ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the data presented in Chapter 3 to offer a new social and economic interpretation of the landscape between Nazareth and Sepphoris in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Evidence suggests an unusually dense pattern of farms and small villages, divided into two spatial groups: one on the north side of the valley, closer to Sepphoris, the other on the south, closer to Nazareth. While evidence of Jewish religious practices is present in both areas, communities living in the south of the valley apparently avoided using Roman artefacts, unlike those on the north, suggesting a cultural border between Sepphoris and Nazareth. Two spatial groups of quarries for limestone building blocks are identified, analogous to the groups visible in settlement patterns, supporting the view that both Sepphoris and Nazareth served as focal places in the Roman landscape of the valley. Roman-period and Byzantine estate centres and Byzantine monasteries cannot be identified in the valley, which exhibits a stable settlement pattern through both periods, although a cultural division between the north and south is no longer visible in the Byzantine period. The limited effect of Sepphoris on the valley highlights the wider question of the relationship between urban centres and their surroundings. It is suggested that Roman and Byzantine landscapes might be envisaged as networks of interlocking cells, and that interactions between towns along routeways were more important in the Roman period for their cultural and economic development than for their relationships with the countryside immediately surrounding them.
