Cattle domestication and subsequent spread caused unprecedented biological, economic, ecological and social transformations in human history. Cyprus was one of the first places domestic taurine cattle were transported to outside of their core domestication region, making it a “hotspot” in which to investigate cattle acclimatisation and management practices. Accumulated archaeological, iconographic and zooarchaeological evidence has shed much light on the economic and socio-ideological significance of cattle in prehistoric Cypriot society, particularly from the Early Bronze Age onwards. However, little information exists on the mechanisms through which prehistoric cattle breeders experimented with this new, large, multifunctional and symbolically potent animal. Here, we use an integrated approach that combines zooarchaeological and stable isotopic data to reconstruct human-cattle interactions and cattle management in an island context. Stable carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotopes were applied to a small sample (n = 16) of cattle (Bos sp.) and goat (Capra hircus) teeth from three key sites, spanning the Pre-pottery Neolithic B to the Middle Bronze Age. The results highlight discrepancies in patterns of isotopic variation between Bronze Age goat and cattle, likely reflecting differences in mobility and the more intensive management of cattle through the provision of fodder. Additionally, we observe differences in the isotope values of cattle through time (Neolithic vs. Bronze Age) and space (upland versus inland), which might be related to local resource availability as well as alterations in climate and environment. In spite of the small sample size, this current work highlights the potential of integrating zooarchaeological and stable isotopic data for addressing questions relevant to animal husbandry practices during key archaeological periods in Cyprus and beyond, inviting future research on the topic.

To improve the resolution of ground penetrating radar (GPR) signals, the Compensated Time-Reversal (CTR) method is applied, especially in lossy media, where the conventional time reversal method has the negative effect of dispersion and loss in the propagation medium. To create the CTR method, Time-Reversal (TR) processing combined with attenuation compensation based on continuous wavelet transform is applied. The application of both the TR and CTR methods to synthetic data showed a significant improvement of the radargram resolution, effectively differentiating anomalies within a low-loss medium, especially when the latter approach was implemented. To test the method in a real-world situation, a forensic GPR investigation was carried out to detect the body of a climber buried by a snow avalanche in the Karkas Mountains, Natanz, Iran. Both the TR and CTR methods successfully located the body, but the CTR method provided better definition of both the body and nearby reflectors related to the subsurface features like specific layers of snow. These results demonstrate that the CTR application is efficient at enhancing the spatial resolution of GPR radargrams and proves to have substantial promise as a GPR processing technique, although the method is relatively time consuming.

This handsome volume is a collection of essays written in honor of Stuart Swiny, director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) from 1980 to 1995 and professor of Cypriot studies in the Department of Anthropology at the University at Albany. It is the outcome, in large part, of a symposium held in 2017 to mark Swiny’s retirement from the University at Albany and reflects his major contribution to the Bronze Age archaeology of the island, as well as his wide-ranging interest in “all things Cypriot.” The volume achieves its stated objective of “bringing together different theoretical, spatial, and analytical approaches to a wide range of types of material culture” (xv), and it is at the same time a more-than-usual personal tribute to Swiny, edited with undeniable respect and affection by two of his former students.Eighteen chapters by former students and colleagues, almost all US-based, are divided into six thematic sections. In Section I (“The Life and Legacy of Stuart Swiny”), we learn of Swiny’s boyhood, introduction to archaeology, and “the road to Cyprus” with copious illustrations from the family album in a chapter by H. Wylde Swiny and Z. Chovanec. Chapter 2, by T. W. Davis, focuses on Swiny’s years as Director of CAARI, undoubtedly his most enduring legacy on the island, with much interesting detail drawn from interviews with Stuart himself. Chapter 3 is a more idiosyncratic reflection by A. H. Simmons on Swiny’s role in facilitating and assisting in the interpretation of Simmons’s own, often controversial, fieldwork, again amply illustrated with personal photographs.In Section II (“Human-Environment Interactions in Cyprus”), F. Chelazzi (Ch. 4) reviews the last 18 years of survey projects on Cyprus. The results are not encouraging. Chelazzi notes a significant decline in the number of surveys since 2004, despite a dramatic increase in land development. On a more positive note, she points to the potential of second-generation analyses by younger scholars to synthesize the last century of survey data, and of new data management systems. Whether such infrastructure will prevent research from becoming dogmatic and uncritical, as Chelazzi suggests, remains to be seen, but easier data access and a resolution of existing issues of reliability and comparability would be an excellent start.In Chapter 5, K. DiBenedetto examines the interconnections between regional exchange, land use, and craft production at the upland Cypro-PPNB site of Ais Giorkis. She suggests that the inhabitants of Ais Giorkis were not primarily engaged in agricultural activities but in hunting and the production of socially valued goods. The enigmatic circular cobbled platforms, the contrast between the size and number of structures, which implies the presence of only a few families, and the quantity and quality of chipped and ground stone suggest the production of surpluses for exchange. This may also have involved mustard, identified as a residue in stone cupules, and deer and pig hides. In search of the human story, DiBenedetto proposes that Ais Giorkis may have served as a meeting place, akin to the local fairs of the recent Cypriot past.Genevieve Holdridge (Ch. 6) provides a very useful review of the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental data from the eastern Mediterranean with reference to societal changes visible in the archaeological record of third-millennium Cyprus. While conditions appear to have been variable across the region during the Chalcolithic, all records suggest that the transition from the Philia Phase of the Early Bronze Age to Early Cypriot I, ca. 2250 BCE, corresponds to a period of very dry conditions, as well as increased seismic activity. This so-called 4.2 kya event, long viewed as a factor in the collapse of settlements and trade routes across Anatolia and the Levant and in the devolution of the relatively homogeneous Philia system into distinctive regional entities on Cyprus, is fleshed out here with authoritative reference to the paleoclimatic data.In Section III (“Social Use and Organization of Space”) W. Crist (Ch. 7) continues his pursuit of the Cypriot “gaming stones” (limestone blocks with depressions in recurring patterns), a subject pioneered by Swiny, with a focus on their production, use, fragmentation, and disposal. Crist suggests that at Sotira one gaming stone was typically in use per household, while in communal and ritual areas larger numbers of people may have gathered to play. He asks why Cypriots, unusually, used stone for their games and suggests that durability, the stability provided by weight, and perhaps sound were important. He proposes that game boards were intentionally destroyed in association with ritual activity and that their structure and the way in which the game was played may have differed cross-regionally on Cyprus.Wylde Swiny and L. A. Swantek (Ch. 8) discuss “Coarse Ware trays” and their association with hearths at Sotira and Phaneromeni, where a number were found “sitting atop hearths” (92). They do not address the absence of carbon residues on the base of these “trays,” although some show bleaching from exposure to heat, and one wonders whether the “hearths” are not better identified as ovens. The authors suggest that they were used for parching or dry-roasting grain and that the “tray”/hearth combination is an exclusively south coast phenomenon. At Marki and Alambra in the center of the island, however, such “trays” were associated with hearths, ovens, benches, and emplacements, and one example from Marki was found in an oven (Frankel and Webb 2006: 24–26).In Chapter 9, L. Steel considers the use and meaning of Room 103 at the Late Bronze Age rural settlement of Aredhiou Vouppes, building on a number of theoretical approaches including embodiment and phenomenology. She suggests that this space, which produced an unusual array of objects, was used for commensal gathering and ceremonial action and conforms to Foucault’s notion of a heterotopia (a special space where normal rules of daily living do not apply). Engaging as this may be, the reader would be wise to remember that this interpretation is based on fragmentary material from secondary fill deposits as no floor surface was identified in Room 103.In the first chapter (Ch. 10) of Section IV (“Material Culture Studies”), J. S. Smith provides a detailed analysis of the textile tools found by the University of Pennsylvania in Area A at Episkopi Bamboula, primarily from the Late Cypriot III period. It is the result of a careful restudy of this material, which includes whorls, loom weights, needles, possible weaving swords, and installations used for washing and dyework. The primary products appear to have been lightweight fabrics, many of which were weft-faced.In Chapter 11, M. Artzy discusses a short-necked jug with a handle on the shoulder from Tomb LVII at Ras Shamra, which was presented to the Ashmolean Museum by C. F. A. Schaeffer. Although displayed alongside Cypriot Bichrome vessels, the shape is foreign to Cyprus, and the decorative schema and color are also out of place. Schaeffer thought it to be of Cretan inspiration, but Artzy argues convincingly that the form is Syrian in origin and that its relatives should be sought in the amalgamated types of painted wares from this region, including Levantine Painted, Syro-Cilician, and Khabur Wares.Chovanec and P. Flourentzos (Ch. 12) offer a valuable overview of opium studies in Cyprus and beyond. They dismiss the interpretation of an ivory object from Kition as an opium pipe and argue that Base Ring juglets were not exclusively used for the storage and transport of opium. They note the presence, however, of an opium alkaloid in a Middle Bronze Age vessel from Politiko and discuss an Early Iron Age vase decorated with a goat’s head, snakes, and what they suggest is an opium poppy capsule and stem, proposing that opium had a deep connection in Cyprus with death, medicine, and fertility.Gloria London’s contribution (Ch. 13) discusses the traditional pottery of Cyprus and in particular the large wine jars or pitharia, based on her own ethnographic research at the pot-making villages of Kornos and Ayios Demetrios (Marathasa) as well as the observations of a Danish UN civil policeman, Knut Jensen, who interviewed people who made or used pitharia in the 1970s. The chapter offers much valuable information that is now available in more detail in a recent monograph (London 2020). The chapter ends with a catalogue of 25 traditional pots housed at CAARI.In Chapter 14, the first in Section V (“Regional Interactions”), C. J. Bergoffen discusses a White Painted Handmade I Ware krater from Enkomi decorated with palm trees and birds, which was found in an industrial complex with evidence for copperworking. Bergoffen considers date palms and birds on Cypriot and Levantine pottery as well as in luxury arts and suggests that the motif on the krater might be viewed as “extracted, abbreviated and abstracted” (182) from more complex scenes depicted in monumental court art. She notes, also, a connection on Cypriot Common Style seals between the palm tree, a male figure, ingots, bucrania, and occasionally birds, perhaps indicating an association between metalworking, the palm tree, and sacrifice. Bergoffen’s treatment of the Enkomi krater is detailed and important. There is some disjunction, however, between the identification of this vessel as “a unique work of art” and a “non-elite object in common use,” as argued in the conclusion (183).Marvin W. Kushnet’s study of the Cypriot economy in the late Archaic and Classical periods (Ch. 15) is based on a statistical analysis of Attic pottery from excavated deposits and silver coin hoards. His comments on the relative quantity of imported Greek pottery at various sites during the fifth century BC unfortunately fails to take account of the relative incidence of excavated deposits, a factor which surely better explains the paucity of such material at Lapithos than the suggestion that this city was not an important place of trade in comparison to Marion, Salamis, Kition, and Amathus, where both sanctuaries and tombs are represented in the extant record. The suggestion, also, that, prior to the move to Nea Paphos in 321 BC, Palaepaphos was a minor port that gained prosperity through religious pilgrimage rather than trade is a long-held misconception. As M. Iacovou (2019) has argued, the sanctuary of Cypriot Aphrodite attracted pilgrims only in the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, prior to which Palaepaphos was a prosperous coastal gateway involved in the export of resources from the Paphos hydrological basin.John R. Leonard (Ch. 16) offers a personal account of an intellectual journey into the Roman maritime economy of Cyprus, with a focus on the premodern carob trade. Together with archaeological and literary sources, such comparative data are used to reconstruct a detailed picture of a thriving and resilient land- and sea-based Roman economy in which a cornucopia of agricultural and manufactured goods was exported from a variety of coastal centers and local export and import stations.In Section VI (“Future Directions”) Swantek and W. J. Weir Jr. discuss the future potential of the Early Bronze Age settlement of Sotira Kaminoudhia, excavated in the 1980s and early 2000s by Swiny (Ch. 17). They propose a number of research questions that continued excavations at Sotira might usefully address, notably relating to the identification of social and economic networks and relative levels of household wealth, in tandem with continued ethnoarchaeological studies, also pioneered in this region by Swiny.The final chapter by A. B. Knapp (Ch. 18) is a personal view of general trends and “individual endeavours” (232) in prehistoric archaeology on Cyprus from 1980 to 2020. After a brief survey of the first 120 years, Knapp tracks the gradual shift from culture-historical to more scientific and multidisciplinary approaches and an increasing engagement with archaeological theory and practice, noting in particular the prominence of female scholars. The chapter ends with a plea for more theoretically informed research and a dissolution of the separation between data, method, and theory.The volume is prefaced by chronological charts and maps and ends with a lengthy index. Each section begins with quotations from Swiny’s publications. There is, inevitably, a certain amount of repetition, particularly in the telling of Swiny’s life and achievements, and some editorial lapses. The dates BCE for the Late Chalcolithic in Table 6.1 should, for example, read 2800–2400 (not 4800–2400). Recent publications are often missing from bibliographies, suggesting that not all chapters were updated prior to publication. Notwithstanding these small quibbles, the volume is a credit to the hard work of its editorial team. It is a valuable contribution to the archaeology of Cyprus and a more-than-fitting tribute to one of its preeminent practitioners.

We present new insights on the directional occurrence of the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly (LIAA) through the analysis of new and previously published directional archaeomagnetic data from Cyprus and nearby countries. The new directions, obtained from in situ baked clay structures such as small hearths and ovens from five Cypriot archaeological sites, dated from 2000 BCE to 1400 CE, are very well defined and are added to the scant reference dataset for Cyprus. The new records together with literature data from nearby countries are used to investigate the directional variations of the geomagnetic field in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. The first directional palaeosecular variation curve for Middle East is calculated using a critical selection of reference data from Cyprus, Israel, Turkey and Syria. The curve covers the last four millennia and shows several periods characterized by abrupt directional changes. A maximum change in curvature is clearly observed around 900 BCE, characterized by a change rate as high as 13.2 degrees per century. The new curve confirms that during the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly notable for extreme intensity values, the geomagnetic field was characterized by steep inclinations and important directional change too. The maximum curvature is shifted by around one century from the two distinct intensity spikes previously observed in Levant around the 10th and 8th centuries BCE. Other periods of important curvature change are also identified and deserve further investigation. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Four hundred and fifteen Middle Bronze Age metal artefacts from Lapithos in Cyprus were examined using a portable ED-XRF analyser (pXRF). The results show a higher than expected presence of non-local tin and a small number of leaded bronzes and copper-zinc alloys. A more detailed analysis suggests the use of particular alloys for some artefact types, most notably high-arsenic and high-tin bronze for plain pins and toggle pins, as well as recycling and mixing practices not previously considered for this period on Cyprus. It would appear that Lapithos was engaged in the production of metal artefacts and that imported tin bronze and high arsenic copper ores from the Limassol Forest region, on the other side of the island, were available to local metalsmiths in significant quantities. Lapithos' location on the north coast, the sheer quantity of metal found at this site and the presence of imports also suggest that it was involved in the maritime metals trade which linked southeast Anatolia to the Aegean and the Cyclades in the first half of the 2nd Millennium BC.

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from the settlement of Marki Alonia provides new evidence for dietary patterns and aspects of livestock management during the Early and Middle Cypriot Bronze Age. Animal data indicate exploitation of a mainly C3 ecosystem and hint at the possibility that caprines and cattle were subjected to different herding practices; they currently constitute the sole available isotopic baseline for this region and time period. As for the few analysed humans, a primarily C3 terrestrial protein-based diet can be suggested.

The magnetic field of the Earth can exhibit considerable variations at short time scales, even as short as decades. The archaeomagnetic studies of Middle Eastern artefacts (mainly from Israel and Jordan) show evidence for an exceptionally high intensity period from 1050-700 BC which displays two distinct spikes over the Levant, the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly (LIAA). Its exact duration and geographical extent are still poorly known. Despite the wealth of ancient settlements, the extensive cultural heritage and a long history of trade and immigration, the archaeomagnetism of Turkey and Cyprus remains largely unexplored. This study presents a large data set of ancient directions and intensities from seven archaeological sites in the Eastern Mediterranean covering a time span of ∼2000 yrs. The recorded directions from thirteen sets of samples are coherent with our earlier findings, yet show significantly larger swings than existing field models. In particular, we confirm the very large swing in inclination we found earlier, from 1910-1850 BC, that is also captured by the Greek PSV curve, and shallower by more than 10° than predicted by existing field models. Consequently, these models require substantial revision in this region. We were able to determine the archaeointensity from five sets of mud-bricks, from the thirteen attempted, allowing us to provide the full field vector. Furthermore, we present thirty-one new archaeointensity results from potsherds and mud-bricks that considerably enhance existing data, especially when a set of strict selection criteria is applied. Fourteen sets of potsherds from a single site (Tell Atchana) provide the longest sequence recorded so far in Turkey, from 2100 to 1350 BC. We find exceptionally high intensities of 145 and 175 ZAm2 around 700 BC, in well-dated mud-bricks and potsherds from two different locations (Tell Tayinat and Kilise Tepe), supporting extreme geomagnetic field variability in the region. Moreover, these two high intensities confirm the younger spike of the LIAA in Turkey.

This pilot study attempts to document the potential of Prehistoric human bone and teeth collagen from Cyprus (9th-2nd mill. BC), for isotopic analysis and palaeodietary reconstruction. We sampled archaeological human skeletons and some faunal remains coming from six sites located in different locations, with different burial modes. The analysis of carbon and nitrogen elemental compositions and stable isotope ratios (δ13C, δ15N), indicate an extremely poor preservation of collagen, probably in relationship with burying conditions. Although very few individuals were successfully analysed, stable isotope data from this study allow a discussion on different protein food resources intake by humans in comparison with some other published data in the Near East (Greece, Cyprus, Turkey) from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. These diachronic data provide documentations for future studies, including palaeodietary and environmental field research.

This paper looks at spatial and social discontinuities in burial practice and in the intensity with which burial places became contested spaces in Bronze Age Cyprus. Early and Middle Bronze Age cemeteries are typically viewed as communal landscapes associated with ancestral claims to place and community, a process that involved varied levels of social negotiation and posturing linked at some sites with ritual and material culture elaboration and the likely use of some tombs as mortuary shrines. In the Late Bronze Age there was a shift, in some settlements, to intramural burial. This 'privatisation' of mortuary space has been linked with the rise of more rigid political and economic structures and the development of an 'urban mindset'. The public/private dichotomy across the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition, however, appears to have been overstated. While earlier, relatively fluid associations did give way to more structured relationships, likely reducing the need for community-wide strategies of affiliation, this did not happen evenly across the island and at many settlements it did not happen at all. The boundary between intraand extramural burial, furthermore, was never absolute and the inclusive egalitarian village cemetery may never have been a reality, with the dead perhaps always viewed as belonging to lineage groups rather than to a wider ancestral community. Variations in the place value of burial are visible throughout the Bronze Age and the apparent shift to intramural burial is likely to have been determined by historically contingent circumstances rather than changes in ideology or emerging notions of privacy or hierarchy.

This paper examines the relationship between site location, resource procurement, and political economy in the context of three localised centres of settlement—Vasilia, Vounous, and Lapithos—which succeeded each other in the narrow, naturally bounded north coastal strip of Cyprus during the approximately 750 years of the Early and Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2450–1700 BC). Cyprus is home to abundant copper sulphide ores and was linked to the international metal trade in the first phase of the Early Bronze Age and again in the Middle Bronze Age. In both cases, this was conducted largely, if not exclusively, via outlets on the north coast which lie close to the southern coast of Anatolia and contemporary shipping lanes but some 35–40 km distant from the nearest ore bodies in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains. Mechanisms which allowed north coast sites to overcome internal distance deterrents in order to exploit geostrategic advantages in relation to external trade include a favourable natural environment (rainfall, soils, and harbours), technological advantage, probably coercion (physical and ideological), and an ability to achieve high levels of centrality within communication and transport networks with fluctuating levels of integration and hierarchy.

This paper presents the results of a residual stress analysis that is part of a wider study of Cypriot Bronze Age knife and other weapon blades from a corpus of artefacts held by a number of institutions in Australia. The current focus is on knives from Early/Middle Bronze Age burial sites at Bellapais Vounous, Cyprus; a significant number of the blades were found on excavation to be bent. The aim of the study was to provide, by means of non-destructive neutron residual stress analysis, likely insights into fabrication methodologies of the knives and determine the stage in the life of each knife blade at which bending occurred. Two Vounous knives from the Australian Institute of Archaeology collection, one measurably bent and the other severely bent and broken, were studied using neutron diffractometer KOWARI to establish the residual stress profiles through the thickness of the knives at several locations. Since the knives were 1 - 2 mm thick at their thinnest sections, a very high through-thickness spatial resolution of 0.1 mm was used to resolve the residual stress profiles. The experimental data from the knives suggested forging/hammering as a possible method of fabrication of functional (hard edge) knife blade. Most significantly, however, the post fabrication bending of both knives at ambient temperature was established. The residual stress data for the two knives were considered in the context of reported metallurgical studies and the archaeological information from Cypriot Bronze Age sites.

The difficulties involved in identifying the archaeological remnants of belief systems have been widely discussed. In many or even most instances, the material correlates of ritual action are likely to have left non-durable (myth, dancing, prayer, prophecy, libations) or non-diagnostic traces. Issues of recognition are thus fundamental to any discussion of the meaning and function of images and symbols and the artefacts on which they are inscribed. One approach – and that adopted here – is to limit the investigation to materials recovered from ritual contexts (where these can be identified) or otherwise of obvious ritual function or content, so that their operational role may be most clearly understood.

Metallurgical production sites are often difficult to identify in the archaeological record because ore beneficiation and slag processing in the past involved the use of ground stone tools that were similar to those used in other contexts to prepare cereals and foods. Analysis of the ground stone assemblage from a Middle Bronze Age copper mining and production site at Ambelikou Aletri in Cyprus provided an opportunity to distinguish industrial and domestic ground stone tools and to identify the types of tools used in different stages of metal production. A comparison of tool morphologies, raw materials, and wear and breakage patterns from Ambelikou Aletri with those from contemporary domestic contexts, suggests that distinctions in the nature and structure of industrial and domestic tool kits do exist and those distinctions have an important role to play in identifying mining, smelting, and casting sites in the future.

This chapter takes a macro-scale perspective of the mortuary record of the second millennium BC, the Early-Middle Bronze Age of southern Iberia. It considers three Bronze Age culture areas that are most commonly considered separately: the Iberian southwest, the southeast or Argaric, North Africa and the role of the Mediterranean as a geographic space and an ecological regime. The chapter discusses important themes that transcend the regional focus of Iberia and North Africa, such as the long use and reuse of tombs, the contributions of bioarchaeology toward understanding the lives of ancient peoples. It also examines how the living transformed the dead through ritual practices during the Early and Middle Bronze Age of southern Iberia. Finally, the chapter discusses the construction of the burial chamber, the manipulation of the body, and the offering of goods to accompany the deceased. Ceramics and metal weapons and tools were generally placed with the deceased in the Middle Bronze Age.

Les figurines plaquettes du Chypriote Moyen ont été étudiées jusqu’à présent en s’intéressant surtout à l’identité du ou des personnage(s) représenté(s), et à leur(s) fonction(s). Cette étude aborde la question du point de vue de leur manufacture et de leur distribution en les replaçant dans l’ensemble du corpus des figurines en Red Polished, notamment celles du site de Lapithos qui est probablement le centre à l’origine de cette production. Sans révéler qui ces figurines représentent ni quelle était leur fonction, cette approche suggère un usage rituel dans au moins quelques cas de contexte funéraire, et éclaire les changements de structures sociales au sein de la communauté qui les produites. L’habitat Chypriote Moyen de Lapithos semble avoir joué un rôle important pour les communautés de la côte nord de Chypre dans l’expression matérielle d’idées et de concepts symboliques à l’âge du Bronze.

In this paper, we present an analysis of an Iron Age I dwelling at the Phoenician site of Dor, on Israel’s Carmel coast. We provide a definition for the architectural mental template for this type of house—a Central Courtyard Hash-Plan House. By combining an analysis of the size and layout of the house, and the distribution of artifacts and ecofacts in it, we define rooms devoted to specialized economic activities such as food production and storage and also attempt to identify gendered spaces. We conclude that the house was a self-contained agrarian unit engaged in complex economic activity. The same conceptual plan, housing similar economic activities, can be identified in other dwellings in the southern Levant, from Late Bronze Age I to Late Iron Age IIA. The gradual disappearance of this house type, vis-à-vis the emergence, on the one hand, of smaller and simpler dwellings such as the ubiquitous Four-Room House and, on the other, that of public facilities for specialized economic tasks, signifies to our minds a fundamental ideological and economic transformation, a change in the habitus of Levantine society—namely, the gradual segregation between households and various aspects of economic life.