Excavated remains of a three-room house.
UPMuseum
Excavations at Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, Jordan. Photo
courtesy UPMuseum Archives
Artist's reconstruction of a three room
house:
1: central activity area
2: stable area
3: storage room
4: sleeping quarters
5: clay roof
Drawing by Chad
Henneberry
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One typical type of dwelling in the Iron Age
was the "four-room" house. The full-scale model
presented in the gallery is based on a "three-room"
variant from the Museum's excavations
at Tell es-Sa'idiyeh in Jordan. The house is
divided into three parts, each with a distinct
function.
A doorway entered into a white-plastered area
(1), which served as a space for food processing
and other household tasks. In larger houses, this
area may have been a courtyard surrounded by rooms
and open to the sky above. A row of pillars divided
this room from a cobblestone paved area (2) to the
side of the house. This space was used for stabling
animals
and for the storage
of agricultural produce. The long broad room at the
back of the house (3) was used for long-term
storage. Space for sleeping and entertaining guests
probably was located on the second floor (4). The
second floor may have been reached by a flight of
stairs or wooden ladders. The walls of the houses
were built of roughly-hewn blocks of stone and the
roof (5) consisted of wooden beams covered with
layers of branches and smoothed down clay.
This style of house is extremely common
throughout the Iron Age, especially in the
territory of Israel and Judah. Numerous finds from
along the Mediterranean coast of Israel and in the
highlands of Jordan make it clear, however, that
this house type also was used in Ammon, Moab, Edom
and Philistia.
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