A 2,700-year-old house reveals how elders lived and led families in ancient Israel

Older people are almost invisible in the archaeological record, but a study by Prof. Avi Faust of Bar-Ilan University shows how they can be found in the way ancient homes were arranged. Bar-Ilan presented the research on 18 February 2026; the paper, a case study of a house known as Building 101 at Tel Eton in the southeastern Judean Hills region, was published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal on 7 January.

The two-storey house was home to an extended family of about three generations. It was destroyed during an Assyrian military campaign in the late eighth century BCE, which sealed hundreds of pottery vessels and other objects inside the debris and preserved a rare snapshot of daily life. Instead of relying on skeletons, which reveal little about social roles, Faust analysed the building's architecture, the objects in each room and the activities that took place there, and compared them with ethnographic studies of ageing and household life.

One room stood out. Room B was the largest in the house and the only ground-floor room used for living and sleeping rather than for storage or cooking. Faust argues it belonged to the senior couple: a ground-floor bedroom would have spared older residents from climbing a ladder to the upper floor several times a day, and its position opposite the entrance allowed its occupants to watch the courtyard and every doorway. A footbath associated with receiving important guests and burnt cedar wood, possibly from an impressive chair, suggest that the patriarch received visitors there. Nearby spaces, including a food-preparation room with a large loom and a partly enclosed courtyard, appear linked to the senior woman's management of childcare, weaving and daily work.

Faust concludes that elders were not passive dependants but active managers of family resources and cohesion, and that household archaeology can recover parts of ancient life that bones and texts miss.