This book had its genesis in a series of 6 popular and well-attended ASOR conference sessions on Household Archaeology in the Ancient Near East. The 18 chapters are organized in three thematic sections: 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?’
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 final section, “Ritual Space at Home,” features studies on the house as ritual space. 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 the Near East.
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CONTENTS:
Authors biographies
Chapter 1. Introduction: No Place Like Home. By Laura Battini, Aaron Brody, and Sharon R. Steadman
Architecture as Archive of Social Space
Chapter 2. Nicholas Picardo, ‘Social House’ Theory and Egyptian Archaeology
Chapter 3. Monique D. Vincent, Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity in the Early Iron Age at Tall al-ʿUmayri, Jordan
Chapter 4. Paul Zimansky, Houses and Households in Urartu: Evidence from the Outer Town at Ayanis
Chapter 5. Timothy Matney, Tina Greenfield, Kemalettin Köroǧlu,
John MacGinnis, Britt Hartenberger, and Melissa Rosenzweig, Living at the Gate: Identification of Specialized Military Housing at Neo-Assyrian Tušhan (Ziyaret Tepe)
Chapter 6. Laura Battini, Neo-Babylonian Domestic Houses at Ur in Social Perspective
Chapter 7. Jacob Damm, Identity at the Twilight of Empire: Domestic Foodways and Cultural Practice at 12th Century BC Beth-Shean
The Active Household
Chapter 8. Stephanie Selover, Laurel D. Hackley, and Sharon R. Steadman, Work/Life Balance’ in the Late Chalcolithic Anatolia: Household Activities and Spatial Organization at Çadır Höyük
Chapter 9. Haskel J. Greenfield, Jon Ross, Shira Albaz, Tina L. Greenfield, Jeremy A. Beller, Suembikya Frumin, Ehud Weiss, and Aren M. Maeir, Household Archaeology during the Early Bronze II of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath
Chapter 10. Jennifer Swerida, House, Household, and The Umm An-Nar: Structure SS1 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, Sultanate of Oman
Chapter 11. Margreet Steiner, A Closer Look: The Houses on the Southeastern Hill of Jerusalem in Economic Perspective
Chapter 12. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Tim Frank, and Oded Borowski, The Daily Bread at Tell Halif: An Overview of Food Production and Consumption
Chapter 13. Anna Lucille Boozer, Living and Working at Home: Workshops and Workplaces in Romano-Egyptian Houses
Ritual Space at Home
Chapter 14. Marie Hopwood, Accidental or Intentional?: An Ubaid Period Burnt Structure at Kenan Tepe, Turkey
Chapter 15. Juliette Mas, Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Houses: A Ritualized Space
Chapter 16. Yağmur Heffron, Ritual Allsorts: An Archaeology of Domestic Religious Admixture in Kültepe-Kaneš