activities that also shaped the world of rural village dwellers and more mobile popu-
lations. Thus home life existed as part of a much larger community that probably
helped to shape and support it.
The archaeological evidence for homes from southern Mesopotamia during the later
fourth millennium BCis limited to the so-called H 5 building at Eridu. Dominated by
a two-storey kiln lined with bitumen and surrounded by pottery, this may have been
part of the town’s religious complex, and as such has been interpreted as a priest’s house
(Crawford 2004 : 90 ). Our understanding of purely domestic structures comes from the
sites of Habuba Kabira and Jebel Aruda, lying beside the river Euphrates in modern
Syria. These two settlements were built over stages on virgin soil. Sharing all the
characteristic features found at sites of southern Iraq, they are generally interpreted as
colonies, established as new settlements designed for permanent residence. We can
therefore postulate with some confidence that domestic architecture found at these
sites would share similarities with those of the south. Indeed, at both Habuba and
Aruda, people’s homes parallel in layout the monumental public buildings of Sumer,
with rooms ranged around a rectilinear or T-shaped room or courtyard, and sometimes
a combination of the two; they thus follow something of the traditional organisation
of space found in the earlier fifth millennium houses.
In Habuba Kabira, homes were organised into densely built blocks, separated by
streets but approached from side alleys. There is a very real sense that the buildings were
planned from scratch and, although there were modifications over time, many of these
houses may represent an ‘ideal’ layout in which the configuration of buildings and
streets both mirrors and determines social behaviour. The larger Habuba homes have
an average area of 300 square metres (Sürenhagen 1986 : 18 ). This is considerably more
than the average Sumerian home known from later (see below) and perhaps reflects the
greater space available to the architects at the newly founded site. The houses at both
sites have a tripartite arrangement (or variation on the theme) and both Vallet ( 1996 ,
1998 ) and Forest ( 1998 ) suggest that this layout consists of a reception area alongside an
open central hall, containing a frying pan-shaped hearth, which acted to isolate a
domestic unit at the rear. Kay Kohlmeyer proposes that the hall was the multi-
functional centre of life where food was eaten and all indoor work other than cooking
took place ( 1996 : 95 ). She also identifies among the houses at Habuba unusual struc-
tures consisting of a single hall, often with frying pan-shaped fireplaces, and sometimes
with a single adjoining room; these may have been used for formal occasions, as well
as living quarters, perhaps for guests (Kohlmeyer 1996 : 95 , 97 ). Forest concludes that
the people of Habuba were interested in non-family members and social appearances.
The fact that houses do follow a pattern of design suggests common concerns about
accessibility and internal organisation and thus a shared notion of behaviour as well
as a common size and structure of families and dependents.
THIRD MILLENNIUM HOMES
The end of the fourth millennium was marked by the abandonment of the so-called
Uruk colonies. There appears to have been a gradual reorganisation of economic and
perhaps political and social relations reflected in the development of new ceramic
forms, building practices and artistic traditions. Particularly characteristic of Sumerian
homes was the use of so-called plano-convex bricks that slowly appeared at the start–– Everyday life in Sumer ––