its end. If this was the case for the Burnt Structure, it is possible that the missing evidence would have been present in a different, but likely nearby location. The abundant evidence of grain cleaning at the structure, however, suggests that these activities would have been carried out near the ground stone tools required for their further transformation. To cart the grain up to the roof top for processing only to move it again to a different structure for grinding seems an inefficient use of time. Therefore, the greater likelihood that the tools were, during its life, present in the Burnt Structure, requires alternative explanations for the absence. If grain processing was present in the structure, perhaps the tools were moved before (or because of) the fire.

determines the amount of grain that can be processed at any given time. These larger netherstones, particularly when created from heavy basalt, can be of significant weight. They are movable, but not necessarily easily and not if a person is already carrying something else in a rapid evacuation. If these large stones had been present in the Burnt Structure before the fire, it is reasonable to think that these valuable items would have been retrieved if possible. The importance and meaning embedded within a ground stone tool set, an irreplaceable netherstone, representing household sustenance, could rank it as precious. The absence of grinding stones for household sustenance in the Burnt Structure could, therefore, have resulted from the relocation of those integral tools out of the burning house to another place. While the main priority would have been to save family members, depending on the speed and immediacy of the blaze, someone could have attempted to save items of great value, particularly those difficult or costly to replace. If the fleeing inhabitants were only able to salvage a few integral pieces then this could explain the wealth of items, such as the pottery, baskets of grain, and more, that remained in place to be destroyed by the fire. This interpretation is based on the assumption that the fire was accidental in nature and spread rapidly before it could be contained. A quite different interpretation would result from an intentional blaze.

This leads to the second interpretation, which suggests that the missing ground stone culinary tools were salvaged from the burning building before it collapsed. The idea of a home burning, of a fire starting in the night and not being detected, is the stuff of nightmares. Today people are encouraged to create and practice escape plans should such an emergency arise. While clearly a modern scenario, it is also possible that ancient peoples created contingency plans in case disaster were to strike, making mental lists of what valuables to attempt to save should the need arise. Parker (2012) initially hypothesized an accidental start to the fire at the Burnt Structure with a potential starting point in Room 3. This small storage room at the back, northeast corner of the building was only accessible from the main living space by stepping over a low wall into the storage area. At the time of the fire, Room 3 held a quantity of animal dung, potentially in dried cake form as fuel (Parker 2012; Miller 1984; Smith et al. 2019). The only interior hearth for the structure was also located in the back northeastern corner of the building, relatively close to the entrance to the store room. This space shows intense levels of carbonization of the animal dung, leading to Parker’s interpretation of this as a potential starting point of the fire.

The third and final explanation explored here for the absence of ground stone tools in the Burnt Structure at Kenan Tepe, asserts that the fire was intentional rather than accidental. As just described above, an accidental fire moving quickly could inspire a rapid evacuation of the structure, resulting in some items saved while others would be lost. An intentional blaze could also result in the removal of items from a structure, but in a more systematic and planned manner. To fully explore this line of thought, the issue of a fast spreading fire (or not) must be addressed. As seen from the Neolithic and other eras, clay-based structures may not preserve to even a meter above ground level after archaeological deposition. Particularly when dealing with pisé or wattle and daub construction, anything that is not true baked brick often wants to return to the dirt from which it came. Through the fire that destroyed the Burnt Structure, we see a better picture of how the building itself was constructed, an important line of evidence in determining how it was destroyed by the fire. Parker (2012: 293) notes that the walls were constructed out of unbaked clay brick. In the structures at Kenan Tepe not affected by fire, no organic structural elements are evident and the walls survive only as knee-high features.

If the house fire was accidental, it is possible that when the severity of the fire became clear, the inhabitants removed valuable items before they were lost. This could explain the absence of large grinding slabs in the Burnt Structure, which were regularly found in other parts of the site, for household use. The size of the netherstone (grinding slab, quern or mortar)

For the Burnt Structure, however, structural evidence was better preserved, including materials linked to the construction of a substantial ceiling/roof/rooftop 226

Marie Hopwood: Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional? work area (Parker 2012: 293). The roof/ceiling was built by first laying roughhewn boughs relatively close together across the open space between the walls of Room 1. Once the beams were in place, a thick layer of clay was smoothed over the beams and allowed to dry. This was then topped by a layer of reeds and a second, thick layer of clay that in some places measured 30 cm in depth (Parker 2012: 294). The topmost surface of the ‘roof,’ which would have been the ‘floor’ for the rooftop work areas, was carefully smoothed. Parker (2012: 294) suggests it may have had a texture similar to carefully prepared earthen floors seen in houses throughout the region. This ceiling/rooftop surface capped Rooms 1, 2 and 3, with the potential of covering Rooms 4 and 5 as well (Parker 2012: 294).

to materials and ideas that would have been brought to the region from far southern cultures in ancient Mesoamerica (Crown 2018). As a part of transitioning from the previous political structure to the new, a number of rooms in Chaco’s Pueblo Bonito were ritually closed. In her analysis, Crown paid special attention to the closure of Room 28, in large part due to its high concentration of special items and its destruction by fire. The entrance to this room was blocked by 30 cylindrical vessels indicative of the cacao drink iconic of the previous power structure (Crown 2018: 393). Inside the room, 99 of the same cylindrical jars were placed on a wooden shelf, showered with turquoise and shell beads, and then set ablaze by a fire started below the shelving (Crown 2018: 398). Crown details this closing of the room, the physical and symbolic blockage of the passageway with vessels, and then the closure and deanimation of the space with fire (2018: 394). Similarly to Kenan Tepe, the rooms in Pueblo Bonito were built of mudbrick and there were few flammable construction materials present. The fire had to have been set intentionally and the situation created in such a way that the space could be ritually transformed. The fire did not spread to other parts of the pueblo, and the ritually closed area was never occupied again.

Those of us who live in wood and wood-product based houses may assume that all houses burn rapidly, but other types of construction materials do not burn with such rapidity or thoroughness. In her exploration of house fires for the Neolithic Opovo community, Stevanović (1997: 335) discusses the difficulty of actually burning wattle and daub structures (also Bankoff and Winter 1979; Gordon 1953: Hansen 1961; Shaffer 1993). Due to their high mineral contents, neither mudbrick nor clay catch fire well and thus do not easily spread or feed a fire. For the Burnt Structure, the main structure is clay-based and therefore not flammable. The roof does contain flammable materials in the form of wooden beams and the reed layer, and there were flammable materials inside the house with basketry and floor mats. The question becomes whether there was enough flammable materials present to feed and support an accidental fire in a context that does not want to burn.

It is the use of fire and of items left behind that allows for interesting interpretations of the Kenan Tepe materials as well. If the fire that consumed the Burnt Structure was intentional, it is not necessary for the room to have been completely emptied in advance. There very well may have been some items that ‘should’ have been left behind, things that were either required or symbolically charged, so that their leaving, or offering to the fire, allowed that space to be closed or deanimated (Stevanović 1997). With this understanding in place, it is possible that some pottery and other household items could have been left behind intentionally as a part of a ritual closure. It is also possible that other items, such as the large ground stone processing tools so integral to life, might have been removed for use elsewhere in the village.

The assertion here, then, is that the fire was not accidental at all, but intentional, and further, that the intentionality of the fire was not a perverse social act of arson, but perhaps the ritual closing of a house or household. While the absence of ground stone tools could represent a beginning of a young family, it could also be a planned end for a more established group. Up to this point, the discussion has been focused on the missing evidence of ground stone food processing tools, and thus of the ability to feed not only the body but the spirit. What is added here is a discussion on the presence of other special items that were left behind, not associated with food preparation.

Further evidence of a ritual closure of the Burnt Structure is found in a series of unique collections of special, socially-charged artifacts blocking the passageway into the main living area (Figure 6). The only known entrance into the Burnt Structure was through a narrow work space (Room 2) entered from the Southern Work Area. The narrow confines of this room measured only 1.5 m wide by 4 m in length, a proportion that would surely have affected the activities carried out there and the feeling of being in that space. Just inside the threshold of Room 2, on the left, was an offset doorway leading to the main living area (Room 1). Even without the use of a wooden door or woven covering, this offset spacing of doorways served to limit the visibility of interior activities (private) from

Examples of closing structures with ritual and objects can be seen in many cultures, ancient and contemporary, around the planet. One such example is seen at the Ancestral Puebloan site of Chaco Canyon in the USA (Crown 2018). Around 1100 CE the Chacoan community underwent a period of dramatic political and social upheaval. This was represented by a widespread rejection of certain cultural influences, such as drinking cacao-based beverages from specific vessel types linked 227

No Place Like Home

Figure 6. The only ground level entrance to the burnt structure is through Room 2. The locations of the deposits of artifacts blocking the doorway to/from the main living space are marked in blue, with red indicating the starting point of the fire as suggested by Bradley (2012) (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

the rest of the village (public). Placed immediately beyond the doorway on top of the floor was a series of collections of special objects that could have served to both physically and symbolically block, or close, the space. These objects were not buried inside the room, but sitting on top of the floor, blocking the entry to the space. Recovered as multiple collections from a small area, it is possible that originally the items had been placed together, such as on a shelf or in a basket; the collapsing of the roof and the toppling of the walls may have dispersed these special items from their original location. These caches of special artifacts were dense in concentration and unique in the types of items found there. Further, the ritually-charged blockade was never removed.

Cache A contained the largest number of artifacts of the four collections, and was located directly inside the doorway into Room 1 (Table 1). Two andirons made up a part of this collection, identified as such not due to any evidence of burning or use over a fire, but by their friable clay construction and two eye-holes along the top. It is possible that wooden rods or branches could have been put through the eye-holes, this could have supported a plank creating a low profile shelf upon which all or some of the cache items were placed. Along with the two andirons were three finely shaped and ground, stone axe heads (Figure 7). There wasno evidence indicating how the artifacts had been hafted onto handles, or how they were used. Crafted from a heavy, green-black serpentinelike stone, the axe heads were polished to a sheen and had been ground to an obtuse angle at the bit edge, bringing the bit itself to an acute, but not sharp point. Thus, the weapons lacked any true sharpness or cutting power. The thickness of the ‘blade’ combined with its blunt bit edge would make them impractical as working tools in general, but potentially powerful symbolic weapons. Shimelmitz and Rosenberg (2013) suggest that weapons such as these were not made for warfare or intentional killing, but instead were for dueling or ritualized fighting. Whereas warfare is characterized by aggressive force against a separate, political unit, duels are generally practiced between people who share a social or political group (Shimelmitz and Rosenberg 2013: 433). It is intriguing that three such imminently transportable items would be left behind in the doorway of a building intended for deanimation.

Caches A, B, C, and D are discussed separately here based on their physical location during excavation (Figure 4). As introduced above, these caches might have consisted of a single placement of items before the fire, but then were shifted during subsequent destruction of the structure. It is also significant that the closing of the structure did not take place in Room 2, the domestic space that would have been open to public visibility during the use life of the structure. Instead, it is through the secondary door that creates the barrier between public and private that the blockage was created. After the destruction of the building, the Room 2 entrance area would never be rebuilt or utilized again, yet it seems that this was not the important area to seal, but rather the doorway into Room 1. 228

Marie Hopwood: Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional?

Figure 7. These highly polished stone axe heads were a part of Cache A and may have represented a form of ritualized warfare (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

Table 1. Artifact concentrations located in the doorway of Room 1. See Figure X for locations of the specific cache recovery spots. These spots represent archaeological context, but could conceivably have been concentrated in one spot before the fire and collapse of the structure. Artifact Type Description Cache A Andirons

KT

Yellow, brown unfired ceramic andiron. Square in cross section with two holes at top. Height: 12.5 cm, Width: 10.5 cm, Thickness: at base 8.5 cm at top 3 cm. Similar to KT64 and found nearby, but friable and broke during excavation. Shape of top with holes was not reconstructed.

Finely shaped, smooth black granite axe head. Triangular. Bit is ground to acute point, but is not sharp. Length: 8 cm, Height at bit: 2.5 cm, Height at poll: 0.5 cm. Axe heads

Beads Bone awl

Figurine

Obsidian blade Pendant

Finely shaped, smooth black-green granite axe head. Triangular. Bit is ground to acute point, but is not sharp. Length: 4 cm, Height at bit: 3.25 cm, Height at poll: 1 cm.

D.6.167.64 D.6.167.49 D.6.167.14 D.6.167.19

Finely shaped, smooth black-green granite axe head. Triangular. Bit is ground to acute point, but is not sharp. Length: 2.5 cm, Height at bit: 1.75 cm, Height at poll: 0.25 cm.

D.6.167.20

White stone pony bead: 0.5 cm x 0.25 cm.

D.6.167.21

White, calcareous stone bead. Resembles a molar drilled through the center. 1 cm x 0.75 cm.

D.6.167.16

White stone bead: 0.25 cm x 0.1 cm.

D.6.167.22

Shaped from a caprid metatarsal that was split in half lengthwise and sharpened to a 1 cm long needle-like point. Pale grey-blue in colour, potentially from burnt context. Condyle is intact. Length: 10 cm.

D.6.167.2

Shaped from a caprid metatarsal, similar in size and decoration to other bone awls (see D.6.167.3). Shattered so final length and shape are indeterminate. Incised diagonal lines decorated exterior surface. The top of this figurine is ground flat and drilled into the central D.6.167.17 cavity, similar to figurine D.6.167.34, and setting it apart from the complete condyles present on other awls. The fragmented lower end makes final determination difficult. Pale grey-blue in colour. Long thing obsidian blade. Sharpened along both long edges. Broken by tip, so final shape/ length are indeterminate. Length: 8 cm, Width: 0.5 cm.

White stone pendant fragment. Only the top, perforated portion was recovered: 0.25 cm x 0.25 cm.

229

D.6.167.18 D.6.167.27

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Artifact Type Description

Pottery

Whet stone Cache B Bead

Bone awl Grinding slab Mortar Pendants Cache C Bead

Figurine

Ornament Pendant Sealing Spindle whorl Spindle whorl Spindle whorl Cache D

Bead

KT

Finely-made, hand held ceramic cup with a rounded base. The cup could not have stood on its own if set down. Red-brown slip on exterior and interior. Diameter: 11 cm, Height 7 cm.

D.6.167.28

Whet stone or polishing tool. Fine basalt cobble, worn smooth at an angle. 6.9 cm x 5.5 cm. Worn surface 5.1 cm x 3.2 cm.

D.6.167.15

White, calcareous stone bead. Square in plane-view, bulging in side-view. 1 cm x .75 cm.

D.6.167.5

Small, coarsely made pot with carbonization on the base. Base is rounded and it could not have stood on its own. Surface is uneven, bumpy and unsmoothed. Height: 18 cm, Width 16 cm, D.6.167.60 Orifice: 10 cm.

Shaped from a caprid metatarsal that was split in half lengthwise, sharpened to a point (tip is broken), and top is broken. Final length is indeterminate. Pale grey-blue in colour, potentially from burnt context. Incised lines along the surface. Basalt grinding slab, found face down and burned on the top-facing surface. Fine vesicles over all. Length: 25 cm, Width: 18 cm. Basalt mortar ground into the surface of a reused hand stone. Handstone surface: 18 cm x 15 cm. Mortar cup: 9 cm diameter, 3.5 cm depth.

Grinding Slab Jar stopper Pestle

D.6.167.11 D.6.167.1

White stone pendant shaped like a hook. Lower part may be broken. Perforated at top is well worn from suspension.

D.6.167.4

Shell pendant with two drilled perforations. Broken in antiquity.

D.6.167.6

White, calcareous stone bead. Ovoid. Length: .75 cm, Width: .5 cm.

D.6.167.47

Bone figurine, similar in size, shape and decoration to KT D.6.167.3. This figurine is complete. Top end is ground flat and drilled into the bone cavity. Perforation does not continue through the bone. Potential for single-note sound if blown across the top. Two columns of diagonal lines are incised in a cross-hatch pattern across the front. The base is carved into short ‘legs.’ Length: 11.3 cm, Top width: 2.5 cm, Bottom width: 1.2 cm.

D.6.167.34

White stone with black veins carved into a rosette or blossom with 8 ‘petals’ carved into the stone. Petals are separate at edges, but incisions become shallow towards the center. Perforated D.6.167.46 in the center. Diameter: 4.2 cm, Thickness: 2.5 cm. Rectangular obsidian pendant. Drilled to suspend by one narrow side. Length: 3 cm, Width 1 cm. D.6.167.41 Small circular impression of clay used to seal a coiled basket. Exterior retains impressions from D.6.167.45 reeds or textile. Interior retains impressions from three basket coils. Diameter: 3 cm. Ceramic burned black. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.167.38

Ceramic. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.167.40

Ceramic. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 1.5 cm.

Coin-shaped quartz bead, almost translucent. Perforated across equator for suspension. Incised with crisscrossing diagonal lines, similar to the incised bone awls and figurines, such as D.6.167.34. Diameter :1.2 cm, Thickness: .3 cm.

D.6.167.39

D.6.194.21

White, calcareous stone bead. Ovoid. Perforated through its length. Length: 1.1 cm, Width: .6 cm.

D.6.194.23

Heavily accreted stone bead. Surface is covered. Rounded square in shape, with leaf-like incisions (single ‘vein’ down center with diagonal incisions meeting the vein).

D.6.194.25

Small, burnt shell bead with well-worn areas around perforation. Length: 2.1 cm, Width: 1.9 cm, D.6.194.24 Thickness: 1.4 cm.

Similar construction to some of the bone awls, but this is shorter, thicker and more sturdy. Bone awl/drill Spiral striations around the tip from circular piercing or drilling. Length: 9.7 cm, Width: 4 cm, Thickness 2.6 cm, Tip .2 cm. Miniature Ceramic bowl

D.6.167.3

Miniature ceramic bowl. Diameter: 3.5 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.194.14 D.6.194.10

Sandstone grinding slab, potentially broken in antiquity. Surface is arced, indicative of back and D.6.194.8 forth motion. Length: 14 cm, Width 10 cm. Ceramic jar stopper. Base is more narrow than central portion, as if it would fit within a vessel opening without falling through. Height: 10.2 cm, Diameter: 9.4 cm. Naturally egg-shaped pebble with use wear suggestive of pestle usage. Length: 4.5 cm, Maximum diameter: 3.75 cm.

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D.6.194.9 D.6.194.11

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Artifact Type Description

KT

Ceramic spindle whorl. Five pin-prick holes poked into the clay before firing. Grouped in one section. No clear pattern. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.194.13

Ceramic spindle whorl. Base is patterned with thumbnail impressions in five rays of 3-4 impressions each. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.194.16

Ceramic spindle whorl. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2.1 cm.

D.6.194.18

Ceramic spindle whorl. Three pin-prick holes poked into the clay before firing. Diameter: 3 cm, D.6.194.15 Height: 1.5 cm.

Spindle Whorls

Ceramic spindle whorl. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.194.17

Ceramic spindle whorl. Potential for fingernail impressions around diameter, but worn and faded. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 1.5 cm.

D.6.194.19

Ceramic spindle whorl. Fingernail impressions around diameter. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2 cm.

D.6.194.20

Ceramic spindle whorl. Pinprick decoration on base of 10 points that roughly encircle the perforation. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 1.5 cm.

D.6.194.26

White ceramic spindle whorl. Diameter: 3 cm, Height: 2.2 cm.

D.6.194.22

As will be seen with all of the caches, beads and ornaments were important parts of these collections, with an emphasis on stone beads, pendants, and ornaments crafted from white stone. In Cache A this is seen with three white stone beads and a fragment of a white stone pendant. These ornaments were accompanied by a long, thin obsidian blade, and a whet stone. While detailed descriptions of the pottery from the Burnt Structure can be found elsewhere (Parker 2012; Kennedy 2020; Parker and Kennedy 2010), it is of note that two special pottery pieces were a part of this collection as well. One was a small, roughly formed jar, with a rounded base and a constriction at the neck. The second was a finely shaped ceramic cup also with a rounded base. Both cup and jar would have required a resting support or to be held in the hand while in use. They could not have stood upright on their own.

The second collection (Cache B) was found just a step farther into the room from Cache A, and could represent items having been pushed in that direction from the collapse. It is comprised of another white, calcareous bead and two pendants or ornaments. The first pendant is carved out of a smooth, hard white stone and is shaped like a hook, with the basal portion of the hook broken. The perforation for suspension shows significant wear. The second artifact is an opalescent shell ornament with two perforations drilled for suspension or attachment to a string. A bone awl was recovered from this collection as well, along with two ground stone food processing tools. This medium-sized grinding slab was found face down and burnt on its topfacing surface, The mortar is a shallow example, pecked and ground into the surface of what was once a basalt handstone.

The final items from Cache A (though examples of these types were found in the other caches as well) were a bone awl and a carved bone figurine. Both awl and figurine were a light greyish blue color, potentially resulting from a color change during the fire. Both awl and figurine appear to have been carved from caprid metatarsals, though carved in different ways. The bone for the awl had been split in half lengthwise and ground smooth, with the interior cavity exposed and the condyle end retained. The tip was then ground to a long, needle-sharp point. The figurine, on the other hand, may have been carved from a different type of element as it does not retain the condyle, but instead its articular end is ground flat at the top with a hole drilled into the cavity. There are no finger holes drilled into the shaft of the figurine, nor was the base drilled through. Further diagnostic evidence from this figurine is not possible due to its fragmentary condition. A similar figurine from a subsequent cache, however, is complete.

Figure 8. Found in Cache C, the white stone ‘rosette’ (D6.167.46) was carved to shape eight ‘petals’ with a single perforation in the center (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

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No Place Like Home Cache C is again slightly separated from the other collections, located just to the north of Cache B. This collection contains a number items similar to the above two caches, including beads and pendants. A white calcareous bead was found along with a unique ornament in the form of a 4 cm diameter ‘rosette’ or blossom carved out of a hard white stone with fine black veins (see Figure 8). The ornament is perforated in the center and incised with varying depths of lines to create the effect of eight carved ‘petals.’ A final ornament from this collection is a narrow, rectangular obsidian pendant (Figure 9). Measuring 3 cm in length and 1 cm in width, the pendant was drilled at one narrow end for suspension. The pendant had likely once been polished to a high sheen. Three ceramic spindle whorls were also recovered with this collection. A complete bone figurine, similar in size and shape to the one introduced with Cache A, was also recovered in Cache C (Parker et al. 2009: fig. 18). While there are similarities between the bone awls and bone figurines from these collections, two differences include the tops of the artifacts and whether or not they are split. The bone awls retain a condyle at their top, and are split lengthwise. Thus, one metatarsal could be used to create two awls. The figurine, on the other hand, is created through a differently shaped element. The top of the figurine and its articular surface is ground flat, with a hole drilled into the cavity. It is unclear if this hole was created to produce music, or if it may have functioned as a place to insert a fitting for another perhaps organic element into the figurine. This figurine is 11.3 cm in height, with the majority of its surface on one face covered with diagonal, crisscrossing incisions down its body (covering approximately 6 cm). The base of the figurine was ground at a beveled angle to taper into two short legs.

Figure 9. This obsidian pendant was shaped into a rough rectangle and carefully smoothed (© Upper Tigris Archaeology Research Project at Kenan Tepe).

small, perforated shell that was badly burnt in the fire. The last two are roughly 1 cm in size, one disk-shaped and the other a rounded square. Both beads are carved from translucent pale gray quartz, perforated through their length, and incised with diagonal lines similar to those seen on the figurines. On the beads, however, this gives a leaf- or feather-pattern appearance. It is in this final collection that the largest number of ceramic spindle whorls were recovered, nine in total. The spindle whorls fall into a regularized size category, of 3 cm in diameter and ranging from 2–1.5 cm in height. While most are plain ceramic, a number have fingernail impressions in patterns on their base or circumference, and others have pin prick decorations on their exteriors. The spindle whorls are not the only daily activity items included in this collection. There is a small ‘pestle’ in the form of an egg-shaped pebble that appears to have been used to pulverize materials. Its miniature size and fine grain would only make it useful to grind small quantities of a material into a fine powder, such as that used for medicinal herbs, spices, or pigments. A sturdy bone awl or drill was also recovered. This tool lacks the condyle and incisions seen on the other awls, and was constructed from a different, much more substantial area of bone. The tool was ground to a sharp point and retained spiral wear patterns on its tip, as if drilled or rotated to perforate materials.

Also unique to Cache C was the recovery of a small, circular, clay sealing. The inner surface of the sealing retains the impressions of at least three coils of a basket, while the outer surface seems to have been impressed with reeds or a woven textile. It is possible that at least a portion of this cache, and the others as well, was contained within a basket that had been placed in front of the doorway, potentially on top of a low-lying shelf supported by the andirons of Cache A. The basket may have then been crushed during the collapse and the artifacts scattered from their central location into these spaces surrounding the doorway. The final collection from this area is Cache D, which was found just to the south of the doorway. The prevalence of white stone beads is continued here with the recovery of four stone beads in this area. The first bead was carved from white, calcareous stone, similar to those beads introduced above. A second bead was a 232

Marie Hopwood: Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional? The last three items of Cache D include a worn sandstone grinding slab, a ceramic jar stopper and a miniature ceramic bowl or cap. The sandstone grinding slab could have been used as a whet stone, or to process small amounts of materials. It was well worn and arced from repetitive lateral usage. The ceramic jar stopper had a narrow disk-shaped base purportedly to fit inside a vessel’s opening, capped by a slightly larger, squat cone topper. The cone topper would have left a lip over the edge of the vessel, allowing it to be easily removed. The miniature bowl or cap is 3.5 cm in diameter, and has very thin walls.

houses that had been destroyed and built over (Banning and Byrd 1987; Byrd 1994; Hodder and Cessford 2004). Hodder and Cessford (2004) note evidence of social memory at Çatalhöyük in which community members dug down into previously buried houses to retrieve specific items. The precise nature of this removal is seen in the shafts being dug straight down on top of where the item was remembered to be, as opposed to numerous attempted holes or larger swaths exposed. The burning of the Burnt Structure changed its existence, use, and meaning for the population at Kenan Tepe. If the fire had been accidental and the basket of special items dropped when fleeing the structure, it is possible that the rubble of the building could have been searched to find and remove them, as well as other important artifacts. Instead, a wealth of items remained in the structure, and were buried with it.

When taken together, these four caches of artifacts combine both the unusual and the mundane. Items of value, such as the various ornaments and the obsidian pendant, are juxtaposed with handfuls of spindle whorls and awls. Together these items were intentionally grouped and placed in or around a basket, and then positioned to block the doorway into the domestic space of the structure. With this interpretation, the lack of any large ground stone food processing tools could be seen as the intentional removal of such items in advance of the closing of the structure. Some items were removed, others put into place, and the fire was engineered to consume the largely clay-constructed building.

As we strive to understand the ways that culinary practices and other daily activities shaped the lives of the inhabitants of the ancient communities we study, it is also important to explore how irregular events, those that by their very randomness make them stand out in the archaeological record, shaped lives as well. Fire-based events from the ancient past preserve exceptionally well in the archaeological record, yet the experience of these events is difficult to interpret, and the assumption that the event was triggered and experienced as accidental has a strong impact on our interpretations of the archaeological evidence. With conflagration, we cannot assume house fires to be accidental even if we do not have the ability to trace their sources forensically.

Conclusion With this interpretation of the Burnt Structure being intentionally consumed and transformed through fire, the activities associated with this closure would have begun well before the fire itself. As part of the preparation, certain items would have been removed and thus their usefulness and use lives transferred to different places, perhaps even to different people. Coinciding with the removal of some items was the deposition of others. Objects carrying meaning, of production, protection, leadership, and memory were placed together, sealing and blocking the entrance to this space, transforming it from an active household into something else. Socially-charged items were used to physically and symbolically close the structure, and were left in the house as it burned. They were intended for the fire, a part of the ritual transformation of the space from one realm of being into another.

With an interpretation of the conflagration as intentional, the effect of this event on the building’s inhabitants and those in the community is vastly different than if it were accidental or an act of criminal arson. Instead of the stunned, shocked numbness experienced by people as the impact of tragedy sinks in, there could be relief in the knowledge of a ritual well-performed, of the dangerous liminality of untransformed space resolved, and of the ability to start anew with whatever stage had just begun. Stages of life are often marked by transformative rituals, moving an individual from one form of existence to another. Rites of passage that enact these transformations abound in the ethnographic literature, applied to individuals, as well as to objects and structures. In this way we can interpret the transformation of the Burnt Structure through the conflagration of becoming the Burnt Structure, and then completed into something else entirely.

Once the structure was closed and consumed by fire, any walls left standing were toppled inwards. The space was covered up and would not be built on again. The social memory of this place would have been strong. Ritual was enacted and taught in this space, the building closed, and the items left as a part of that closure remained. Across the broader Anatolian and Mesopotamian region numerous examples showcase special items being removed from in-floor burials or

‘No one remembers how the fire started’ Parker (2012: 289) wrote in his exploration of the household archaeology of the Burnt Structure at Kenan Tepe. 233

No Place Like Home He began the chapter with an imagining of what it might have been like to be at that place when it was occurring. The fire spread quickly, perhaps originating in the storeroom, then spreading to the roof beams, collapsing the roof, and once the fire had burned itself out, the house collapsed, and no one went back. This fits with a scenario based on a tragic event started by an accidental fire, yet in its very empathy defuses the agency of destruction. A second interpretation of the Burnt Structure is that the fire was intentional, planned, and part of a ritual closing of that structure. Instead of items accidentally lost to a tragic accident, or absences of artifacts caused by a rapid fleeing of the fiery destruction, carrying whatever valuables could be saved, an intentional starting and nurturing of the conflagration adds a different understanding for the presence and absence of items as a part of a ritual closing of this Ubaid-period structure. With meaning clearly embedded into tools, and at times the items even coming to ‘be’ the labor and meaning they represent, perhaps something similar was taking place with the building, the home, that would become the Burnt Structure. In a very real way, this structure would become no place like (a) home.

late pre-Columbian ofrendas and huacas. Cambridge archaeological journal 19(3): 357-366. Brumfiel, E.M. 1991. Weaving and cooking: Women’s production in Aztec Mexico, in J.M. Gero and M.W. Conkey (eds) Engendering archaeology: Women and Prehistory: 224–251. London: Wiley Blackwell. Brumfiel, E.M. and C. Robin 2008. Gender, households, and society: An introduction. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 18(1): 1–16. Byrd, B.F. 1994. Public and private, domestic and corporate: the emergence of the southwest Asian village. American Antiquity 59(4): 639–666. Crown, P.L. 2018. Drinking performance and politics in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 83(3): 387–406. Ebeling, J.R. and Y.M. Rowan 2004. The archaeology of the daily grind: Ground stone tools and food production in the southern Levant. Near Eastern Archaeology 67(2): 108–117. Eitam, D., M. Kislev, A. Karty and O. Bar-Yosef. 2015. Experimental barley flour production in 12,500-year-old rock-cut mortars in southwestern Asia. PLoS One 10(7): 1–10. Goldstein, R.C. 2008. Hearths, grinding stones, and households: Rethinking domestic economy in the Andes. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 18(1): 37–48. Gordon, D.H. 1953. Fire and the sword: the technique of destruction. Antiquity 27(107):149–152. Graff, S.R. 2012. Culinary preferences: seal-impressed vessels from Western Syria as specialized cookware, in S.R. Graff and E. Rodriguez-Alegria (eds) The Menial Art of Cooking: Archaeological Studies of Cooking and Food Preparation:19–46. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Graham, P.J. 2011. Ubaid period agriculture at Kenan Tepe, southeastern Turkey. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Connecticut. Graham, P.J. and A. Smith. 2013. A day in the life of an Ubaid household: Archaeobotanical investigations at Kenan Tepe, South-eastern Turkey. Antiquity 87(336): 405–417. Hastorf, C.A. 2012. The habitus of cooking practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük: What was the place of the cook? in S.R. Graff and E. Rodriguez-Alegria (eds) The Menial Art of Cooking: Archaeological Studies of Cooking and Food Preparation: 65–86. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Hansen, H.O. 1961. Mudhouses. Oslo: Kulm. Hodder, I. 2000. Agency and individuals in long-term processes, in M.-A. Dobres and J. Robb (eds) Agency in Archaeology: 21–33. London: Routledge Press. Hodder, I. and C. Cessford 2004. Daily practice and social memory at Çatalhöyük. American Antiquity 69(1): 17–40. Hopwood, D.E. 2008. The Changing relationship between the living and the dead: Child burial at the site of Kenan Tepe, Turkey, in K. Bacvarov (ed.)

References Cited Adams, J. 2010. Engendering households through technological identity, in B.J. Roth (ed.) Engendering Households in the Prehistoric Southwest: 208–228. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Appadurai, A. (ed.) 1988. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arthur, K.W. 2010. Feminine knowledge and skill reconsidered: Women and flaked stone tools. American Anthropologist 112(2): 228–243. Atalay, S. and C.A. Hastorf 2006. Food, meals, and daily activities: food habitus at Neolithic Çatalhöyük. American Antiquity 71(2): 283–319. Bankoff, H.A. and F.A. Winter 1982. The Morava valley project in Yugoslavia: Preliminary report, 1977– 1980. Journal of Field Archaeology 9(2): 149–164. Banning, E.B. and B.F. Byrd 1987. Houses and the changing residential unit: domestic architecture at PPNB ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan. In Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 53(1): 309–325. Bollinger, A. 1993 Así se alimentaban los Inkas. La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial “Los Amigos del Libro.” Bray, T.L. 2003. Inka pottery as culinary equipment: food, feasting, and gender in imperial state design. Latin American Antiquity 14(1): 3–28. Bray, T.L. 2009. An archaeological perspective on the Andean concept of camaquen: thinking through 234

Marie Hopwood: Chapter 14. Accidental or Intentional? Babies Reborn: Infant-Child Burials in Pre- and Proto History: 113–121. BAR International Series 1832. Oxford: Archaeopress. Hopwood, M.H. 2010. The fed community: Food preparation and community at the Halaf site of Fıstıklı Höyük, Turkey. PhD Dissertation, Anthropology Department, Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY). Hopwood, M.H. forthcoming. The daily grind: Ground stone artifacts and their use from Ubaid period Kenan Tepe, Turkey, in B.J. Parker (ed.) Kenan Tepe Volume 1: The Ubaid Period. Salt Lake City: University of Utah. Hopwood, M.H. 2012. Food, community and the archaeological past: Creating community during the Halaf period at Fıstıklı Höyük, Turkey, O.P. Nieuwenhuyse, R. Bernbeck, P.M.M.G. Akkermans, and J. Rogasch (eds) Interpreting the Late Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia: 183–190. Belgium: Brepolis Publishers. Hopwood, M.H. 2013. Consuming the past: Sustenance, taste, and the shared embodiment of food preparation, in J. Day (ed.) Archaeology of the Senses: 222–242. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Hopwood, M.H. and M. Siddharatha 2012. Feeding households: A multiproxy method for analysis of food preparation in the Halaf period, at Fıstıklı Höyük, Turkey, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives in Household Archaeology: 219–246. Winona Lake, IL: Eisenbrauns. Ingold, T. 2006. Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos 71(1): 9–20. Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14(1): 1–16. Johnsson, M. 1986. Food and Culture among Bolivian Aymara. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Kennedy, J.R. 2020. Commensality and Labor at Kenan Tepe: A Use–Alteration Analysis of Terminal Ubaid Ceramics. Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton. Kennedy, J.R. and M. Hopwood forthcoming. Household production at Ubaid Kenan Tepe: Evidence from ground stone and ceramic use alteration, in J. Kennedy and P. Mullins (eds) From Households to Empires: Papers in Honor of Bradley J. Parker. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Kopytoff, I. 1988. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process, in A. Apadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective: 64–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuijt, I. and N. Goring-Morris 2002. Foraging, farming, and social complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the southern Levant: A review and synthesis. Journal of World Prehistory 16(4): 361–440. Liu, L., G.A. Lee, L. Jiang and J. Zhang 2007. Evidence for the early beginning (c. 9000 cal. BP) of rice

domestication in China: a response. The Holocene 17(8): 1059–1068. Miller, N.F. 1984. The use of dung as fuel: an ethnographic example and an archaeological application. Paléorient 10(2): 71–79. Parker, B.J. 2012. Domestic production and subsistence in an Ubaid household in Upper Mesopotamia, in B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds) New Perspectives on Household Archaeology: 289–318, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Parker, B.J. and L.S. Dodd 2005. The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP): A preliminary report from the 2002 field season. Anatolica 31: 69–110. Parker, B.J. and J.R. Kennedy 2010. A quantitative attribute analysis of the Ubaid-period ceramic corpus from Kenan Tepe. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 358(1): 1–26. Parker, B.J., C.P. Foster, K. Nicoll, J. R. Kennedy, P. Graham, A. Smith, D.E. Hopwood, M. Hopwood, K. Butler, E. Healey, M.B. Uzel, and R. Jensen 2009. The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP): A preliminary report from the 2007 and 2008 field seasons at Kenan Tepe. Anatolica 35: 85–152. Parker, B.J., C.P. Foster, J. Henecke, M. Hopwood, D. Hopwood, A. Creekmore, A. Demirergi, and M. Eppihimer 2008. Preliminary report from the 2005 and 2006 field seasons at Kenan Tepe. Anatolica 34: 103–176. Parker, B.J., L. Dodd, A. Creekmore, E. Healey, and C. Painter 2006. The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP): A preliminary report from the 2003 and 2004 field seasons. Anatolica 32: 71–151. Parker, B. J., A. Creekmore, L.S. Dodd, E. Moseman, C. Meegan, and P. Cobb 2004. The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP): A preliminary synthesis of the cultural history of Kenan Tepe, in N. Tuna, J. Öztürk, and J. Velibeyoğlu (eds) Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilısu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs Activities in 2001: 547–602. Ankara: Middle East Technical University. Parker, B.J., A. Creekmore, L.S. Dodd, R. Paine, C. Meegan, E. Moseman, M. Abraham, and P. Cobb 2003. The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP): A preliminary report from the 2001 field season. Anatolica 29:103–174. Peterson, J. 2002. Sexual Revolutions: Gender and Labor at the Dawn of Agriculture. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Peterson, J. 2010. Domesticating gender: Neolithic patterns from the southern Levant. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29(3): 249–264. Pollock, S. 2003. Feasts, funerals, and fast food in early Mesopotamian states, in T.L. Bray (ed.) The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires: 17–38, Boston: Springer. 235

No Place Like Home Pollock, S. 2012. Politics of food in early Mesopotamian centralized societies. Origini 34: 153–68. Rosenberg, D. 2004. The pestle: characteristics and changes of stone pounding implements in the Southern Levant from the early Epipalaeolithic through the Pottery Neolithic period. Unpublished MA Thesis, Tel Aviv University. (Hebrew with English summary). Rosenberg, D. 2013. Not ‘just another brick in the wall?’ The symbolism of groundstone tools in Natufian and Early Neolithic Southern Levantine constructions. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(2): 94-108. Rowan, Y.M. and J.R. Ebeling 2016. New Approaches to Old Stones: Recent Studies of Ground Stone Artifacts. London: Routledge. Rucks, M.M. 1995. The Social Context and Cultural Meaning of Ground Stone Milling Among Washoe Women. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Nevada. Shaffer, G.D. 1993. An archaeomagnetic study of a wattle and daub building collapse. Journal of Field Archaeology 20(1): 59–75.

Shimelmitz, R. and D. Rosenberg 2013. Dulledged weapons and low-level fighting in the Late Prehistoric Southern Levant. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(3): 433–452. Smith, A., L. Proctor, T.C. Hart and G.J. Stein 2019. The burning issue of dung in archaeobotanical samples: a case-study integrating macro-botanical remains, dung spherulites, and phytoliths to assess sample origin and fuel use at Tell Zeidan, Syria. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 28(3): 229–246. Stevanović, M. 1997. The age of clay: the social dynamics of house destruction. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16(4): 334–395. Weismantel, M.J. 1988. Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Wright, K. 1991. The origins and development of ground stone assemblages in Late Pleistocene Southwest Asia. Paléorient 17(1): 19–45. Wright, K. 1992. A classification system for ground stone tools from the prehistoric Levant. Paléorient 18(2): 53–81.

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Chapter 15. Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Houses: A Ritualized Space? Juliette Mas The construction of Mesopotamian private dwellings as with official buildings, was framed by ritual practices and was the object of many omens (Sauvage 1998: 73–75); unlike official buildings, however, the house probably remained a place of symbolically charged meaning and ritual throughout its existence. The fact that the space underneath houses was sometimes used as a burial place for deceased members of the family group may explain why the house was the privileged place of family traditions involving the practice of certain cults.1 Beyond the cult of ancestors, rites relating to some form of family religion were performed in the houses. The house was thus a symbolic place that manifested family continuity. Mesopotamian family religion probably developed along two main facets: the veneration of a particular god and the cult of ancestors. As pointed out by K. Van der Toorn, we should distinguish between ‘family religion’ and ‘domestic religion.’ In fact, the expression ‘domestic religion’ intends that the main part of cultic activities related to family religion occurred in the family house, which seems not to have been the case in Mesopotamia (Van der Toorn 2008: 20–21). Nevertheless, within the framework of this paper, we will focus on cultic archaeological evidence from domestic dwellings. Therefore, this evidence should only reflect a very small part of all aspects of family religion. Furthermore, it is very likely that a large number of the objects and installations used in cultic activities in households were basic domestic utensils and installations also used in some instances for worshipping, and hence hard to interpret as related to religious activities.2 The evidence for religious, cultic, and worship activity in upper mesopotamian houses Domestic Altars The only features that can clearly be identified in a domestic context as having had a cultic function are altars. Even if the altars are not exceptional, 1  Although in Upper Mesopotamia, burials were identified in only 8% of the houses (Mas 2013). 2  Additionally, we must keep in mind that a part of this equipment might not have left any traces as they could have been made of perishable materials.

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Figure 1. Tell Melebiya, House B7, domestic altar (after Lebeau 1993: pl. XX.5).

they are not a common feature in Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian houses.3 The domestic altars took the form of small aediculae built in mudbricks or pisé. They were usually plastered and decorated with niches and recesses (Figure 1). The Syrian Upper Euphrates region during the Late Bronze Age is an exception in that the ‘altars’ corresponded to tables built of limestone slabs. Indeed, the domestic altars of the Weststadt neighborhood of Tell Bazi, were tables composed of a large monolith resting on two stone feet (Figure 2; Otto 2006: 67), and are identical to those found at Mumbaqa (Werner 1998a). The altars were generally built in the ‘main rooms’ or ‘reception rooms’ of the houses.4 Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian houses were generally furnished with

3  Altars were identified in two houses at Mari, two houses at Tell Melebiya, five houses at Tell Chuera, three houses at Mumbaqa and 22 houses at Tell Bazi (Mas 2013). The site of Tell Bazi offered the greatest number of this kind of installation in the region. Indeed, it seems that altars were part of the classic set of installations in the dwellings of the Weststadt neighbourhood at Tell Bazi (Otto 2006: 67– 71). Therefore we can note that, except for Tell Bazi where domestic altars are widely attested, the Syrian Upper Mesopotamian sites are characterized by very scarce evidence of domestic altars (Mas 2013). Nevertheless, installations can be difficult to interpret and often we do not have enough details in reports to challenge the excavator’s interpretation. See notably Battini 2014: 9 and Mas forthcoming. 4  Nevertheless, at Tell Melebiya, the altars were installed in rooms with a rather private character and with limited accessibility (Lebeau 1993: 103).

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Figure 2. Tell Bazi, Weststadt, Domestic altar (after Otto 2006: Abb. 26).

only one altar.5 It is likely that other installations were built for cultic purposes, or at least used episodically in this sense. Thus, some have suggested that the benches equipped with cupules were used in certain rituals (Figure 3). It is perhaps the same for benches equipped with drains for the evacuation of liquids, which could have been used to perform libations.6

areas and in urban contexts. The ritual of the kispum was celebrated when the need arose, maybe even on a daily basis, with a lavish meal probably included once a month (Van der Toorn 2008: 26). It was possibly quite informal and part of the normal family worshipping activities; therefore, little mention is made in the texts (Van der Toorn 1996b: 49). In fact, the kispum ceremony performed in a private context is not known in detail, but the important elements can nevertheless be reconstructed. Thus, to mark the invisible presence of the ghosts, a chair was placed where they were supposed to sit around a table that was only used on solemn occasions (Van der Toorn 1996b: 51–52).7 This communion meal for the deceased included the breaking of the kukku bread, the anointing of the table with oil, and the evocation of the dead of the family (Beckman 1996: 59; Sigrist 1993: 391).

Traces of food offerings and libations have sometimes been found next to the domestic altars. This was probably the place where the family gods and the ancestors were cared for. These ceremonies could be related to the kispum ceremony, known textually. It was a banquet that brought together all the living and deceased members of the family. The latter shared the same meal and consumed premium products such as meat and beer. The ancestors of a clan could even be elevated to the status of family god. Family and domestic cults ensured cohesion both in semi-nomadic

Apotropaic Deposits and Cultic Artifacts The Upper Mesopotamian house was placed under magical protection.8 In this respect, terracotta figurines could be active components in apotropaic deposits as well as in cultic activities. Figurines are a frequent element of the inventories of Upper Mesopotamian dwellings.9 Nevertheless, it is difficult to connect all of

Two altars were discovered in Haus XXIX and three in Haus B in Tell Chuera Bereich K (Hempelmann 2010: 41, Abb. 7; Pfälzner 2001: 327). We can also note an example of a double altar in house B7 at Tell Melebiya (Lebeau 1993: 96; Pl. XX.5). 6  According to J.-C. Margueron, this would have been the case for the installations uncovered in the so-called ‘Maison rouge’ in Mari Area B: ‘à moins de trouver une explication d’ordre pratique pour ces édicules à deux degrés et pour ces petites barcasses creusées sur le sommet des banquettes, alors que dans les temples elles se trouvent plutôt au pied des plates-formes, il semble bien qu’il y ait là de modestes installations d’un culte domestique’ (Margueron 2004: 258). Podiums were often associated with the altars in the Weststadt district of Tell Bazi houses and were, according to A. Otto, used for ritual libations (Otto 2006: 70–71). 5 

About the kispum, see also McDougal 2018 and related bibliography. On this topic, see Wiggerman 1992, notably p. 96–101. 9  Indeed, this class of artifacts was found in about 25% of the excavated Upper Mesopotamian houses dating to the Bronze Age 7  8 

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Figure 3. Mari, ‘Maison aux installations artisanales’, altar with ‘barcasses’ and plastered podium (after Margueron 2007: fig. 8).

the figurines to a cultic or magical use. According to L. Badre, while some of the terracotta figurines were probably toys, most of them must have had a symbolic meaning and would thus have served as a protective fetish (1980, 1982). She adds that one could associate this function with the figurines added to architectural models. She also hypothesizes that figurines could have been broken in situ at the death of one of the family members (Badre 1980:156, 1982: 105; Van der Stede 2012: 600–601). The careful deposition of intact or broken figurines under floors, doorsteps, or at the corners of rooms, suggests that the figurines may have, in some cases, endorsed a protective function for the houses and their inhabitants (Castel and Charpin 1997: 252).10 Terracotta figurines were also sometimes found broken and discarded in domestic houses (Figure 4). According to M.N. Van Loon, ‘apparently they were holy objects, to be treated with reverence and capable of imparting their blessing’ (Van Loon 2001: 6.343). J.-W. Meyer and A. Pruß suggest that the anthropomorphic figurines were used in household rituals and represented supernatural beings or humans involved in the rite. These figurines were probably produced for a limited and specific period of use in the context of magical domestic practices, such as healing a sick person, and then they were discarded (Meyer and Pruß 1994). Terracotta figurines were sometimes associated with domestic altars, that is, they could represent a ritual procession (Otto 2008: Figure 4. Selenkahiye, discarded broken figurines (after Van Loon 2001: pl. 6.9d).

(Mas 2013). 10  See Otto 2006: 244, concerning the apotropaic deposits at Tell Bazi.

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Figure 5. Mari, Architectural Model from the ‘Maison Rouge’ (after Margueron 2004: fig. 161).

721–722) or deceased ancestors (Werner 1998a: 112). Therefore, it seems that figurines were not reserved for a single magical or cultic activity or aspect. As L. Badre concedes, one must remain cautious about the interpretation of these objects. Their function and the symbolism with which they were invested cannot be clearly defined, and only hypotheses can be formulated about these artifacts (Badre 1980: 157).11 Incense burners or terracotta architectural models could also have been employed in cultic activities (Figures 5–7).12 Van der Toorn interprets the architectural models as an illustration of the link between the family gods and the family home in which they reside (Van der Toorn 1995: 37–38). They are thus a sign of family continuity. His study points out that when the family grows, or the group encounters economic problems, some of its members are forced to leave the paternal home. In such cases, people could maintain their family traditions by transferring their devotion to a replica of the ‘ancestral 11  Concerning figurines in a funerary context and their possible meaning, see notably Van der Stede 2012. 12  Glyptic iconography reveals that this type of object could indeed be used to burn products or to carry out libations within the framework of cultic activities (Werner 1998a: 109–112). Incense burners were found at numerous houses dated to the Middle Bronze Age of the Planquadrat Q Schicht 2 at Halawa A (about these incense burners, see Pruß 1994). One incense burner was also discovered in the Casa 1 of the Settore Sud at Tell Fray and dated to the Late Bronze Age (Matthiae 1980: 46–47). Concerning architectural models, see notably Van der Toorn 1994: 45, 1995: 37–38; Schmidt 1996; and Masetti-Rouault 2001: 452. Architectural models were found in the so-called ‘Maison Rouge’ in Mari Area B, dated to the end of the Early Bronze Age (Margueron 2004: 172–174, 179–185), and in several houses dated to the Late Bronze Age in the Syrian Upper Euphrates region (at Mumbaqa and at Emar). In fact, architectural models were found in six houses at Mumbaqa in the Late Bronze Age levels: Haus C, Haus E, Haus I, Haus K, Haus O, and Haus P (see Werner 1998a, 1998b). At Emar, architectural models were found in two houses in Areas A and L (about the Emar architectural models, see Margueron 1982).

Figure 6. Emar, Architectural Model (after Margueron 1982: fig. 1).

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Figure 7. Mumbaqa, Architectural Model (after Werner 1998a: Abb. 185).

home,’ an architectural model. Indeed, in their minds, ancestor worship was forever linked to the house of their ancestors. Those who could no longer own the real house of the group could then keep it in a symbolic way (Van der Toorn 1994: 45).

Figure 8. Mari, ‘Maison du potier’, Grave 1052 (after Jean-Marie 1999: pl. 220).

Graves

mudbricks or baked bricks underneath houses were uncovered only at a few settlements (Figure 9).15 Burials in domestic dwellings were likely more frequent than it is possible to point out by examining the excavation reports because these may not mention and describe all of the graves. Moreover, to identify the graves in private houses, one generally has to dismantle the occupational floors and to excavate below them, which is not always done. In any event, it seems that in Upper Mesopotamia inhumations were probably mostly carried out in dedicated areas or necropoli outside of living spaces during the Bronze Age. Additionally, the location of inhumation depended, in some cases, on the age of the deceased.16 In fact, several settlements

To be incorporated into an extended family means to be integrated into a community that includes different generations. During the different periods of their lives, some of these generations were contemporaries of another: grandparents, parents, and children, all of whom could live in the same house. But generations that had already died could have the same impact on family life and were included in the community of the living. The link with these older generations was manifested and ensured by the cult of the ancestors. Access to the family burial vault and to the graves, and thus to the ancestors and their cult, was thus a sign of belonging to the family community (Van der Toorn 1996b: 48). Nevertheless, despite this well-documented situation, the occurrence of graves within Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian houses is rather low.13 The presence of several graves in the same house is also very rare (Figure 8; Mas 2013).14 Burial vaults built either with

to the shakkanakku period which contained six graves (Figure 8; Jean-Marie 1999: 8–10, 12–15) and the so-called ‘Maison aux tablettes’ dated to the Old-Babylonian period which revealed ten inhumations (Margueron 2004: 455–456). 15  In fact, vaults were discovered in domestic houses at Tell Melebiya (Lebeau 1993: 99), Tell Brak (Oates and Oates 2001: 66–69), Chagar Bazar (McMahon 2009: 122, Pl. 5a), Tell Barri (Valentini 2002), and Tell Mohammed Diyab (Bachelot 1992). We shall note that it is usually difficult to determine the number of inhumations within these vaults because many of them were looted in antiquity. 16  Extra muros cemeteries were notably identified at the sites of Tell es-Sweyhat (Zettler 1997: 51–72) and Tell Bi’a (Strommenger and Kohlmeyer 1998: 83–117). At Tell Abu Hujeira, child burials were set into a mudbrick terrace surrounding the domestic quarter excavated in the Area A (Martin 1991: 8–10).

In fact, fewer than 8% of the excavated houses in the Syrian Euphrates and Jezirah dated to the Bronze Age revealed graves (Mas 2013). 14  Nevertheless, we can note that at Chagar Bazar a house in Area BD/G dated to the Old Babylonian period yielded seven graves in the courtyard (Mallowan 1947: 109–111). In Mari, two houses also had evidence of numerous burials: the so-called ‘Maison du potier’ dated 13 

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Figure 9. Tell Barri, Hypogeum 570 (after Valentini 2002: fig. 19b).

neighborhood of Tell Bazi. Therefore, Tell Bazi seems to have been a peculiar settlement in this regard. Besides the Tell Bazi case, the central space house type seems to correspond to dwellings where family cults were mostly carried out throughout the region.

revealed a discrimination regarding age in terms of burial location, as only infant burials were found in domestic houses.17 The location of the archaeological evidence for cultic and worship practices

Type of Settlement and Presence/Absence of Temples

Types of Houses with Evidence of Altars and Cultic Activities

The presence of cultic installations, such as altars, seems to be a typical house equipment in some settlements when they are sometimes completely absent in the houses excavated at other sites. Could these trends be connected to the presence or absence of other worship places?

Central space and bipartite house types are the most frequently represented among the dwellings with evidence of cultic activities. We should note that the central space houses which have archaeological evidence for cultic activities are dated to the Early Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age at many settlements in the regions of the Syrian Euphrates and Jezirah. Interestingly, the central space type houses may have belonged to households that were the most independent from an economic point of view (Mas 2013, 2014a, 2014b). It seems that the same households were also more religiously active, and were possibly imbued with strong family ties and family cults. The bipartite houses with evidence of cultic activities were exclusively excavated in the Late Bronze Age Weststadt

If we examine the small rural site of Tell al-Raqa’i, which was excavated across almost all of its expanse, which revealed an occupation dated to the Ninevite 5 period, we can see that the archaeological exploration uncovered a large storage building, numerous domestic houses, and a small temple. No altar was uncovered in any of the dwellings (Schwartz 2015). We can presume that the temple allowed the inhabitants of the site, which was easily accessible as the site is small, to fulfill their religious needs and to carry out their worshipping activities. Therefore, one can infer that the Tell alRaqa’i households had no need for domestic altars and that is why none of this type of installation was found in the houses of the site. At Tell Melebiya, another small rural site where the Early Dynastic III levels were extensively excavated—even the central part of the tell

17  In fact, the Tell Melebiya houses exclusively yielded infant burials (Lebeau 1993: 47). At Tell Arbid, infants seem to have often been buried in domestic houses when adults were buried in extra muros cemeteries (Sołtysiak 2010: 46). Following this trend, it seems that in the Tigridian region, burials within the houses were restricted to infants (Valentini 2019: 274–277).

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Juliette Mas: Chapter 15. Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Houses their homes, which means they could have gone often to worship there (Van der Toorn 1996b, 2008: 22). Indeed, chapels were sometimes discovered in cities’ quarters (Battini 1999: 343). Domestic altars might, in an urban context, be connected to other specific family cults.

where we could have expected official buildings to be— no temple was uncovered.18 Instead, several houses at Tell Melebiya revealed domestic altars (Lebeau 1993: 103-104). Therefore, can we postulate that the Tell Melebiya inhabitants built domestic altars because they had no accessible temple?

Upper Mesopotamia Mesopotamia

By contrast, at Tell Chuera, domestic altars were identified in Area K houses as well as the so-called ‘Kleiner Antentempel,’ which was interpreted as an ancestor’s shrine by P. Pfälzner (Pfälzner 2001: 336– 337). At Mari, two houses, both dated to the end of the Early Bronze Age and both located in the vicinity of important temples, had evidence of domestic altars.19

versus

central/southern

The degree of ritualization of domestic space in Upper Mesopotamia seems to have been lower than it was in southern Mesopotamia, notably during the Early and Late Bronze Age. From this perspective, the distribution of altars is supposed to be much more widespread in southern Mesopotamian houses. Nevertheless, this statement is often based on evidence from Old Babylonian Ur. Indeed, L. Woolley identified numerous examples of domestic altars in the houses he excavated at Ur. He even estimated that their presence must characterize the major part, if not the totality, of the houses at the site. Moreover, according to him, these installations were arranged in spaces specifically dedicated to family cult (Woolley and Mallowan 1976: 29–30). According to Van der Toorn, Woolley’s interpretation is somewhat inflated, not all of the houses at Ur had a space for worship (Van der Toorn 1996a: 70). L. Battini reinterprets the ‘chapels’ of Ur more as reception rooms than as rooms with religious function, except perhaps in three cases, but this number is not significant compared to the quantity of houses excavated at the site. According to her, what Woolley defined in many cases as ‘altars’ are nothing more than reception benches (Battini 1999: 192–196, 358–359, 2014). Concerning the presence of graves in domestic houses, the dichotomy is clearer. In fact, we know for instance that about 70% of the Old Babylonian houses excavated at Ur had evidence of burials, with an average presence of five deceased members buried underneath the dwellings (Battini 1999: 211–220).21 It is the opposite in Upper Mesopotamian houses, which rarely have graves within domestic houses. In fact, fewer than 8% of the domestic houses had evidence of burials in the regions of the Syrian Euphrates and Jezirah during the Bronze Age (Mas 2013).

As an intermediate example, at Tell Bazi neither a temple nor shrine was discovered in the Weststadt domestic quarter, dated to the Late Bronze Age, where numerous houses had altars. Indeed, the only excavated building, which could be interpreted as a temple, is located at the summit of the main mound on the citadel (Einwag and Otto 2006; Otto 2013: 372–374). The houses equipped with altars at the site of Mumbaqa, also dated to the Late Bronze Age, were located on the main mound; however, they were not located close to temples Steinbau 1 and Steinbau 2 (Werner 1998a). Nevertheless, both at Tell Bazi and Mumbaqa, if temples were not located next to the domestic houses which yielded altars, sanctuaries were discovered in other parts of these settlements. Should we thus interpret the difference between the houses that contained domestic altars, or lacked them, based on the presence or absence of nearby poliad temples and shrines, or by a difference of rural settlements versus towns and cities? This seems a difficult conundrum. Indeed, if we can imagine that small temples, shrines, and chapels were used on a frequent basis by basic households,20 the access to the important temples in towns and cities was probably not possible for all residents of these settlements, but only high ranked individuals. Furthermore, we could probably distinguish between the cults carried out in important temples, such as, the Ishtar temple at Mari and within the framework of the household in the family house, or in a neighborhood shrine such as the one uncovered at Tell Chuera Area K. According to Van der Toorn, the family god was not necessarily the god of the city, especially in an urban context. In fact, urban families would have worshipped a local god who had a chapel or a shrine in their quarter, in the vicinity of

Conclusion Even though Upper Mesopotamian Bronze Age houses were undoubtedly symbolically charged spaces, we have little evidence concerning worship practices within the domestic spaces of this region. In spite of the different elements related to cultic activities, we have only a few indications of family religion, its modes of expression, its beliefs, and its rites. These are rarely

The whole EDIII settlement was of course not excavated and we cannot exclude the existence of a temple in the remaining unexcavated part of the site. 19  Indeed, altars were discovered in the so-called ‘Maison aux installations artisanales,’ which is located in Area B next to the palace and not far away from the main temples of the city (Margueron 2004 fig. 120, 2007: 232–239); and another house which is located between the Ishtar temple and the palace (Margueron 1997: 39–40). 20  As for instance at Ur or Tell Harmal (Battini 1999: 343). 18 

21  We should note, as pointed out by Battini, that the size of the households cannnot be deduced from the number of deceased family members buried in the house (Battini 2014: 13).

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No Place Like Home documented in texts and the objects used in rituals are rather difficult to identify insofar as the material culture used in the cult was often similar to domestic equipment used in daily life. Nevertheless, a survey of the available archaeological data concerning the domestic houses in Upper Mesopotamia dating to the Bronze Age, reveals that households felt the necessity to protect their home, and therefore themselves, and to include all the generations of the group (alive and deceased) in their spiritual and cultic routine. Indeed, activities of a cultic nature could be identified in about 10% of the Upper Mesopotamian excavated houses (Mas 2013). It seems that the domestic cultic practices particularly developed during the Late Bronze Age in the region of the Syrian Upper Euphrates.

Hempelmann, R. 2010. Die Ausgrabungen im Bereich K, in J.–W. Meyer (ed.) Vorbericht zu den Grabungskampagnen 1998 bis 2005, Ausgrabungen auf dem Tell Chuera in Nordost Syrien Teil II (Vorderasiatische Forschungen der Max Freiherr von Oppenheim– Stiftung Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Röllig Band 2): 35–81. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag. Jean-Marie, M. 1999. Tombes et nécropoles de Mari, Mission archéologique de Mari Tome V (Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique CLIII). Beyrouth: IFAPO. Lebeau, M. 1993. Tell Melebiya, Cinq campagnes de recherches sur le Moyen-Khabour (1984–1988) (Akkadica Supplementum 9). Leuven: Peeters. McDougal, R.M. 2018. Ancient Mesopotamian remembrance and the family dead, in D. Klass and E. M. Steffen (eds) Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New Discoveries for Research and Practices: 262–275. New York: Routledge. McMahon, A. 2009. Chagar Bazar Burial Practices, in A. McMahon (ed.) Once there was a Place: Settlement Archaeology at Chagar Bazar 1999–2002: 109–127. London: British Institute for the Study of Iraq. Mallowan, M.E.L. 1947. Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar (Iraq 9). London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Margueron, J.-C. 1982. Les Maquettes, in D. Beyer (ed.) A l’occasion d’une exposition, Meskéné-Emar, dix ans de travaux 1972–1982: 87–94. Paris: ERC. Margueron, J.-C. 1997. Mari: rapport préliminaire sur les campagnes de 1990 et 1991. Mari annales de recherches interdisciplinaires 8: 9–70. Margueron, J.-C. 2004. Mari, métropole de l’Euphrate au IIIe et au début du IIe millénaire avant J.-C. Paris: Picard ERC. Margueron, J.-C. 2007. Mari: la maison d’habitation de la Ville II. Akh Purattim 2: 227–244. Martin, L. 1991. Tell Abu Hgaira. Orient-Express 1991(2): 8–10. Mas, J. 2013. Maison, architectures domestiques et société dans le Moyen-Euphrate et la Djézireh syrienne à l’âge du Bronze, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Lyon 2. Mas, J. 2014a. Bronze Age Domestic Architecture in Eastern Syria: Familiar, Social and Economic Implications, in P. Bieliński, M. Gawlikowski, R. Koliński, D. Lawecka, A. Sołtysiak and Z. Wygnańska (eds) Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 30 April–4 May 2012, University of Warsaw, Volume 1: Plenary Sessions, Township and Villages, High and Low—The Minor Arts for the Elite and for the Populace: 251–270. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Mas, J. 2014b. Early Bronze Age Houses in Upper Mesopotamia: Evidence of Dwellings or Private Enterprises?, in F. Buccellati, T. Helms and A. Tamm (eds) Houses and Household Economies in 3rd Millennium B.C.E. Syro-Mesopotamia (BAR International Series 2682): 95–102. Oxford: Archaeopress.

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Woolley, C.L. and M.E.L. Mallowan 1976. Ur Excavations Volume VII, The Old Babylonian Period, Publications of the Joint expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia. Philadelphia - London: Trustees of the two Museums by British Museum Publications. Zettler, R.L. 1997. Surface Collection and Excavations in the Lower Town and Lower Town South, in R.L. Zettler (ed.) Subsistence in a Marginal Environment: Tell es-Sweyhat, 1989–1995 Preliminary Report (MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology 14): 35–72. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications.

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Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts: An Archaeology of Domestic Religious Admixture in Kültepe-Kaneš Yağmur Heffron The Middle Bronze Age city of Kaneš (modern Kültepe in south central Anatolia) is principally famous for the rich corpus of cuneiform documents retrieved from the houses of its resident merchants, most of whom were from the north Mesopotamian city of Assur (Qal’at Sherqat in Iraq) (Figure 11). Equally significant, however, are the physical remains of the dwellings in which Mesopotamian expatriates lived alongside local Anatolians, often within the same households as foreign and local communities intermingled through marriage and business interests. Decades of continuous excavation at Kültepe have exposed large portions of residential neighborhoods in a well-preserved lower town. Conspicuous within Kültepe’s rich household assemblages are portable cult paraphernalia as well as permanent ritual installations which point to a diverse set of ritual practices embedded in domestic settings. This constitutes a substantial body of material evidence with tremendous significance to inform our understanding of the religious life of ancient Kaneš, which has largely remained limited to textual reconstructions to the extent that a meaningful archaeological record of religious practices has been assumed to be non-existent (Barjamovic and Larsen 2008: 153; Taracha 2009: 25). This chapter presents an overview of the principal categories of ritually significant artifacts and installations encountered within domestic spaces at Kültepe-Kaneš. In reconstructing how these objects may have functioned within distinct but interrelated customs and practices, inferences made from the archaeological evidence can be further strengthened by textual and iconographic sources. This way, interpretations such as why a particular type of vessel is likely to be associated with ritual activity, or in what order the different stages of a particular rite may have been carried out, can be proposed with greater confidence. The resulting synthesis highlights the distinct ways in which otherwise ordinary living spaces could serve as permanent or ad hoc sacred settings. Isometric projections of Kültepe houses were produced from individual 2D ground-plans originally published without scale or North arrow. Please refer to site plans in Özgüç (1959) for house plans in context.

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The nature of the archaeological evidence from Kültepe places this site in an unparalleled position to inform the broader religious history of Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age. Prior to the emergence of the centralized Hittite state and its official cult (see Gates 2017), which was organized formally around temples, no comparably obvious religious institutions/structures are evident in the archaeological record (Heffron 2016: 23–24). In order to investigate the archaeology of religion for Middle Bronze Age Anatolia, one instead has to turn to other bodies of evidence, mostly from extramural cemeteries, most famously at Yanarlar (Emre 1978), Gordion (Mellink 1956), or Ilıca (Orthmann 1967); or the more recently excavated examples from Çavlum (Bilgen 2005) and Dedemezarı (Üyümez et al. 2007; see also Koçak 2013). A richer source of archaeological evidence for ritual behavior can be found at Kültepe-Kaneš, where the excavated remains of private houses also contain graves in addition to a variety of other permanent installations as well as portable paraphernalia. Evidence for domestic religion in ancient Kaneš holds a significance far beyond the archaeology of ritual at Kültepe or even the general history of Anatolian religion. Given the particular circumstances surrounding Kaneš as headquarters for Assyrian business operations across Anatolia, evidence for domestic ritual activity can shed a great deal of light on the social history of its highly heterogenous community of locals, expatriates, and migrants, often brought into shared households through mixed marriages. The position of the house as a nexus for cross-cultural interaction at Kaneš is all the more enhanced by the evident concentration of ritual activity in domestic settings which almost certainly acted as a catalyst for exposure and reciprocal amalgamation of Anatolian and Mesopotamian religious traditions (Heffron and Highcock, forthcoming). Household religion at Kaneš is thus not only a fascinating area of investigation in its own right, but can also inform wider discussions of cultural admixture and negotiations of ethno-religious identity in a diverse Middle Bronze Age community. Historically, however, the archaeology of household religion at Kültepe-Kaneš has not been the subject of detailed contextual discussions or extensive

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Figure 1. Map of Anatolia showing the key sites of the kārum period.

interpretative analysis even though objects of ritual significance, especially vessels, have been a favourite subject in numerous publications (Özgüç 1979, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002a, 2002b). Concerned principally with catalogue typologies, previous studies do not consider functional analyses, affordances, or contextual associations of vessels as a means of reconstructing their possible significance and use as ritual objects. Although Tahsin Özgüç has made remarkably intuitive assertions that certain objects and object types were used for ritual purposes inside Kanešean homes, he seldom dwelled on the questions of why and how.

Figure 2. House 1. Attributed to Adad-Sululi. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC), gridsquares F-G/910 (Özgüç 1959: 27-8; plan.9). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1959: fig.33).

Houses and household space at Kültepe At its most basic, the ground plan of a typical Kültepe house (e.g., House 1, Figure 2) consists of a large rectangular main room and/or courtyard and a smaller back room, often divided into two individual spaces, each of which can generally be entered directly from the main room and are, therefore, equally physically accessible (see Brusasco 2007). Most houses exposed in Kültepe’s Lower Town are elaborations on this basic layout, the larger and more complex structures incorporating more rooms of various sizes added along up to three sides of the main room, but never fully surrounded as is sometimes encountered in contemporary Mesopotamian domestic architecture.

of a room, and sometimes accompanied by horseshoe hearths and occasionally portable braziers), and ‘bathtubs’ (i.e., large, deep, rectangular thick-walled basins of coarse clay most likely used for water storage and/ or washing). Cooking vessels and grinding stones are also typically found in these rooms, which must have served as general food preparation and service areas. Presumably these rooms were the busiest and the most public portion of a house, in which the household came together, and guests were received in what we can think of as a semi-formal reception area often accessible directly from the street or else entered through a small ‘antechamber.’ Internally, the main room/courtyards tend to have the largest number of access points in the form of doorways leading into other rooms in the house. In larger houses, main room/courtyards tend to occupy central positions separating front rooms

The main room/courtyard is often paved with flat stones along one wall, which presumably corresponds to an unroofed area. Main room/courtyard spaces are regularly furnished with fire installations (such as large tandırs built against a wall, often in the corner 248

Yağmur Heffron: Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts: Sleeping quarters were almost certainly located on upper stories, leaving ground floor areas to be used for storage, food preparation and other household work, and perhaps also to keep animals as is still the custom in modern village houses in the region. On the one hand, in situ preservation of a variety of furnishings such as storage vessels, kitchen equipment, or containers for tablets is extremely useful for reconstructing space use on ground floors. On the other hand, unless published photographs actually show assemblages exposed in situ, it is not possible to distinguish from excavation reports whether small finds reported for a particular space come from primary contexts such as room floors or from secondary contexts such as fill or collapse layers.

Figure 3. House 2. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level Ib (ca. 1833-1690 BC), gridsquares V-Y/21-22 (Özgüç 1959: 11; plan.10). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1959: fig.13).

of high physical accessibility from back rooms that are relatively more private, secluded areas of lower physical accessibility.

Archaeological evidence for ritual activity Archaeological evidence for domestic rituals at Kaneš is manifested both in fixtures built into the architectural space of the house, and also in portable paraphernalia. Fixed installations consist mainly of graves below room floors, as well as a small number of stone stelae whose function may have included, but was not necessarily limited to, funerary rites (Heffron 2016). Portable paraphernalia are best represented by a large corpus of elaborate ritual vessels, predominantly of zoomorphic character (Figure 6) but including a range of other shapes as well (Özgüç 2002a, 2002b). Notably, plain ‘utilitarian’ wares such as spouted pouring vessels or footed bowls, which were no doubt used for a large variety of household tasks, can also be counted among ritual paraphernalia where they occur in contexts and/

Doorways, whether internal or external, are almost always positioned near corners and/or on short walls to produce a bent axis approach. Particularly external doorways providing access into the house from the street are often placed near the corner in the long wall of a rectangular room, thus hiding the main portion of the room from direct visual access (e.g., Room 1 in House 2, Figure 3). The excavators cite ample evidence suggesting upper stories were common (Özgüç and Özgüç 1953: 12–14, 101–102; Özgüç 1959: 29–30) and some plans show spaces for staircases (e.g., in one corner of Room 3 in House 1 [Figure 2]; one end of Room 3 in House 3 [Figure 4], or between Rooms 1 and 14 in House 4 [Figure 5]).

Figure 4. House 3. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level Ib (ca. 1833-1690 BC), gridsquares D-F/6-8 (Özgüç 1959: 12-13; plan.3). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1959: fig.16).

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Figure 5. House 4. Attributed to Peruwa. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC), gridsquares Y-Z/26-28 (Özgüç 1959: 34-37; plan.11). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1959: fig.50).

or clear association with other items suitable for cult activity. Kültepe houses have also produced a variety of supernatural representations in the form of mold-made lead miniatures which may have served as apotropaia (Heffron 2017). The latter function can also be extended to the small number of ritual texts recovered from Kültepe houses (Barjamovic 2015; Michel 1997), which would have been viewed as magical objects with a supernatural agency in their own right (Heeßel 2004; Panayotov 2018; Reiner 1960; Rüster 1983). Those texts whose content aligns closely with the central concerns of family religion such as facilitating a safe birth and the preservation of infants (Michel 1997) are especially significant (see also Barjamovic 2015 on incantation texts from Kültepe). Permanent Installations: Stelae Although small in number, stone stelae make up a conspicuous group of installations marking permanent ritual space above ground. These roughly shaped stone uprights, approximately 1 m in height and tapering towards the top, recall the so-called ‘obelisk’ featured on a stamp seal worship scene from contemporary Acemhöyük (Figure 7), confirming their significance as markers of ritual settings. Where discovered in situ, stone stelae were built into stone receptacles and are found in association with pouring vessels (which themselves are in keeping with a ritual function), strongly suggesting they were used for activities involving water, such as liquid offerings (Heffron 2016) or washing (following Winter 1999). There seems to be

Figure 6. Example of a zoomorphic vessel (Kt. 86/k 147). Height, 19 cm. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 20001836 BC). (Drawing by Neil Erskine after Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2011: 256, fig.206).

no clear association between stelae and graves, but this does not necessarily exclude funerary rites from the broader range of ritual meaning attributed to these installations (Heffron 2016: 32–33). 250

Yağmur Heffron: Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts:

Figure 7. Stamp seal impression from Acemhöyük, ca.1800-1759. Diameter of seal ca. 2.5 cm. Drawing by Serkan Demir (Heffron 2016: fig.10)

rooms, sometimes even in staircase spaces or areas identified as toilets (Battini 1999: pls. 277–279, 301, 2017: 98), the distribution of graves across domestic space in Kanešean houses does not seem to adhere to a strict rule. A broad preference for main room/ courtyard areas is nonetheless evident, suggesting a patterned rather than random behavior (Winter 1999). This recalls the broad correspondence between ritually significant installations and reception rooms at Old Babylonian Ur (Battini 2017) and likewise at Nippur where graves are again reported regularly below central rooms (McCown and Haines 1967: 39) in which the family presumably gathered around the main hearth, ate, and perhaps also slept. This in turn implies graveside activity was likewise communal. Main room/courtyard areas (or reception rooms), which are often the most spacious areas in a house, would have accommodated larger gatherings to include most if not all of the members of a household (and perhaps also visitors) as opposed to being restricted to a smaller number of specific individuals. Battini’s (2017) proposal to rethink Old Babylonian houses as being equipped with multifunctional reception rooms in which most

Permanent Installations: Sub-Floor Graves The presence of graves below house floors can be viewed as a way in which domestic space was permanently transformed into a liminal space where both the living and dead members of a household co-habited (see Patrier 2013). At Kültepe, in-house graves are a highly conspicuous feature of the residential quarter of the Lower Town, although not all dwellings possess them. There is evidence that some houses served as small-scale grave sites post-abandonment (Yazıcıoğlu Santamaria 2015: 240). Most graves, however, appear to have been placed below living floors and therefore are contemporary with occupation, which means that one of the widespread uses of domestic space (or a selected area within domestic space) was as a primary context of burial and associated mortuary rites at the time of interment, as well as continuing funerary rituals after the burial episode, such as commemorative offerings or invocations (see below). As in contemporary Old Babylonian Ur, where graves have been discovered below the floors of all kinds of 251

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Figure 9. Example for a trefoil-mouth pitcher (Kt. f/k 295). Height, 13 cm. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 20001836 BC). (Drawing by Neil Erskine after Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2011: 186, fig.32).

Figure 8. Example for a beak-spouted pitcher (Kt. 03k. 026). Height, 35.4 cm Kültepe-Kaneš (ca. 1830-1700 BC). (Drawing by Neil Erskine after Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2011: 190, fig.46).

ritual activity clustered, rather than looking to find designated chapel areas reserved exclusively for cultic use, also applies to Kaneš.

Figure 10. Example for a ‘teapot’ (Kt. k/k 153). Height, 7.5 cm. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC). (Drawing by Neil Erskine after Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2011: 182, fig.21).

It is not possible to offer here an exhaustive account of all categories of grave goods encountered at Kültepe. The following discussion will therefore focus on two particularly conspicuous types of paraphernalia which lend themselves especially well to inferring funerary rites around the time of burial and are therefore especially informative for reconstructing ritual activity within the domestic setting.

but also in contemporary cemeteries across central Anatolia (see Akyurt 1998). At Kültepe, as elsewhere, vessels recovered in association with burials come mainly in the form of pouring types, among which

The first category is that of pottery vessels, which are a standard component of graves not only at Kültepe 252

Yağmur Heffron: Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts: beak-spouted pitchers are the most common, followed closely by trefoil-mouth jugs and teapots (Figures 8–10).

(Heffron 2014; Kahya 2017; White 1993: 277–278), it is likely a similar association also existed at Kültepe.

Needless to say, the basic function of such vessels makes them suitable for a wide range of contexts. Most ubiquitous among these is the beak-spouted pitcher (German Schnabelkanne; Turkish gaga ağızlı testi), a standard part of the Anatolian ceramic repertoire, with a long history on either side of the second millennium. Notwithstanding their quotidian use as simple household items, the preponderance of beakspouted pitchers in and around graves across central Anatolia throughout the Bronze Age situates Kültepe securely within the wider context of regional trends attesting to widespread use of these objects as funerary paraphernalia. According to Özgüç (1953), it is often the better quality, thin-walled and highly burnished examples which have been deposited in graves while thicker-walled and generally coarser wares were associated with contexts of daily use above ground. Another popular type of libation vessel is the trefoilmouth pitcher, often found in similar archaeological contexts as its beak-spouted counterpart. Together with common bi- and quatrefoil forms, the trefoil-mouth pitcher is conspicuous in burials, where the excavators again report higher quality examples (Özgüç and Özgüç 1953: 41).

It is equally likely that pouring vessels may have been used to serve drinks to participants at a funeral. Textual evidence from Kültepe corroborates commensality being a part of mortuary rites practiced within Kanešean households. A set of documents relating to the funerary preparations for Ištar-Lamassī, an Assyrian woman whose affairs were settled by her Anatolian second husband Lullu includes itemized lists of funerary expenses for which Lullu was expecting to be reimbursed by his Assyrian in-laws (Veenhof 2008, 2010). Consumables make up a large proportion of the expenses, which suggests a relatively sizeable funerary meal for the family and/or other participants reinforcing the communal aspect of funerary rituals. The preparations for Ištar-Lamassī’s funeral also incurred charges for the services of professional wailers, which point to yet another discrete rite around the time of burial, further reinforcing its communal performative aspect. Finally, we must also acknowledge that spouted pouring vessels may have been used for ritually significant acts of washing/cleansing, as proposed by Winter (1999: 243) for spouted jugs from the Royal Cemetery at Ur. One of Winter’s key considerations for such a function is the preponderance of these vessels in the fill surrounding the grave, as opposed to having been placed inside the tomb, next to the deceased. Excavation reports from Kültepe do not provide the necessary resolution of data to say whether any of the pouring vessels attributed to graves were in fact discovered in the surrounding fill. There is, however, evidence for such a pattern from the contemporary extramural cemetery site of Yanarlar. Here, in addition to vessels placed inside the burial pithoi, Emre (1978: 15) reports that pitchers were regularly found immediately outside, near the mouth of the pithos sealed by a large stone. As such, their deposition outside the grave points to a distinct stage of funerary activity. This activity could have involved a round of libation and/or drinks specifically timed postinterment; or to allow participants to ritually cleanse themselves after having attended a funeral. This range of possibilities certainly is feasible for Kültepe.

Three key ritual functions (none mutually exclusive) can be considered for these objects. The most obvious is as libation vessels used for making liquid offerings to the dead and/or other supernatural entities such as demons or deities whose presence was expected at the time of burial. In iconography, beak-spouted pitchers are familiar from kārum period glyptic (e.g., Özgüç 1965: pl. XVI/49b; see also White 1993: 277–278) as well as in later Hittite art, perhaps most famously on the İnandık Vase (Gates 2017: fig. 6) where worshippers pour out libations in divine presence. The close similarities between Early Bronze Age forms of beak-spouted pitchers and contemporary lead miniatures (Canby 1965: 45), which, given the likely amuletic use of such miniatures (Heffron 2017) might even suggest that the beakspouted pitcher was recognized as a visual shorthand for an icon of libation. Furthermore, libation may well have been considered a fundamental function of such vessels as suggested by the Hittite term išpanduwa-, which Alp (1967: 518) equates with the archaeologically attested type of the beak-spouted pitcher, derives from the term šipant-, ‘to libate/make an offering.’ Two other terms, išpantuzzi and išpantuzzieššar, likewise derived from šipant-, appear to be synonymous with each other as well as with išpanduwa- and are used variously to refer to the libation liquid as well as the vessel itself (Alp 1967: 522, 525). Given the demonstrable continuity between kārum period rituals and Hittite cult (Heffron 2020), particularly in relation to the use of ritual vessels

A second category of grave good, which, unlike vessels, seem to have served a much narrower, perhaps exclusively funerary purpose, is that of thin sheets of metal (most often gold, occasionally silver, and very rarely electrum). The excavators report having discovered these metal sheets in situ on the faces of the deceased, clearly placed as eye and mouth covers (see Heffron 2020) (Figure 11). The textual correlates of eye- and mouth-covers made of gold come from the later Hittite royal funerary ritual (Kassian et al. 2002), 253

No Place Like Home rare case of in situ evidence from grave-side rituals comes from the house attributed to an Assyrian merchant by the name of Adad-Sululi (House 1, Figure 2). The ground plan shows a modest three-room structure with a typical layout comprising a large main room/courtyard, with two smaller rooms leading out to it from one of the short sides. Adad-Sululi’s tablets were located in Room 1. In Room 2, a fruit-stand was discovered in situ, where it had been placed on two ‘carefully laid’ flat stones in the southwest corner of the room. In addition, the presence of five individual graves below the floor of Room 2 (Özgüç 1959: 27–28) strongly suggests that the fruit-stand on the flagstones marked a ritual installation associated with funerary offerings. Given the unusual concentration of graves in a relatively small space below the floor of Room 2, Özgüç has suggested this was a ‘grave room’ set aside exclusively for burial. In several other houses he similarly identified ‘grave rooms’ which were evidently sealed off and abandoned while occupation continued in the remainder of the dwelling (Özgüç 1959: 9–12). Published evidence such as in situ kitchen facilities in areas ostensibly removed from the quotidian life of the house (Özgüç 1959: 9–10), or the presence of stairways offering alternative points of access into rooms with blocked doorways (Özgüç 1959: 39), contradict the exclusionary use of domestic space for burials.

Figure 11. Imagined arrangement of gold sheets on display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Ankara). Measurements not available; original displays use adult human skulls. Drawings by Neil Erskine (Heffron 2020: figs.1a-b).

Even if we do accept that the rooms discussed by Özgüç were permanently sealed and abandoned, a demonstrable link with grave construction is not evident. Nothing, in other words, suggests that certain rooms may have gone out of use as the direct result of ritual concerns. The line of reasoning in Battini’s (2017: 91) critical reassessment of ‘sacral’ altars, even domestic chapels, initially proposed for Ur, also applies here ‘it is easier to accept the ‘religious’ interpretation of an object considered until now as an ordinary one than to refuse the religious interpretation for a common one.’

at one stage during the course of which the deceased must have been lying in repose, in a kind of farewell ceremony (Van den Hout 1994). Assuming a similar component also existed for funerary rituals carried out in and around domestic areas which already served as the primary settings of burial (at least for certain individuals) at Kültepe, the residential house also served as designated spaces for performative display (Heffron 2020). Funerary rites are by no means limited to rituals carried out at or around the time of interment. We know from ample textual references that kispum rites, a widespread Mesopotamian practice of making regular food offerings to the family dead, was also practiced by Assyrian merchants. Sub-floor graves excavated in Kanešean houses, therefore, can be seen as the focal points of continued funerary rituals—whether they were carried out in Mesopotamian fashion, which we know from texts to recognize as kispum and/or according to local Anatolian customs which surely also made similar provisions for the dead.

Portable Paraphernalia: Ritual Vessels Outside of burial contexts, ceramic vessels again make up the most ubiquitous type of portable ritual paraphernalia across Kanešean domestic space. The same generic types that turn up regularly in graves, such as the beak-spouted pitchers, can only be included in this group if and when contextual associations justify such a purpose (e.g., association with stelae as discussed above). Certain other types of elaborate vessels, on the other hand, do invite interpretation as purpose-made artifacts produced specially for ritual use, some perhaps even cult objects in their own right. This group is best represented by zoomorphic vessels, but include anthropomorphic examples as well (Figure 12) (see Heffron 2014: 182–184 for ‘divine cups’ as possible

The extent to which graves below floors were accompanied by installations or portable paraphernalia above ground, however, is not always clear from recorded archaeological evidence. One excellent but 254

Yağmur Heffron: Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts: 5. 6. 7. 8.

Any typology can be (re-)organized in numerous ways, depending on why we wish to classify a group of objects in the first place. Specifically in aid of reconstructing ritual practices, it may be more useful to group zoomorphic vessels by the types of activities they could facilitate, that is, by the ways a vessel would be functionally suitable for using/manipulating liquids in a particular way (similarly in Pilavcı 2017 for Hittite BIBRU). Considered this way, it is possible to make a distinction between serving vessels which aid precision pouring, such as spouted pitchers or teapots, used as an intermediary receptacle actively transferring liquid, such as for making libations, serving drinks, or for washing. Open vessels can also be used for serving if liquids are removed by means of ladles, dippers, or perhaps directly by drinking cups, like a punch bowl. Open vessels are also suitable for the display of their contents and could equally have been used as receptacles for pouring liquids in rather than out. Some large open vessels with spouts, and indeed zoomorphic vessels with a high necks placed on the back of the animal and a spout in its mouth, were probably designed to serve both purposes, namely to collect the liquid via one opening and to transfer it out the other. Especially for zoomorphic vessels, we cannot ignore that liquid passing through the body of an animal is an ‘evocative process’ (Heffron 2014: 275). This would be a distinct function from zoomorphic (or anthropomorphic) vessels which only facilitated a filling of a human/animal form with liquid which a participant would then drink directly.

Figure 12. Anthropomorphic vessel (Kt 88/k 749). Height, 6.1 cm. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level Ib (ca. 1833-1690 BC). (Line drawing by Neil Erskine after Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2011: 241, fig.186).

representations of gods/goddesses). There are also miscellaneous vessels shaped in the form of various inanimate objects, such as boots or grape clusters, which we can assume signified things meaningful in a ritual context (unless they were simply novelty items for amusement). We know that the zoomorphic vessels from Kültepe houses are the forerunners of the Hittite BIBRU vessels, which were used for libations as well as collective acts of cultic drinking referred to as ‘god-drinking’ (DINGIR eku-) in Hittite sources (Heffron 2014). The same phrase, no doubt referring to a comparable drinking rite, has recently been attested in an Old Assyrian text from Kültepe (Kahya 2017), which now validates the proposal that this type of cultic drinking in Hittite temple-based religion had its roots in domestic practices of the kārum period at Kaneš (Heffron 2014). These vessels would be suitable as cult objects in their own right as we know Hittite BIBRU certainly were (Pilavcı 2017: 137).

Finally, there are vessels suitable for direct consumption from them, in the form of small cups with or without handles. Large, open vessels could also have served for direct consumption if used with straws, in Mesopotamian fashion.

Compared to other Anatolian sites, Kültepe boasts by far the most substantial repertoire of zoomorphic vessels, which almost exclusively come from domestic assemblages. Özgüç (1994: 222–223) distinguishes between eight types: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Fruit-stands and cups with animal figures on the rim Beak-spouted pitchers with figurines on the handle Jars and beak-spouted pitchers with a human face in relief on the body Jars with animals in relief on the body

Some vessels were probably cult objects in their own right, serving as the focus of ritual action rather than tools to carry it out. In particular, vessels bearing crowded scenes of appliqué human and animal figures fit very well into this category as they appear to recreate ritual scenes. A self-referential ritual scene, for instance, is found on a zoomorphic spouted round bowl occupied by a clay figurine evidently filling a small vessel from a miniature zoomorphic spout (Heffron 2016: 30, fig. 8). Some kind of ritual activity also seems to be referenced by shallow, rectangular,

Drinking vessels in the shape of standing/ reclining animals; or boots Drinking vessels in the shape of a trough or boat, with animal heads as spouts Same as 2, but with the addition of a human figure inside and birds perched on the sides Jugs and pitchers with spouts in the shape of an animal head 255

No Place Like Home vessels with ram’s head spouts in which oarsmen occasionally appear (Özgüç 2003: 185–192). The most elaborate example of this type carries a tall structure with windows and a flat roof on which a bird is perched, perhaps representing a shrine (Özgüç 2003: 192, figs. 222–224). Inside the structure is a female figurine wearing the typical round headdress of divinity, while her companions, one at the back of the boat behind the structure and the other in front, leaning over the edge of the boat as he rows, both sport conical caps worn by male divinities. Özgüç (2003: 186–192) has proposed this vessel to be a direct representation of Mesopotamian religious festivals in which deities (in the form of divine statues) would sail down the river. What is abundantly clear is that this and other similar vessels do deliberately recreate ritual activities, perhaps even specific events, thereby potentially transforming the function of a vessel from a ritual tool to a ritual in and of itself.

Figure 13. House 5. Attributed to Kuliya. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC), gridsquares LVLV1/126-127. (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Veenhof 2010: 13).

Although contextual information on Kültepe finds leaves much to be desired, there are still some interesting observations to be made from the broad distribution of ritual vessels around domestic houses. Özgüç (1994: 221) reports that unlike ordinary pots and pans found in kitchens and similar work areas, ritual vessels were encountered in ‘specially prepared places in living rooms or particularly in archive and storage rooms.’ A close examination of the published excavation records, however, suggests this statement needs some revision.

Figure 14. House 6. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC), gridsquares B-C/9 (Özgüç 1986: plan.1). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1986: fig.2).

First to be called into question is the indiscriminate labeling of any and all rooms in which tablets were discovered as ‘archive rooms’ (Özgüç 2004), a term which misleadingly suggests entire rooms were devoted to the storage of cuneiform documents, when it is far more likely that it was parts of rooms that were reserved for such a purpose. For instance, tablets making up the archive of the merchant Kuliya were discovered in situ inside a small recess in the corner of Room 4 in House 5 (Figure 13), attributed to overnship by the same tradesman. Veenhof (2010: 13–14) has pointed out that such spaces (described as cupboards by Özgüç) might well correspond to the term huršum, as mentioned in a letter addressed to Kuliya from the very same archive: ‘We opened the huršum and took out your tablet coffer (tamalakkum) a tablet.’

In House 6 (Figure 14) ritual vessels were found in two small self-contained storage areas located at the back of the house: a pair of boot-shaped cups placed alongside tablets and envelopes in Room 4, and three zoomorphic vessels (two hares and a pig) in Room 3, which also held a stone-lined bin. In House 7 (Figure 15) two narrow compartments (Rooms 6 and 7) at the south end of Room 3 served as storage spaces exclusively for pottery vessels: a large number of cups, pitchers, teapots and other vessels, alongside which was an anthropomorphic vessel (Özgüç 2003: 214). More often, however, the great majority of ritual vessels for which findspots have been recorded come not from relatively more secluded back rooms or storage spaces, but from main rooms or courtyards used as kitchen or service areas, sharing the same space with a wide range of quotidian utensils installations such as hearths, large water basins (‘bath tubs’), and generic work areas. Perhaps we ought to think in terms of a distinction between settings for the storage of ritual objects as

There are numerous examples of cuneiform documents being kept in small storage rooms located in relatively more private parts of a house, no doubt in order to limit and better control access to important documents. Where ritual vessels have also been found in such rooms, we may conclude that these items were also set aside as special items and removed from the sphere of busy daily activity. 256

Yağmur Heffron: Chapter 16. Ritual Allsorts:

Figure 15. House 7. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC), gridsquares P-R/25-26 (Özgüç 1959: 25; pl.1). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1959: fig.28).

Figure 16. House 8. Kültepe-Kaneš Lower Town Level II (ca. 2000-1836 BC), gridsquares C-E/7-8 (Özgüç 1959: 32-22; plan.7). (Isometric projection by Neil Erskine after Özgüç 1959: fig.43).

opposed to settings of their use (see Battini 2017: 101 for a similar suggestion).

consistent with regular domestic activities around food preparation. Room 2 also contained fine wares including a zoomorphic vessel of unspecified type, a bull-spouted fruit-stand, and a ram-spouted boat-vessel, indicating that the presence of special ritual paraphernalia was compatible with all the other domestic tasks this room served to accommodate.

A good example to illustrate this comes from the large house attributed to the Anatolian businessman Peruwa (House 4, Figure 5), boasting more than a dozen rooms only on the ground floor, with a staircase in Room 13 attesting to an upper story. There was plenty of choice for where and how ritual vessel should be kept. Zoomorphic vessels and associated Alişar III ware drinking cups were discovered in Room 1, a typical courtyard entered through a small room opening directly onto the street, partly roofed over by a portico and furnished with a sizeable horseshoe hearth on a platform in the corner. Another drinking set, this time consisting of cups placed inside a fruit-stand, was discovered in what appears to have been a basement storage area (Room 12) for which the excavation report also records an unspecified number of cuneiform tablets, envelopes, various vessels along the walls including beak-spouted vessels whose mouths were covered (Özgüç 1959: 34–36; 1953: 103–104), indicating that they were full at the time of deposition. Room 9, another storage space, also contained small drinking cups (Özgüç 2003) though these do not seem to have been in association with ritual vessels as part of a special set. It is likely that the vessels in Rooms 12 and 9 were found in a secondary setting of storage whereas the set comprising a zoomorphic vessel and Alişar III cups from the main room/courtyard was discovered in its primary setting of use.

As for the ‘specially prepared places in living rooms,’ published reports provide only one case that fits this description. In the courtyard (Room 1) of House 8 (Figure 16), the excavators uncovered what is described as a plastered shelf, upon which was a group of in situ fineware vessels including several jars, basket-handled cups, and grape-cluster vessels (Özgüç 1959: 11). These ‘good’ vessels on display were thus set apart from coarsewares and cooking pots but still kept in the same room. The overall regularity with which ritual vessels have been discovered in the busiest and most public parts of the house rather than being placed in secluded back rooms or storage areas such as where tablets were often kept, would suggest a high degree of embeddedness of ritual within other components of the ordinary life of a household. Furthermore, the ubiquitous presence of ritual vessels in central areas of food processing and other domestic activity further reinforces the communal nature of involving the use of such vessels, again in keeping with shared cultic drinking—we can imagine the members of the household passing drinks around, taking turns consuming.

The large Room 2 of House 8 (Figure 16) is a typical courtyard space which was probably unroofed over the stone paving and large oven built along the east wall. The small stone-paved ‘larder’ space (Room 1) in the northwest corner contained cooking wares including an in situ pot near the oven, an ash pan, and a horseshoe hearth with a grinding stone nearby (Özgüç 1959: 32),

Communal participation in household rituals is particularly significant in a social context within which many, perhaps most, households were mixed—indeed we do have the archaeological correlates of cult practices pointing both to Syro-Mesopotamian preferences (such as in-house graves, and stone stelae) as well as those of 257

No Place Like Home Anatolian origin (such as the funerary eye- and mouthcovers and zoomorphic vessels). Domestic space was therefore not only ritual space, but a composite space of ritual admixture facilitating and reinforcing coherence within a very diverse social context, but presumably also allowing individual preferences and distinct cultural traditions to be played out.

with a family’s relationship with its ancestors, in order to maintain ties between the present and the past, but extends also into the future as a family seeks to secure the well-being of infants and children through magical protection as well as rites surrounding pregnancy and birth. Significant in this regard is the motif of what has been called a ‘divine family’ found frequently in miniature lead figurines (Emre 1971), which almost certainly fulfilled a magically protective function as personal and/or household apotropaia (Heffron 2017). In what is clearly a stock theme usually made up of a standing male and a female holding an infant and sometimes with an additional older child standing at her side, the broad significance of this group is in keeping with ideas of offspring and generational continuity, even though its precise meaning may escape us (Heffron 2017: 288, 293).

Conclusion In keeping with the broad multifunctionality of domestic spaces in the ancient Near East, residential structures at Kaneš also served a variety of purposes. The conspicuous architectural arrangements of rows of small spaces with direct street access have been identified as possible shops (Özgüç 1953), while assemblages comprising ingots, crucibles, pot bellows, blow pipes, melting pots, and stone molds (Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2011: 271–280) attest to at least three individual structures that served as small scale metalurgical workshops (Topçuoğlu 2014: 125–126). Loom weights recovered from private houses (Kulakoğlu and Kangal 2010: 236–237; Lassen 2014: 261) suggest that textile production, whether for household consumption or for economic gain, would also have been part of regular domestic activities. Needless to say, the sheer presence of merchants’ cuneiform archives in houses speaks to dwellings doubling as offices where business was often conducted while merchandise was certainly stored in merchants’ homes. There is also some evidence that a degree of scribal education was carried out in domestic settings (Barjamovic 2015).

Although not as frequent as graves, other types of installations built into the house such as stone stelae and associated basins, and ritual deposits, further point to the variety of ways in which a house could be marked as a permanent ritual setting. Different installations would have facilitated different types of rituals. Finally, portable paraphernalia, most conspicuous in the form of a rich variety of vessels suitable for libations, drinking rites, and possibly also acts of ritual washing or cleansing, alert us to yet another level of versatility in the use of domestic space as settings in which to make offerings to supernatural beings such as the dead and/or deities, participate in ritual commensality, and presumably also purificatory rites. Notably, the presence of drinking sets points to the communal aspect of at least some household rituals in which we can expect members to have participated as a group. Among vessels used for ritual purposes, zoomorphic types certainly fulfilled a specialist role in facilitating communication with the divine, as suggested by textual references to ritual drinking acts establishing a bond between human and divine participants (Heffron 2014: 171).

The domestic house also served as a religious setting in which a series of distinct but interrelated spheres of ritual activity took place. Archaeological evidence for household rituals manifests in the form of permanent fixtures as well portable paraphernalia, each pointing to different modes by which the domestic setting could be transformed into a liminal space on a temporary or ad hoc basis (Heffron 2016: 26). Most conspicuously, the presence of sub-floor graves immediately situates the ordinary domestic setting in a permanent state of liminality whereby the worlds of the living and the dead are juxtaposed in a shared space. Whether at Kaneš or elsewhere, the use of domestic setting as funerary settings (the house, effectively, being also a mausoleum), suggests a strong sense of family ownership of the dead, and an emphasis on intergenerational continuity whereby the social role of ancestors is configured heavily in relation to the concerns and well-being of the family and the household. It is important to remember that the significance of generational continuity lies not only

Inevitably, extant evidence can only offer a partial (and surely distorted!) view of the full constellation of ideas surrounding domestic space as ritual settings. Nonetheless, the sources available to us do point to a tremendously wide range of concerns; such as, the desire to attract good supernatural presence while warding off evil; easing rites of passage such as birth and death; invoking and caring for ancestors; and carrying out divine worship through libations and offerings.

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Acknowledgements This article would never have seen the light of day had the editors not been superbly accommodating and fantastically efficient. I would especially like to thank Sharon Steadman for her unflagging encouragement; and Laura Battini for alerting me to crucial literature thanks to which Mesopotamian comparanda now make so much more sense to me. As ever, I am grateful to Neil Erskine for producing so many of the images—surely an unforeseen commitment when he came to hear me give this paper in Boston five years ago.

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