Change or continuity? Rural settlement in Eastern Galilee at the time of the crusades: The Hospitaller Estate of Belvoir

International audienceThis chapter offers a reflexion on a smaller scale by focusing on a specific historical territory. Starting with a spatially well-defined area whose definition as a political and historical entity is only relevant to the twelfth century will make it possible to adopt a systematic archaeological approach and to question the density of settlement and its organisation. In terms of settlement density, the period of the crusades seems to witness a densification of settlement, most of the perennial springs being occupied or re-occupied during the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Although it remains very difficult to reach a clear picture of the decades preceding the First Crusades, it seems that more sites were inhabited during those centuries that during the Early Islamic Period. The pattern of settlement defined during Frankish rule appears generally to have lasted, maybe with short interruptions, during the Mamluk period