“semitisches pantheon”. eine “männliche tyche” - MOSAIKjournal.com

DOMESTIC SPACE AND COMMUNITY IDENTITY |103
courtyard house we see at Zagora by 700 BC cut the individual
house off from other units, as the oikos could be accessible only
through a narrow door guarded by its male kyrios and sheltering his
dependent women, children and relatives from the outside world. 86
Classicists often suggest that Homeric notions of gender are less
rigid than those in Hesiod and later authors. 87 However, possibly
eleventh – ninth century BC Greeks did interpret their simple,
open houses in much the same ways as the subdivided space of
Archaic and Classical courtyard houses.
Difficulties in interpreting patterns in the material record as
gender-related activities, in the context of the Early Iron Age and
the Classical world are primarily due to the fact that these interpretations
are based on vague assumptions with few concrete models
available. One basic assumption that duality of patterning/dichotomy
in artefact types can be directly related to the duality
of gender roles is often very difficult to ascribe to the Iron Age
material. 88 However, there are many socio-cultural and natural formation
processes, which will affect this basic pattern and create
variation in the archaeological record. A better understanding of
socio-cultural aspects of the patterning of gender related activities
within a household unit as well as within settlements would enable
us to interpret the archaeological record better.
SPATIAL EVOLUTION AND FUNCTIONALITY WITHIN
EARLY IRON AGE HOUSEHOLDS
The study of “social space” within Early Iron Age households can
be defined with reference to the number and disposition of rooms,
the subdivision of the house and the position of doorways that indicate
the nature of internal communication. The number of rooms
affects internal differentiation in terms of function, arrangement
and segregation. In a number of examples we already observed,
that in one-room houses, multi-functional utilisation is dominant,
whereas in multi-room houses the possibility of a mono-functional
use for each room within the house increases. In the Early Iron
86 MORRIS (2000) 283–286; WEST (1978).
87 VAN WEES (1995) 154–163; MORRIS (2000) 286.
88 ALLISON (1999) 2–4; TRINGHAM (1991) 93–131.