English summary: The house XV B (also known as maison 49,19) in Megara Hyblaia, an antique small town nearby Syracuse, is one of the biggest housing complexes of Hellenistic Sicily. Spread around two courts, the house from the 3rd century B.C. possesses a great many of generously cut main rooms, but at the same time areas with installations for productive activities. Thereby it belongs to one of the especially interesting Hellenistic domestic architectures--under social as well as under culture-historic aspects. This makes ...
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English summary: The house XV B (also known as maison 49,19) in Megara Hyblaia, an antique small town nearby Syracuse, is one of the biggest housing complexes of Hellenistic Sicily. Spread around two courts, the house from the 3rd century B.C. possesses a great many of generously cut main rooms, but at the same time areas with installations for productive activities. Thereby it belongs to one of the especially interesting Hellenistic domestic architectures--under social as well as under culture-historic aspects. This makes the already in the 1960s excavated, but since then unpublished house, a rewarding object for a historical-archeological analysis. The example of the house XV B allows an examination of some basic problems of Hellenistic housing. The new analysis provides important insights for the development of a large two-courtyard-house in connection to and dependence on an already existing insula-system of the pre-Hellenistic city. The differentiation of two main building phases permits conclusions to a changing understanding of representative living. Such concepts are especially being demonstrated through paths within the house, the accessibility of rooms, their function(s) and cultural semantic. A detailed analysis of the building structures of the house XV B constitutes the starting point for a discussion of comprehensive questions of Hellenistic domestic architecture, which includes other examples predominantly from Sicily. The analysis is focused on the relation of the ground plan to the urban structure, the conception of two-courtyard-houses and especially on the function of rooms and areas of the house. Earlier interpretations, which were partly guided by the description of the 'Greek house' by Vitruv, have emphasized the spatial separation of certain usages of two-courtyard-houses (e.g. gender-related or in the sense of a differentiation between private and public sphere). However, a more critic revision of the archaeological record leads to a less strict differentiation: House areas, which are designed differently, are not necessarily determined in respect to their functions, but stimulate different atmospheres and thus shape social manners. Finally the case of the house XV B of Megara Hyblaia is placed in its historic context--a rural city under the influence of the metropolis Syracuse--and into the context of a discussion of methods about possibilities and limits of a reconstruction of antique usages of domestic architecture. German description: Das Haus XV B (auch bekannt als Maison 49,19) in Megara Hyblaia, einer antiken Kleinstadt bei Syrakus, gehort zu den grossten Wohnkomplexen des hellenistischen Siziliens. Verteilt um zwei Hofe beherbergt das Haus aus dem 3. Jahrhundert v. Chr. eine ganze Reihe grosszugig geschnittener Hauptraume, zugleich jedoch Bereiche mit Installationen fur produktive Tatigkeiten. Damit gehort es zu den auch unter sozial- und kulturhistorischen Gesichtspunkten besonders interessanten hellenistischen Wohnbauten - und macht das bereits in den 1960er Jahren ausgegrabene, seither aber im Grunde unpubliziert gebliebene Haus zum lohnenden Objekt fur eine bauhistorisch-archaologische Befundanalyse, die hiermit nun vorliegt. Am Beispiel des Hauses XV B lassen sich einige fur das hellenistische Wohnen grundsatzliche Probleme untersuchen. So erbringt die neue Analyse wichtige Erkenntnisse zur Entstehung des grossflachigen Zweihofhauses im Zusammenhang und in Abhangigkeit von einem praexistenten, kleinteiligen Insula-System der vorhellenistischen Stadt. Die Unterscheidung von zwei Hauptbauphasen ermoglicht Ruckschlusse auf ein sich wandelndes Verstandnis von reprasentativem Wohnen, das sich insbesondere an Wegfuhrung innerhalb des Hauses, Zuganglichkeit von Raumen, deren Funktion(en) und kultureller Semantik aufzeigen lasst. Die detaillierte Analyse des Einzelbefundes bildet den Ausgangspunkt fur eine Diskussion ubergreifender Fragestellungen zu Wohnbauten hellenistischer Zeit, die unter Einbe
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