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

DOMESTIC SPACE AND COMMUNITY IDENTITY |107
tlement arrangement means, a number of predefined ideas (although
not always very strict ones in the early stages) about the
number and size of households within the settlement, their architectural
arrangement in “house-plots”, and consequently about the
number, size and particular functions of spaces within a single
household.
We can observe these contrasts between Early Iron Age
households and later, Archaic and Classical examples, by comparing
the case of Zagora with settlements such as Vroulia or the Sicilian
colony of Megara Hyblaia. 96 In the example of Vroulia, founded
in the early seventh century BC, with a settlement plan standardised
from the time of its conception, the houses form a row with two or
more rooms behind a court. 97 The rooms lie adjacent to one another
in a paratactic arrangement. In this settlement, the function of
particular rooms was not strictly pre-arranged, as in later Classical
households, and one could argue that the functional division of
spaces still retains its links with the Early Iron Age. However, the
repetition of a house-plan with contiguous rooms behind a courtyard
brings us closer to the idea of spatial separation of activities
and individuals. To this is added the fact that no subsequent modification
occurred to the settlement (in contrast to how “heavily”
modified were the examples of Early Iron Age settlements) so that
the visible plan of Vroulia mirrors the original conception of its
founders: planned rows of houses. 98 Definitely the idea of the entire
settlement acting as a “theatre” for daily life activities, with activities
easily changing places, was not the case for Vroulia.
Internal communication is another point of interest with respect
to the social arrangement of the household. Internal communication
is determined by the number and arrangement of its
rooms, the structure of access-ways and room functions. 99 These
features were also part of the innovations witnessed in the course
of the transition from the Early Iron Age to the Archaic period.
The position of doorways within a household is indicative of the
96 VALLET – VILLARD (1976) 259–324.
97 KINCH (1914) fig. 2, 1; LANG (2005) 18–19, fig. 2, 4.
98 LANG (2005) fig. 2, 4.
99 PEARSON – RICHARDS (1997) 1–9.