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

DOMESTIC SPACE AND COMMUNITY IDENTITY |89
while a joint porch probably served for both houses. 47 House U has
an unusual, roughly rectangular, plan with two rooms of equal size.
It is definitely better constructed than house V. Its door is marked
by a gap in the south wall, without a threshold, but no doorway
exists to give access into the inner room. This inner room with no
access from any of the three walls is a very curious phenomenon in
terms of use of space. The most likely explanation is that it served
as a storeroom entered from above in which case this is the only
evidence of a second storey in Emporio, similar to the example of a
unit in Zagora. 48 House V is a variation of the usual bench-house,
roughly rectangular. Of its internal features, near the northeast corner
a small hearth with a possible mudbrick superstructure was full
of dark red earth and clay. A possible sleeping platform is indicated
by a group of stones in the southeast corner. Houses U and V defy
the common bench-house classification. Their common porch may
emulate the megara, but the hearth in V is as in all the benchhouses.
The column shafts in all houses must have been wooden.
Stone thresholds were found in nearly all the houses, probably with
a wooden frame resting on the threshold. The Geometric houses
on Andros and Siphnos provide parallels for this architectural type,
featuring the characteristic sleeping benches. We can easily summarize
the characteristics of the two architectural types encountered in
Emporio. The megaron face south and all have two columns in the
porch and a central doorway into the single main room. 49 The arrangement
of the interior columns is clear only in the lower megaron
and the megaron-hall, within there were two and three columns in
line down the centre. Unlike most of those in the bench-houses,
the column bases are broad and comparatively flat discs. The masonry
is generally more sophisticated in the megara and it is clear
that no mudbrick was used in the construction of the walls. Unfortunately
there is no conclusive evidence about the shape of their
roofs. A flat roof or one with a slight one-way pitch was most likely
the case, a type that is still very common in traditional architecture
in Chios and the Near East. 50 Much has been written about the
47 BOARDMAN (1967) 49–50, fig. 27. pl. 10 c–e.
48 BOARDMAN (1967) 50, fig. 27.
49 BOARDMAN (1967) 31. 40. 51.
50 BOARDMAN (1967) 36, pl. 11 a–b.