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September 8, 2006

Friday Pot Blogging

Today I'd like to move away from lamps and take a look at two wide mouth round bottomed juglets. Perhaps they look more like cups and they may have been used for that purpose. Both juglets are from what is called the Iron II C Age. Depending on who you ask, this period starts around 722 BCE and just about everybody thinks it ends in 586 BCE. Some scholars would start this period as early as 800 BCE. For reference, the Northern Kingdom, sometimes called Israel, finally fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

Iron IIC Age juglet from the North     Iron IIC Age juglet from the South

Notice any differences? The juglet on the left is similar to many juglets found in the North (Israel) in this period. Amiran (Plate 88, #15) has a drawing of one almost exactly like this one from Megiddo stratum III. The juglet on the right is more like the one she illustrates (Plate 89, #15) that was found at Lachish, stratum III in the South (Judea). It even has the irregularly burnished red slip that she describes.

To be sure, juglets like the one on the left are also found in the southern part of the region but they are not as common as in the North and juglets like the one on the right are all but never found in the North. Two things are working here. First, subtle and not so subtle differences in material culture are well known between the domains of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. By the time of these juglets, the Northern Kingdom was likely no more. And that fact brought about many noticeable changes in the material cultural of the north.

You may be wondering how the juglet on the left got broken. When acquired this juglet was in nearly perfect condition. But it was broken in 1970 while being slung onto the roof of a bus taking us from a hotel in downtown Athens (on our way home from Israel) to the Athens airport. It was in a well protected carrying case with several other pots. Normally I carried them myself but for some reason they wouldn't let me take it on the bus. It was the only pot in the carrying case that was seriously damaged.

Reference:

Amiran, Ruth, Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land; From its Beginnings in the Neolithic Period to the End of the Iron Age, Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1969

Posted by Duane Smith at September 8, 2006 2:17 PM | Read more on Archaeology |

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