The Kitchen in the Church Complex

The fourth-century church complex at 'Ain el-Gedida, in the Dakhleh Oasis, provides a striking case study for the integration of kitchen work into social and religious space in late antiquity. Its unique features - both sociological and archaeological - reflect a dynamic, rough-and-tumble integration that both protects the sacred space of the nave and centres the productive labour of cooking. This article analyses the anteroom/kitchen B6 from the perspectives of space syntax, the communicative landscape of labour, and the sociology of graffiti. While it may have been designed as a transitional zone or service auxiliary for the primary public spaces of church and gathering hall, B6 becomes, in its socio-spatial effects, an alternate pole of symbolic density that exerts a counterforce to the sacred space of nave and sanctuary. This analysis also provides a preliminary model for thinking about the role played by visible labour in the religious experience of Christians in the later Roman Empire, particularly non-elite Christians.