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This article investigates the applicability of the concept of liminality to the archaeological analysis of temple thresholds, with a primary focus on the Bronze Age southern Levant. Previously, studies on cultic spaces have emphasized temple cellae as the central focal point of ritual. In contrast, ritual performed at temple thresholds has largely been an ignored phenomenon. This study presents theoretical, textual, and archaeological data to support the argument that thresholds, in general, elicited ritual activity, and that within temple contexts, a wide range of rituals were conducted, and offerings presented. After investigating the topic of liminality in rites of passage, an array of ANE texts will be used to shed light on threshold rituals. This is followed by a presentation of archaeological studies that have attempted to apply the concept of liminality to the archaeological record. Bronze Age temples from two sites, Lachish and Hazor, will be used as case studies to investigate whether there is evidence from the southern Levant for ritual in entrances and thresholds. The results of this study demonstrate that temple thresholds in Canaan did in fact function as liminal spaces within which ritual was conducted. Additionally, this study identifies an important distinction between rituals that were performed in the liminal space of thresholds and those that were performed in the temple's cella. Ritual in the cella was theocentric, with the primary focus on the deity, while ritual at thresholds was anthropocentric, concerned with humans and their status transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging digital entertainment media in the Global South are anchored in nation-state configurations, benefit from supranational affordances, and aspire to global operations. Drawing on Sassen's "third spaces," the article focuses on the case of Shahid, a Middle East-based video streaming platform and a hybrid media venture that operates at the intersection of the local and the global. The article suggests digital media entertainment territoriality is such that content services simultaneously inhabit geographic nation-state borders and transversally closed bordered spaces, and point to potential reconfigurations of power dynamics with such ventures functioning as spaces for negotiating cultural politics in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many undemocratic countries where conservative law and patriarchal ideas are in place, women are considered second-class citizens particularly in domains of public life. After Iran's Islamic revolution, Iranian women were confronted with a theocratic regime, which imposed laws and norms, which limited women's activities and violated earned liberties. The activities of women under non-democratic states and patriarchal systems are thwarted by the repressive measures of authoritarian states as well as patriarchal society and hostile attitudes of ordinary men and women. New normative frameworks and practices imposed gender segregation in various aspects. During these years, women attempt to resist these policies, not by deliberate, organized campaigns but through daily practices in public life. Asef Bayat calls these kinds of resistance and activities 'social non-movement'. This article focuses on a rather under-researched form of social activism and attempts to describe the way in which social media might be supportive tools for women aiming to build active networks and communicative spaces to deliberate on challenges to their lives. At the same time, these spaces function as the civic training ground where representations of political demands for social change are put forth. This article discusses ways in which social media have been used as platforms where women's demands, among others, hold identity dimensions as well as violation of their basic and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Iron Age II period of the southern Levant (1000–586 BCE), most data for household studies come from four-room or pillared houses. Tell Halif in southern Israel gives us several examples of the four-room pillared house, including the one identified here as the K8 House, from the eighth century. The purpose of this research is to examine the K8 archaeological remains and add to our understanding of Iron Age houses and households as reflected in the patterning of artefacts in the buildings occupied by the household. Based on the remains preserved in the K8 House, we can identify a set of activities undertaken regularly inside the house. It can be demonstrated from Tell Halif's archaeological data that, once the specific activities are identified, their organisation also can be identified. In order to understand how space functioned in the K8 House at Tell Halif, a spatial analysis of the archaeological materials was undertaken. Ceramics and microartefacts discovered on floors and in the covering fill provide important sources of data serving to identify activities and helping to assess what type of reductions of the 'de facto' refuse may have taken place. The locations of artefacts in the K8 House help to identify activity areas within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]