Endnote 4 – Ideology in Stone

Amihai Mazar, “The Israelite Settlement in Canaan in the Light of Archaeological Excavations,” in Janet Amitai, ed., Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, April 1984 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), pp. 66–68; Joseph A. Callaway, “Ai (et-Tell): Problem Site for Biblical Archaeologists,” in Leo G. Perdue, Lawrence E. Toombs and Gary L. Johnson, eds., Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation. Essays in Memory of D. Glenn Rose (Atlanta: John Knox, 1987), pp. 87–99; and Shmuel Givon, “The Three-Roomed House from Tel Harassim, Israel,” Levant 31 (1999), pp. 173–77. There are two problems with this idea: The supposed Canaanite “prototypes” lack the broad room, which is essential for the definition of the four-room house type; more importantly, even if some Late Bronze Age architectural ideas were adopted during the Iron Age I period it does not say anything about the meaning of the houses during these periods. People can, and do, adopt cultural elements from other periods and cultures but vest them new and different meaning. See, for example, Abner Cohen, Two Dimensional Man: An essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), p. 3; Ian Hodder, The Present Past, (London: Batsford, 1982), pp. 204–207.