"This book investigates the mappings of ideas about sexual and ethnic difference in Galilee during the centuries following the last Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire - centuries that saw major socioeconomic changes in the region, as well as the development of that small community of Jewish authors/authorities known as the rabbis.".

"It examines aspects of Jewish identity as these were constructed both in the earliest rabbinic texts and "on the ground," through practices that created (or contested) topographies of self vs. other, male vs. female, and insider vs. outsider. Three sociospatial sites ground this study: house, marketplace, and courtyard/alleyway.

The author explores each site - through texts and archaeology - suggesting ways in which different discourses and material elements might have participated in negotiations of gender, class, ethnicity, and "nation" among Jewish communities in Roman Palestine."--BOOK JACKET.