Richard T. Nowitz

Stark accommodations. The authors hypothesize this loft, used as a sleeping area, above the storage room. A wooden-frame bed, with rope webbing beneath the wool blanket, stands against the left wall. Perhaps it was to a bed like this that the Tosefta (Ketubot 6:8) referred when it said a community had to provide a bed when helping an orphan set up his household. Mud plaster on the room’s exterior walls provides some insulation. The doorway at right, covered by a hanging mat woven from date palm branches, leads down a ladder to the traqlin. In the far wall, another doorway leads to the courtyard, where a domed chicken coop stands.