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‘Atiqot 73 (2013)
ISBN 2948-040X
A Crusader-Period Bathhouse in ‘Akko (Acre)
(with a contribution by Danny Syon)
(pp. 71–108)
Howard Smithline, Edna J. Stern and Eliezer Stern
Keywords: Galilee, Crusader Kingdom, water installation, technology, pottery typology, history, numismatics
A Crusader-period bathhouse, which was exposed in the Montmusard suburb north of the Crusader city wall, is the first large verifiable Crusader-period structure to be found in this area. It was constructed directly upon remains of the Hellenistic city, with no intervening occupation levels. The bathhouse, only partially preserved in its western part, is of the hypocaust type, comprising a furnace, a storage and stoking room, a northern hot room and a larger eastern hot room. Its eastern part was very poorly preserved due to extensive stone robbing during the Ottoman period. The finds include fragmentary ceramic vessels, water pipes and glazed tiles, as well as a variety of marble floor- and wall-tiles and glass windowpanes dating from the Crusader period; fourteen coins were also retrieved, ranging in date from the second to the sixteenth centuries CE. The Crusader-period ceramic wares date to the thirteenth century, thereby dating the bathhouse to the thirteenth century.