The “Four-Room” House

The term “four-room house” designates a typical dwelling in Iron Age Israel whose “ideal” plan was composed of four main areas, with three parallel longitudinal spaces that are backed by a broad space. A “four-space house” or “four-area house” would be more appropriate terms, since the basic four areas are often subdivided into smaller rooms, and the actual number of rooms varied. The long spaces were sometimes separated by pillars, but the existence of pillars is not part of the definition. The entrance was usually located at the central longitudinal space.

Subtypes of the “ideal” form comprised two longitudinal spaces (i.e., three-room houses) and even one or four such spaces. The term “four-room” is generic and incorporates all of these subtypes. The common denominator is a long house with a number of long spaces in the front and a broad space at the back.

The four-room house developed in the Iron Age I (c. 1200–1000 B.C.E.), and, from the early Iron Age II (c. 1000 B.C.E.) until the Babylonian destructions of the sixth century B.C.E., it was the dominant type of domestic building in ancient Israel. The fact that the spatial and temporal distribution of the house type corresponds with that of the Israelite settlement has led most scholars to associate the house with the Israelites.^a A few scholars attempted to discredit this association on the basis of some houses unearthed outside Israelite territories, such as at Sahab, Tel Qiri, Tel Keisan, and Afula.¹ Such assertions, however, should be rejected on a number of grounds.