ABSTRACT
Literally hundreds of stepped pools have been identified in houses across Roman Palestine. Scholarship has primarily concentrated on their purported usage in ritual purification practices by the Jewish occupants of these houses. In this chapter, I focus instead on the stepped pools’ respective life histories, most notably the manner in which they were reused. By studying the pools’ reconditioning, from ritual to mundane, this chapter aims to increase the understanding of how these pools functioned within their respective households and what they meant for them.
