Yasur-Lau Assaf. Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond
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342 louise a. hitchcock
Philistia
Tell es-Ṣa/Gath, Building 23033, Industrial Cult Corner
Tell es-Ṣa is located in the Shephelah, approximately midway between
Jerusalem and Ashdod (Maeir 2008). In the Iron Age (ca. 1180–600 bce)
it was the location of Gath, one of the ve main cities of the Philistine
Pentapolis mentioned in the Bible. New discoveries from Tell es-Ṣa/
Gath are changing the way we view the Philistines and their relation-
ship to Cyprus and the Aegean (Maeir 2008). e Philistines may be
regarded as a hybridized culture with elements introduced by settlers
from various parts of the Mediterranean as a result of piracy and
upheaval that characterized the end of the Bronze Age (cf. Gitin et al.
1998; Oren 2000). Although the precise details of the various cultural
strands of the Philistines are still being debated, there are features that
can be linked to various parts of the Aegean and Cyprus, as well as to
the local Canaanite culture.
Building 23033 is a Stratum 3 (ninth century bce) structure located
in Area A where the majority of Philistine remains on the tell have
been uncovered (Zukerman et al. 2007: 66, Fig. 8). e plan of Build-
ing 23033 has some Aegean characteristics. It is composed of a hall
with porch employing approximate 1: 2 proportions and four side
chambers, but it is lacking the circulatory corridor separating the hall
from side chambers as found in canonical megara.
15
e plan of Build-
ing 23033 indicates that it was special, as does the context of some of
the nds that may be regarded as ritual. ese include notched animal
scapulae found near an entrance and associated with a bench, and a
painted chalice in another wing of the building (Zukerman et al. 2007:
64, 66, Fig. 8), which might be indicative of a cult corner.
Building 23033 also contained industrial installations for oil and
wine production, as well as weaving implements, indicating it had a
predominantly industrial function (Zukerman et al. 2007: 64–65). e
15
e canonical Mycenaean megaron (see Hitchcock 2010b – Barber 1992) of the
Late Bronze Age had a rectangular outline and consisted of a hall, fore-hall, and a
porch with two columns in antis to support the roof. Both the fore-hall and the porch
were approximately one half the depth of the inner hall. e internal arrangement of
the megaron was dominated by a circular hearth, and surrounded by four columns
arranged in a square. e megaron frequently had rear chambers and side corridors
giving access to smaller, square service rooms to the side.
cult corners in the aegean and the levant 343
location of the scapulae in buildings with industrial installations for
oil and wine production and weaving implements may be taken as
an example of what Burdajewicz (1990: 67) has termed “sacred econ-
omy,” a relationship between ritual and industrial activity. e bench
with scapulae and a chalice may even represent an industrial “cult cor-
ner,” which need not be located in an actual corner, but may simply be
understood as a small area in a larger building where cult objects were
located (cf. Gilmour 1995: 15, 214–217). Koehl (2006: 335) has sug-
gested that rhyta were used in libations related to the textile industry
based on their frequent association with loom weights. In the case of
Building 23033, the chalice may similarly have been associated with
libation activities linked to textile production. Sacred economy is well
documented on Cyprus (cf. Knapp 1986), and notched scapulae on
Cyprus were found in cult buildings that had a connection to metal-
lurgical activities, such as at Myrtou-Pighades (above). Given that cult
corners can be identied in Canaanite, Cypriot, and Aegean culture,
they would not be out of character at Tell es-Ṣa/Gath.
16
Conclusion
is paper is not arguing for cultural diusion of the cult corner from
the Levant to Cyprus or the Aegean, particularly as origins are not
always easy to identify and such features are quite common across
cultures (cf. Rapoport 1969: 15, 54–55), although regional manifesta-
tion of borrowings no doubt occurred in the eastern Mediterranean.
e value in comparative studies of this type is that each provides
additional categories of evidence and features that can be used to shed
light on other cultures and perhaps identify broader patterns of social
and ritual practices. Using analytical methods pioneered in one region
such as the Levant makes it possible to identify and interpret similar
constellations of other features and practices in others. For example,
one interesting practice occurring across cultures might be the prac-
tice of divination using bone implements, taking the form of groups
of astragali in Megiddo and Taʿanach (see King and Stager 2001: 341;
16
Further to the west in Area A, a small rectangular space excavated in 2007 con-
tained an unusual assemblage of ritual items including a pomegranate-shaped object,
some phallic bottles, and a ring rhyton, which indicates another cult corner. e pub-
lication of this area is much anticipated.
344 louise a. hitchcock
Shiloh 1979: 149–152) and notched scapulae in Cyprus and Philistia.
Others include the importance of standing stones and high places in
rural and urban contexts, and the association of rhyta with metallur-
gical activity. In addition, analogies with the Levant allow us also to
identify liminal spaces associated with Mycenaean gates and fortica-
tion systems. Evidence from Kalavassos in the form of the libation
stone and specialized pouring vessels from Phaistos indicate that liba-
tion was a feature in both Aegean and Cypriot cult corners.
In investigating the concept of the cult corner in Cyprus and the
Aegean, examples in certain periods came from monumental struc-
tures rather than domestic ones. However, it was suggested that these
were derived from practices that developed in the pre-palatial Early
Bronze Age. Furthermore, it can be suggested that some of the exam-
ples found in the Minoan palaces, particularly the rst palace at Phais-
tos and the second palaces at Gournia and Mallia, were directed at the
general population, as they were only accessible from the exterior. In
a sense, they provided visitors to the palaces with a household cult
corner away from home. Furthermore, given the disturbed context of
early excavations of settlements as well as the lack of emphasis on
the excavation and careful study of domestic architecture in the LB
Aegean, some of the observations made for monumental buildings
might bring greater clarication to understanding ritual practices in
households.
Most signicantly, applying the Levantine concept of the cult corner
to the Aegean has enabled us to escape the polarization of seeing build-
ings as entirely cultic or entirely secular—whether the buildings were
ocial or domestic. In doing so, it has become possible to interpret
spaces in Aegean buildings with greater clarity, establish new criteria
for the identication of ritual activity in domestic and ocial dwell-
ings, and reconsider the symbolism of particular artifacts such as stone
tools and decorated pottery with regard to current research on feast-
ing. It was also argued that while the cult corner in the Aegean may
have had its origins in the domestic sphere, it was a concept that was
quickly appropriated with great success by those responsible for the
construction of the Minoan palaces. e Aegean and Cypriot interpre-
tation of the concept of the cult corner took several forms. ese forms
include publicly accessible cult corners, interior and centralized cult
cult corners in the aegean and the levant 345
rooms, and corners in courtyards that used baetyls or high places as
focal points as at Gournia and Phaistos. e examples of cult corners
in Cyprus and the Aegean surveyed here supplement the Levantine
corpus, and may also take us a step further in studying interconnec-
tions among the Aegean, Cyprus, and the Levant.
VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION IN THE
DOMESTIC SETTING
1
Beth Alpert Nakhai
Introduction
Religious activities in Israel were enacted in real time and space and
required the use of both ritual and commonplace artifacts. Elements
of such activities must be reected in the archaeological record, but
scholars are challenged to identify sacral acts that did not take place
within buildings specically designated for religious purposes. While
there is overall consensus concerning ritual in the Jerusalem Temple,
and even in the major sanctuaries throughout the land, less is known
about the practice of religion in the domestic setting. Recent studies
have identied small cultic areas within Israelite houses at Tell el-Farʿah
(N), Tell Halif and ʿAi, among others. is paper suggests that fam-
ily elders of both sexes oversaw religious practice at these household
shrines, but these elders held no monopoly over expressions of domes-
tic piety. Additional rituals were enacted in mixed-use or multifunc-
tion spaces, that is, in areas throughout the house in which a variety of
activities took place. Given the space limitations of the typical Israelite
house and the myriad tasks to be accomplished within it, this is hardly
surprising.
In Israel, domestic space was used in dierent ways depending
upon seasonal factors, food preparation requirements, cra produc-
tion activities, storage needs, issues with livestock, and more. e
variegated nature of daily life activities meant that it was rare for
a substantial part of a four-room house to be assigned exclusively
to a single task or activity. Indeed, exibility was one of the most
1
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of
the European Association of Biblical Studies (Vienna). I would like to thank Jennie
Ebeling, Laura Mazow, and Assaf Yasur-Landau for inviting me to participate in the
2008 Household Archaeology in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant session at the Annual
Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, and for including my work
in this book.
348 beth alpert nakhai
compelling characteristics of this type of house, in which space was
allocated for specic tasks and then reallocated, modied, or altered
when needs changed. Like other activities within the Iron Age home,
religious expression was sensitive to seasonal, familial, and personal
factors. is paper addresses some of the questions raised by the use
of domestic space for ritual activities. How can cultic areas within the
domestic venue be identied and cultic acts reconstructed? What do
they contribute to our knowledge of family religion? Finally, what does
the consideration of mixed-use space as the locus of cultic activities
contribute to ongoing discussions about gender and religion?
Overview: Ocial Religion
To set the stage for this examination of family religion, a brief over-
view of Israelite religion is in order. Rainer Albertz identied two “foci
of identity” within Israelite religion. As he denes them, “ocial reli-
gion” operated for “the people” or “society as a whole,” while “per-
sonal piety” related to the individual within the context of the family
(1994: 19).
2
It is this distinction that makes it possible to move from
the macro- to the micro-level, and from there into the important dis-
tinctions evident in what has, to date, oen been variously considered
domestic, household, or family religion.
3
First, though, a few com-
ments about ocial religion provide appropriate background.
Ocial religion was about the welfare of the nation. It provided the
venue for the king to care for his nation by tending to its national God
or gods, and for the priesthood to articulate an ideology of purity, sin,
and atonement through the ritual of sacrice. In addition, it created
opportunities for the population at-large to gather cyclically for festal
pilgrimages, at which time they joined with others to celebrate their
national identity by worshipping the national divinities. e Bible
indicates that worship designed to sustain Israel as an agricultural
society took place in the Jerusalem Temple, in thrice-annual pilgrim-
age festivals (Deut. 16: 1–17). Of course, the extent to which these
2
See, more recently, Albertz 2008, for the introduction of village-level worship. See
van der Toorn 1996 for a discussion of the village or clan rather than the household as
the focus of local worship. See Olyan 2008 for a discussion of the connections among
these elements within Israelite religion.
3
See, most recently, the articles in Bodel and Olyan 2008 for various denitions of
domestic, household, and family religion. See, too, Albertz et al. forthcoming.
varieties of religious expression 349
festivals were celebrated throughout Israel’s history is a matter of
debate, and even less is known about the opportunities that pilgrimage
oered to average individuals. e Bible does not forbid women from
making pilgrimages, and the story of the annual pilgrimage of Elkanah
and his two wives, Peninnah and Hannah, to the sanctuary at Shiloh
elaborates upon that possibility (1 Sam. 1–2). So, too, does the story
of the young women celebrating the grape harvest at Shiloh (Judg. 21:
19–24). At the same time, Deuteronomic law excludes women from
the obligation to make pilgrimages, stating that, “ree times a year
all your males shall come into the presence of YHWH your God, in
the place which He will choose” (Deut. 16: 16). is suggests that a
woman’s need to give thanks, make vows, seek forgiveness, or sup-
plicate God would have been met elsewhere, as well.
4
Ocial religion was also practiced in royal or bamot sanctuar-
ies outside of Jerusalem. Evidence for these sanctuaries comes from
nationally signicant sites including administrative and religious cen-
ters and fortresses, such as those at Megiddo, Arad, Beersheba, Lach-
ish, Bethel, and Dan. Insofar as they are known archaeologically, they
are identied by their well-built sanctuaries, substantial and weighty
stone altars, rich cultural assemblages, piles of animal bones, and the
like (see, inter alia, Zevit 2001). Like the Jerusalem Temple, these royal
sanctuaries served national needs as they provided settings in which
the priesthood maintained the royal cult, and government ocials and
soldiers fullled sacricial obligations (Nakhai 1994, 2001: 176–193).
Others may have turned to these sanctuaries when local worship failed
to meet their needs. at the national sanctuaries received popular
support seems likely, given the constant Deuteronomistic excoriation
of “all Israel” for worshipping in them (see, inter alia, Lev. 26: 30;
1 Kings 3: 2, 14: 23; 2 Kings 14: 4; 17: 7–11).
Overview: Family Religion
Here, however, the focus is on “personal piety,” on worship in the
household context, in space that was also used for mundane domes-
tic activities. is sort of worship (referred to variously as household,
4
See, too, passages in Leviticus that articulate the periods of impurity during which
women are prohibited from entering the sanctuary, and the point at which they are
required to return and oer sacrices (12: 2–8; 15: 25–30).
350 beth alpert nakhai
domestic, or family religion) can be related to those aspects of life
that were of greatest concern to all Israelites: sustenance and economic
survival, on the one hand; and health and reproduction, on the other.
5
To be eective, family religion had to encompass all these elements.
Traditional approaches to family religion have lumped them into a
single discussion, but I want to suggest that Israelites employed dier-
ent strategies to manage these two kinds of concerns. Dierent space
within the house was used for each, and dierent members of the
household oversaw each of these two “foci of worship.”
Household Shrines: e Shrine of the Family Elders
As we shall see, small household shrines are found in only a limited
number of homes.
6
is type of shrine might be constructed as an
alcove with an oering bench, or perhaps a massebah. Specialized
cultic objects such as model shrines, portable stone altars and oer-
ing stands, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic gurines are oen
associated with these modest domestic installations. Some scholars
have linked them to women’s worship (Willett 1999; Meyers 2002b;
Ackerman 2008b) but in my opinion, they are to be associated with
housing compounds and their resident kin groups and not with indi-
vidual residences. As such, they are better understood as the venue
for worship by the extended family, most oen with regard to matters
of subsistence and general welfare. Family elders, that is, the ranking
matriarch and patriarch of the extended family living in the multi-
house compound, oversaw worship at this small household “shrine of
the family elders,” which was set up within their own home.
7
Let us consider household shrines and the subsistence economy.
Israel’s survival was dependent upon farming, herding, and the
5
Note S. Olyan’s denition of family religion as “the religious practices of distinct,
interrelated social units (household and clan) in a number of dierent loci (domicile,
local and regional sanctuary, family tomb” (2008: 115), and S. Ackerman’s distinction
between the household, a spatial unit, and the family, a group bonded by biological
and marital ties (2008b: 128).
6
In some cases, a separate structure might have been set up within the housing
compound. See Ackerman 2008b: 132 for Micah’s family shrine (Judg. 18) as a discrete
architectural entity.
7
According to K. van der Toorn, family elders set up teraphim or elohim, small
wooden statues, in special locations within their homes; both husband and wife were
responsible for honoring these protective ancestors (2003: 396–399).
varieties of religious expression 351
production of necessities including ceramic vessels, clothing, metal
and stone tools and weapons, and more. At some level, Divine sup-
port was understood to have been required for success in all these ven-
tures. e link between religion and the economy has been illuminated
through the excavation of sites dating back as far as the Chalcolithic
(Levy 2006; see also Nakhai 2001). People beseeched their gods for suc-
cess in commercial ventures. In Iron Age Israel, an example is found
at Tell el-Hammah in the Jordan Valley, where textile manufacture
took place in one building while across the courtyard, a second build-
ing contained cultic objects including a kernos, a zoomorphic vessel,
astragali, and a female plaque gurine (Cahill and Tarler 1993).
8
is
highlights the link between religion and the economy, but this link was
not restricted to places of commercial productivity.
Average Israelites similarly prayed for harvests and ocks su-
ciently bountiful to meet family needs. Even as Temple worship served
to support agricultural exigencies, those unable to travel there might
have used the regional bamot sanctuaries to ask God for rain, oer
thanks for plentiful harvests and healthy ocks, and so forth. However,
it is not clear how accessible these royal sanctuaries would have been
for acts of “popular worship.” More likely, it was within their villages,
alongside kinfolk and neighbors who shared in their agricultural and
pastoral anxieties and responsibilities, that Israel’s farmers invoked
Divine assistance or expressed their gratitude for food, clothing, and
shelter.
Worship in Jerusalem, insofar as it was organized around agri-
cultural festivals, celebrated planting and harvesting, and worship in
household sanctuaries was organized around similar themes. Even
while crises such as drought, vermin, re, livestock disease, and dis-
ruptions in commerce might threaten survival, much else concerned
the predictable: the need for rain—or for no rain—in the right season,
the desire for plentiful harvests and healthy livestock, and so forth.
9
Given the pervasive belief that success was granted by God, it seems
reasonable to expect that within the housing compound, some kind of
organized worship would have been designed to cope with these con-
stant, pressing needs, and some built space would have been dedicated
8
For the association between the textile industry and the goddess Asherah at Tell
el-Hammah and elsewhere, see Ackerman 2008a.
9
For seasonal worship, see de Vaux 1961: 178–194; van der Toorn 2003.