RECONSTRUCTION OF A VILLAGE

Reconstruction of an ancient village

Jericho eventually became the second largest city in Israel (Jerusalem was the largest), but it started life as a prosperous little village with a good water supply.

Water meant agriculture, with fields grouped around a central settlement of houses, similar to the ones above: closely packed together, compact, 'wide-room' houses. The foundations for this type of house show no openings for doorways - a person entering from the street stepped down two stair to a dropped floor.

There was no stone in the Jericho area. All houses were built with mud brick. 

A drawing of the settlement at Catal Hüyük in Turkey circa 6,000BC

This was a different city of course, but it gives some idea of the way that houses were packed together.

WHAT IS A VILLAGE? WHAT IS A CITY?

Villages were small settlements usually based on agriculture. They consisted of a few inter-related families. The people in an ancient village were usually non-literate. 

Cities were of course larger, usually with semi-planned street systems. The city could be divided into recognisable areas - palace, storage areas for tax collection, housing for rich and poor, a place of assembly. Cities in ancient Israel usually had fortifications. They also had conduits for a water supply, and for sewage disposal.

The Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe proposed that there were ten criteria that marked the transition from village to city:

• increased settlement size
• concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people or families
• large public works
• writing
• representational artworks showing humans, animals or Nature
• some knowledge of engineering, fortifications, metallurgy
• foreign trade
• members of society who performed tasks not related to agriculture, eg pottery makers, healers, religious experts
• different classes or levels in society
• political organisation based on power rather than family.

It is difficult to pinpoint when exactly this happened in Jericho. The process was, of course, a slow one. The image below shows the size of the city of Jericho - about 10 acres. This had developed over thousands of years from the small prehistoric village.

 Aerial photograph of Tel Jericho

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