Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud / Markham J. Geller -- 1 The Land behind Ctesiphon: The Archaeology of Babylonia during the Period of the Babylonian Talmud / John Simpson -- 2 “Recycling Economies, When Efficient, are by Their Nature Invisible.” A First Century Jewish Recycling Economy / Matthew Ponting and Dan Levene -- 3 The Cedar in Jewish Antiquity / Michael Stone -- 4 Since When Do Women Go to Miqveh? Archaeological and Rabbinic Evidence / Tal Ilan -- 5 Rabbis in Incantation Bowls / Shaul Shaked -- 6 Divorcing a Demon: Incantation Bowls and bt Giṭṭin 85b / Siam Bhayro -- 7 Lilith’s Hair and Ashmedai’s Horns: Incantation Bowl Imagery in the Light of Talmudic Descriptions / Naama Vilozny -- 8 The Material World of Babylonia as Seen from Roman Palestine: Some Preliminary Observations / Yaron Z. Eliav -- 9 Travel between Palestine and Mesopotamia during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: A Preliminary Study / Getzel Cohen -- 10 Shopping in Ctesiphon: A Lesson in Sasanian Commercial Practice / Yaakov Elman -- 11 Substance and Fruit in the Sasanian Law of Property and the Babylonian Talmud / Maria Macuch -- 12 Rabbinic, Christian, and Local Calendars in Late Antique Babylonia: Influence and Shared Culture / Sacha Stern -- 13 ‘Manasseh Sawed Isaiah with a Saw of Wood:’ An Ancient Legend in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Persian Sources / Richard Kalmin -- 14 Biblical ‘Archaeology’ and Babylonian Rabbis: On the Self-Image of Jews in Sasanian Babylonia / Isaiah Gafni -- 15 Loanwords in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: Some Preliminary Observations / Theodore Kwasman -- 16 The Gymnasium at Babylon and Jerusalem / Markham J. Geller and D.T. Potts -- Index.

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The Babylonian Talmud remains the richest source of information regarding the material culture and lifestyle of the Babylonian Jewish community, with additional data now supplied by Babylonian incantation bowls. Although archaeology has yet to excavate any Jewish sites from Babylonia, information from Parthian and Sassanian Babylonia provides relevant background information, which differs substantially from archaeological finds from the Land of Israel. One of the key questions addresses the amount of traffic and general communications between Jewish Babylonia and Israel, considering the great distances and hardships of travel involved.