ABSTRACT
Besides using historical sources this chapter applies a new spatiotemporal approach, archaeological demography developed by the author, to the 2930 settlement sites of Byzantine Palestine, in order to trace their demographic and economic development between the fourth and sixth centuries c.e. Focusing on the variety of Jews – urban Hellenized Jews, the mostly illiterate rural population, Jewish Christians and Samaritans – the often assumed predominance of Jews in fourth-century Palestine is disproved on the basis of religious demography. The vast majority of settlements cannot be defined on religious grounds. The Nahariya region in north-western Galilee serves as an example of Jews’ abandonment of small towns between the fifth and seventh centuries and their replacement by Christians. In the entire region, a fragile peace was ultimately destroyed by imperial policy which tightened the legal status of Jews and enforced conversions to Christianity.
