The Early Byzantine Christian Church
An Archaeological Re-assessment of Forty-Seven Early Byzantine Basilical Church Excavations Primarily in Israel and Jordan, and their Historical and Liturgical Context
Series:
Bernard Mulholland
Chapter 6: Gender analysis: is there evidence for segregation of the sexes in Early Byzantine basilical churches?
Extract
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Gender analysis: is there evidence for segregation of the sexes in Early Byzantine basilical churches?
The purpose of this chapter is to examine whether there is archaeological evidence for segregation of the sexes in Early Byzantine basilical churches in the catalogue of sites. If this archaeological evidence exists, then this will be cross-referenced with repeated patterns of deposition for domestic pottery from the previous chapter to determine whether there is any relationship between the two sets of evidence.
First, some of the current established views on the segregation of sexes within the Early Byzantine Church are reviewed. The primary focus is upon research conducted by Mathews and Taft who have both analysed textual references to segregation of the sexes in relation to both architectural and archaeological evidence. Then some historical references to women in the Early Byzantine Church are considered to determine whether they might provide any further evidence for segregation of the sexes at this time.
Then the archaeological evidence (Table 6.1–6.7) will be scrutinised for any indication that the sexes were segregated. When designing the database and constructing the Tables of artefacts for this research, allowance was made for two columns labelled ‘male’ and ‘female’ and those artefacts that might be assigned to either category marked off for analysis.1 These artefacts were compared against artefacts included in a recent museum exhibition on women in Byzantium, and also to textual references mentioned above.2 However the archaeological...
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