These villages lack any sort of elitist architecture such as exceptionally large houses, suggesting a simple, egalitarian social structure. Other distinguishing cultural features seem to have been determined by the demands of agricultural life in the highlands: “four room” courtyard houses, rock-hewn cisterns, hillside terraces, and large “collar-rim” jars appropriate for the storage of agricultural products. All this suggests that the emergence of Israel was an indigenous development, related to