Dwellings with three rooms: a new type of architecture at late seventh millennium BCE Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria

Abstract

ell Sabi Abyad in Syria has yielded a long and continuous sequence of a seventhmillennium BCE settlement, exposed over large areas in excavations that took place between 1986 and 2010. Each settlement layer contains a number of single-generational houses of different shapes and sizes. This paper will delve into a new type of dwellings found at Tell Sabi Abyad in layers dated to 6400-6300 BCE – the so-called ‘three-room buildings’. The buildings’ characteristics as well as their development through time are discussed, with special attention given to the fiercely burnt three-room building in the upper settlement level A2.