The soot-covered pot in front of you illustrates how the Philistines cooked their meals when they settled in Canaan. The pot is designed to stand on top of an open fire that burned in a central fireplace (as depicted in the drawing next to you). Heating a house through an open fireplace was a feature of the Philistines’ homes but not of the Canaanites who used to cook over a tabun-like oven. Two hundred years after their arrival in Canaan, the fireplaces disappeared from the homes of the Philistines, following the adoption of the Canaanite method of cooking into their culture.