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

104|ANASTASIA CHRISTOPHILOPOULOU
Age one- and two-room houses predominate. 89 In these cases the
arrangement of rooms is sequential; because one room is situated
behind another, the rear room was only accessible via the front
door/front room. Typical examples can be found throughout the
whole area of the Aegean and Crete as in the cases of Karphi and
Vrokastro in Crete or Ag. Andreas in Siphnos, as well as the earlier
examples of houses in Zagora. Houses with a more complex pattern
of space organisation emerge in the late eighth century BC
(and the later examples in Zagora testify this transition). The houses
allow more than two rooms now, but a linear arrangement is still
dominant and not replaced by a radial room arrangement until the
Archaic period. In the Archaic period, the rooms were placed
alongside one another in a “paratactic” manner. Furthermore, the
houses now included a courtyard (as in the examples of Zagora and
Miletus) or a corridor (as seen in Azoria or Dreros). 90
Multi-period sites also allow us to study changes in the architecture
and activity-areas of households as a result of functional,
social and other shifts over time. These changes, distinguishable
through the different phases of the house, are the result of the developmental
cycle of the house, which was in turn influenced by
both the family cycle (its sociobiological development) and the
economic cycle (the development and extent of household activities).
Sites such as Zagora, exemplify these changes: The older
houses in the site were surrounded by open spaces. The houses
were furnished with benches mostly used as storage and work area
(but occasionally used for sitting and sleeping). All daily tasks were
conducted in the one-room of the household, which was multifunctional.
There were no further divisions between a living room
and a storage-room. If there was a need to subdivide areas, this
would be determined by social convention (for instance an area for
men separated from that for women, for older people from that for
younger people and so on). “Privacy” was definitely very restricted
in this kind of domestic environment. 91 We should assume that
when the weather permitted it, a number of activities could have
89 MAZARAKIS–AINIAN (1997) tab. I–VIII.
90 For a discussion of corridor houses in Dreros see LANG (1996) 94–
97. 91 LANG (2005) 21–22.