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

DOMESTIC SPACE AND COMMUNITY IDENTITY |113
for more than about a century and most were in use for much
shorter periods. This is apparent in many of the case-studies examined
here in the Aegean and Crete, where, throughout the whole
transition between Early Iron Age and Archaic periods, only very
few examples of households demonstrate a continuous use encompassing
many generations. 113 In order to address the “problem” of
identifying short-term time scales of activities within households
we need to return and discuss the constrains of our methodologies
of collecting activity-related data from households.
Since the first excavations of domestic architecture in the
Greek context (whether dealing with Early Iron Age-Archaic or
Classical-Hellenistic houses) attempts have been made to assign
functions to particular spaces/rooms and more recently the separation
(or not) of gendered activities has promoted much discussion.
114 It has also been argued that one reason of why these interpretations
are difficult or problematic, is the fact that „excavators
of domestic houses do not always note the precise location of small
finds which should be indicative to the gendered use of rooms”. 115
However, it is not exactly clear that better quality data hold the solution
to the “problem” of room function. Let us take the example
of a settlement excavated to a high standard, and well-documented
where all potential small finds are recorded and all pottery recovered
is noted. Although exact find spots are not always specified in
the publication, it is possible to locate the find-spots of a considerable
number of artefacts with reasonable certainty. It is, however,
clear that most domestic objects were removed when the house
was abandoned and what remains gives us a very mixed picture:
Fragments of the same artefact (as very often is the case of loom
weights, in Early Iron Age domestic contexts in Crete and the Aegean),
are frequently widely scattered across the house, probably as
the product of post-occupation activity. Additionally, small finds
are more likely to be subject to constant moving throughout the
daily life patterns of the household, equally meaning that, even if
not affected by post-occupation activities, their “find location” will
113 COULSON (1997) 360–390.
114 NEVETT (1995) 363–381; WALKER (1983) 81–91; JAMESON
(1990a) 90–113; JAMESON (1990b) 171–195; FOXHALL (1989) 22–44.
115 NEVETT (1995) 366–367. 374. 381.