The need for a new synthesis and analysis of the evidence for Greco-Roman culture in Galilee during the time of Jesus became apparent to me while working on my study on Galilee's population, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee. In particular, I was struck at the importance of context, both geographical and chronological, for understanding the region as a whole as well as the significance of individual artifacts and buildings. When reading about particular archaeological finds, I wanted to know if they were typical or atypical within Galilee, the larger area of Palestine, and elsewhere in the Roman East, as well as within their own time periods. I also wanted to contextualize investigations of Galilee within the larger scholarly conversation about Romanization. In this work, I have tried to collect and present the archaeological data from Galilee in a concise, accessible form, while also directing the reader to parallel finds from other regions and to standard reference works on specific categories of material culture. Fuller bibliographies for individual sites can often be found in my previous book, Myth. I have written primarily for scholars who are interested in understanding the setting of Jesus, but I also hope this book will prove useful to scholars specializing in Early Judaism, Syro-Palestinian archaeology, and the Roman Near East.

When discussing specific sites, I have sometimes used the Greek name and sometimes the Hebrew, depending on which is better known.