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

114|ANASTASIA CHRISTOPHILOPOULOU
not always equate to their “activity location”. The situation where
household units can be said to be not only architecturally distinct
but also characterised by a recurrent association of features and
artefacts, allowing thus a more or less secure interpretation of even
short-term activities in the household is extremely rare in the timeframe
of the Early Iron Age. And this “rarity” should not only be
reckoned as an interpretational problem for the period examined
here, but also something testifying a “trend” towards the apparently
random distribution of what ought to be socially significant artefacts
in domestic architecture of the Early Iron Age, illustrated in
an important number of cases (including examples in Chalasmenos
and Vrokastro in Crete, as well as in Zagora in Andros, Tsikalario
in Naxos for the Cyclades or the Emporio bench-houses in the
Eastern Aegean). Even “high profile” activities, such as cooking,
appear to have no fixed location in many occasions in both cases of
Early Iron Age households or later Classical households. 116
In almost all case-studies examined here in the Aegean and
Crete excavation appears to pick up evidence for where objects
were stored best of all. Secondarily, it reveals a confused and fragmentary
mixture of different kinds of activities spread unevenly
throughout domestic space. 117 Finally, the ambiguity of artefact
assemblages in the domestic environment may be related to the
multiple overlay of routine ephemeral activities organised temporally.
With respect to the same problem while examining Classical
households, M. H. Jameson had suggested that although literary
sources may appear to assign specific functions and genders to particular
rooms, these designations are very fluid. He emphasised for
example that the division between “men‟s quarters” and “women‟s
quarters” (as defined by written sources) and their difficult “archaeological
visibility” might be explained best if these are interpreted
as “sleeping quarters”. 118 An important number of functiondetermining
elements of material culture and furnishings for either
Early Iron Age or later households might have consisted of movable
items and features. Thus beds for example, might very well
have consisted of sleeping bags or pallets which would have been
116 FOXHALL (2000) 493, fig. 6.
117 FOXHALL (2000) 495–497 contra CAHILL (1991) 281.
118 JAMESON (1990a) 92–113.