**2. Criteria**

Various criteria have been used to identify buildings and objects as religious or cultic in nature. Coogan (1987) formulated four such criteria: *isolation* as a result of the separation of the sacred from the profane, the presence of *exotic materials*, *continuity* of religious buildings on multi-period sites and *parallels* of architectural features.

In his report on the site of Phylakopi, Renfrew (1985) established 18 criteria. The list has been repeatedly modified and adjusted, recently by Zevit (2001, p. 82) who adapted it "to reflect the possibilities of the Iron Age sites in Syria-Palestine" and by Daviau (2012) who concentrated on the rituals taking place at cultic sites.

These criteria argue from ritual to material remains, not the other way around. Zevit's first two criteria, for instance, postulate that "Rituals may be performed in a place of natural significance, such as a cave, spring, mountain top, or a groove of trees" and that "They may be performed in a place of historical significance, e.g., the site of a theophany to an ancestor, or a famous event, or a grave". It is easier to argue that a ritual may have taken place in a cave than to interpret the remains in a certain cave as cultic.

Moreover, most criteria are 'fluid'. How many criteria have to apply? Do they have to apply completely or partly? How many special pottery types have to be present to define a site as cultic? How great the investment of wealth? How tight the parallels? The danger of circular argumentation is lurking. The presence of 'cultic vessels', for instance, strengthens the interpretation of a site as cultic, but the vessels are deemed 'cultic' in the first place because they are often found not in domestic contexts but in what is interpreted as temples or shrines.

Some indicators are more convincing than others. The presence of animal bones can be an indicator for offering practices, but need not be, as argued above. Food such as fruits may have been consumed in a ritual, but may also have constituted the daily evening meal. So these are weak indicators. Statues and inscriptions, on the other hand, are strong ones. The more indicators are present and the stronger they are, the more certain the identification as cultic.

So, whereas in Mesopotamia and the northern Levant the identification of a site or building as cultic is mostly secure and generally accepted because of the overwhelming evidence in the form of specially designed buildings, inscriptions, large statues, continuity over centuries and the presence of exotic materials, as for instance in the temples at Aleppo and Ain Dara in Syria (Kohlmeyer 2012; Novak 2012), in the southern Levant, the interpretation is often uncertain and per force based on insufficient data.
