The birth, life and death of an Iron Age house at Tel ‘Eton, Israel

Abstract

Using a biographic-like approach, this article presents the initial results of the study of an elite Iron Age house at Tel ‘Eton, from its conception, through its birth and life, to its death and decomposition. Massive preparations preceded the construction of the house, and the latter incorporated continuous foundations, and quality building materials, including ashlar stones. The building was pre-planned, and some of the original rooms had two doorways leading to them, in order to enable easy future sub-division, without endangering the structure's physical integrity. The house evolved over the years, and its inner division changed overtime, reflecting the changes in the life-cycle of the extended family that lived in it. The house was destroyed in heavy conflagration in the late 8th century BC; hundreds of artifacts and complete vessels were unearthed below and within the debris, allowing for a detailed reconstruction of the use of space within the building on the eve of its destruction and the processes that accompanied its destruction (perhaps even ‘execution’), and subsequent collapse.

Keywords:

• four-room houses
• use of Space
• construction
• destruction
• household archaeology

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article and the research leading to it were supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation (no. 284/11; ‘The Birth, Life and Death of a Four-Room House at Tel ‘Eton’).

Many people contributed to the excavations and the study of the material. A full list of staff and specialists will be published in the final report; here we would like to thank the Tel ‘Eton expedition and laboratory staff, students from Bar-Ilan University, Wheaton College, Franklin and Marshall College, the Open University of Israel and volunteers who participated in the excavations, as well as many of the inhabitants of the nearby settlements. Area A, in which Building 101 is located, was supervised by Joshua Walton, Aaron Greener, Garth Gilmour, Yonathan Adler, Oriah Amihai and Michal Marmelshtein; they were assisted by Naveh Yogev, Holly Haller, Pirchia Eyall, Zev Farber and Daniel Frese. Many samples were studied in the chemistry laboratories of Yitzhak Mastai, Doron Aurbach and Mordechai Livneh at Bar-Ilan University, and we thank them and their staff.

We would also like to thank Dan Cabanes and David Friesem who studied formation processes during the 2009 season and supplied some of the FTIR results and additional information, and to Ruth Shahack-Gross, who supervised them as part of the ERC Ancient Israel project, and Israel Finkelstein and Steve Weiner, who headed the project. D. Langgut acknowledges the support of the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 2141/15 (‘New Equipment Grant’).

Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments.

ORCID

Avraham Faust http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7301-7135

Hayah Katz http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5303-7235

Assaf Avraham http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1073-7888

Michael Tsesarsky http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5282-0332

Notes

1 The excavations are directed by Avraham Faust. Hayah Katz serves as Associate Director and is responsible for the ceramic analysis. Yair Sapir studies formation processes (as part of his PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Avraham Faust), Assaf Avraham studies Iron Age construction technology (as part of his PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Oren Vilnay and Avraham Faust), Tehila Sadiel studies the faunal remains (as part of her Master's thesis under the supervision of Guy Bar-Oz and Avraham Faust), Anat Hartmann-Shenkamn and Chen Auman-Chazan studied the botanical remains (the latter, as part of her Master's thesis, under the supervision of Ehud Weiss and Avraham Faust), Natasha Timmer and Ofer Marder studied the flint assemblage. Oren Ackermann studied the geomorphology and contributed to the study of the rocks used in the construction. Oren Vilnay and Michael Tsesarsky performed laboratory strength tests and analyzed construction technology. The sediments were studied in the Laboratory of Geomorphology and Soil, under the guidance of Sarah Pariente. Ofir Katz studied the micromorphology, Mordechay Benzaquen and Dafna Langgut studied the wood remains (dendroarchaeology). Other aspects of the study of the building are not advanced enough to be included here and will be published elsewhere.

2 The term ‘complete vessel’ applies to any vessel the majority of which was unearthed. Since various post-depositional processes lead to movement of sherds, one cannot always expect to find all the pieces of a vessel, and if the majority of the vessel is found, it suggests that the vessel was located in the building when it was destroyed, and hence needs to be explained as part of the use of the building prior to the destruction. In this article we discuss mainly the distribution of complete vessels as counted following restoration, or (in cases where the pottery is not yet fully restored) on the basis of the counting of in situ vessels during excavations. Since the restoration is still in progress, it is likely that the figures will be slightly updated in the future, but the overall patterns presented here are not likely to change.

3 There were some minor exceptions. The length of two mudbricks reached 61 cm and one was even 63 cm long. As for the height, one mudbrick was 15 cm high (see Sapir et al. in press for full information).

4 As noted, post-depositional processes can greatly change the nature of the remains (Schiffer 1987 and many references), but since we are discussing complete vessels in what appears to be mainly undisturbed contexts, we think that we can, carefully, treat the assemblage as representative and cautiously learn about the use of space at the time of the structure's destruction.

5 The study of the upper floor is still on going, but it is unlikely that the conclusions will significantly differ from the preliminary conclusions presented here.

6 The restoration of the vessels is now in progress and it is likely that there will be some minor changes in the counting once it is concluded.

7 The lack of unequivocal, in situ evidence for cooking installations in Building 101 is still an open question (cf. Hardin 2010: 169; Meyuhas 1937: 9, 37–38).

8 Notably, although most scholars still tend to date the Priestly texts to the Persian period (e.g., Blenkinsopp 1996; Clines 1993; Levine 1993: 101–09; Rofé 1994; Sperling 1999), and some date them to the Exilic period (see Clines 1993: 580), a growing number of scholars tend to view them as earlier, and date them (or, at least, significant parts of them) to the Iron Age (Friedman 1987; Halpern 1991; Hurvitz 1974; Knohl 1995; Milgrom 1991: 12–13; 1999; Schwartz 2011: 208–09; Weinfeld 1979; Wenham 1979: 13; see also Arnold 2009: 29–30; Vanderhooft 2009). Though apparently still a minority, it appears that the number of these scholars is growing and, more importantly, it appears to include many of those who specialize in the study of the Priestly source (e.g., Knohl, Milgrom, Schwartz and Wenham, see above). That the law seems to assume the unique possibilities afforded by the four-room house fits the earlier dating.

9 Since those who stayed in the room were free to leave and enter the house (and this particular room), but had to be careful in their contact with others, this location enabled them to have much easier movement to and from the main doorway (with less chances of accidently touching someone or something; see extended discussion in Faust and Katz 2017).

10 The low frequency of phytoliths in this room (2.9 and 11.7 thousands per gram) runs contrary to their frequency in other rooms (in other sites) that have been proved to have served as stables (e.g., Shahack-Gross et al. 2005) and suggest that the room was not used for this purpose. The number of the spherulites, however, is higher (1.3 million and 5.5 million per gram); the issue will be discussed below.

11 To exemplify the relative scarcity of bones in this area, we should note that the volume of the 8th century remains in Area A (inside Building 101 and outside it) greatly exceeds that of the remains excavated in all other parts of the mound combined (due to our focus on this building and its excellent preservation below the late Persian period building; in other Areas the 8th century remains were not preserved so well). Still, the total number of identifiable bones from this Area is (at the time of writing) only 135. Although excavated to a more limited extent, the number of identifiable bones (from the same era) unearthed in other excavation areas is about 300.

12 Two were uncovered in the passageways connecting Rooms 101B and 101D with the courtyard, the third was uncovered in a storage vessel (originally it was probably left on top of it) near the entrance to Room 101C. It is interesting to note that all the in situ lamps were uncovered in the western, inner part of the building.

13 It should be stressed that in most Iron Age houses oil lamps are quite rare, and in a few cases lamps were not found (Aizner 2011: 141–42 and many references; see also Panitz-Cohen 2011: 88; for the situation in Greece, see also Moullou 2015). Their high frequency at Building 101 stands out. It is therefore likely that their presence might be another indication as to the high status of the inhabitants who could afford the expense of using so much light (i.e., oil and perhaps wood for a permanent fire).

14 We are not suggesting that style is disconnected from function (e.g., Hodder and Hutson 2003), but the limited data would not have been sufficient to understand the differences, and it is only the wide exposure of Building 101 that enabled us to gain these insights.

15 It is possible that there was also access to one of the rooms (for guests) from the outside (e.g., Meyuhas 1937: 7; cf. II Kgs 4:10), but we have no evidence for this practice in Building 101 yet.

16 The above-mentioned low frequency of phytoliths in all the rooms might also suggest that none of the rooms was used to house animals on a regular basis (cf. Shahak-Gross et al. 2005). The number of spherulites in many of the floor samples reaches greater quantities (up to 7.8 million per gram in one of the samples in Room 101G), but although this can be taken to indicate the presence of animals, such a conclusion should be considered more critically. First, the presence of spherulites in Room 101G (2.8 and 7.8 million per gram in two samples), for example, does not fit the macro-remains unearthed in this room on the eve of the destruction, which shows conclusively that at this time it was used for the storage of grain (above). This disparity, alongside the low phytolith concentrations that are atypical of dung remains, implies that it is unlikely that the room was used to house animals. It is more likely that the observed spherulites originate in earlier activities in these spaces and that they were embedded in the floors when the rooms served other functions (perhaps they also relate to the material of which the floors were made), but they clearly cannot be taken as an indication for the activities that took place in the various rooms in the final stage of the building (and this applies also to room 101J, discussed above). The small size of spherulites (rarely over 5 microns in diameter) and the fact that their calcic surfaces are more likely to ‘stick’ to floor surfaces might explain how they survived the constant cleaning (while the phytoliths were swept up).

17 The ‘life’ phase was already divided into (a) the building's development over time and (b) its use on the eve of destruction.