Negevite pottery, Negev pottery, Negebite ware, etc. are the names given to a hand-made ware, i.e. without using the
potter's wheel, found in Iron Age sites of the
Negev desert,
southern
Jordan, and the
Shfela of Israel. However, its use was not limited to the Iron Age, starting instead in the Bronze Age and continuing uninterruptedly until the
Early Muslim period.
It was produced from coarse clay containing straw and other organic materials. It was discovered by C.
Leonard Woolley
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...
and
T.E. Lawrence in the northeastern
Sinai
Sinai commonly refers to:
* Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
* Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
* Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God
Sinai may also refer to:
* Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...
, found again by
Nelson Glueck in
Tell el-Kheleifeh, and at last identified by
Yohanan Aharoni as the wares manufactured and used by the people of the desert. Negevite wares show some similarities with
Midianite pottery Midianite pottery, also known as Qurayya ware is a ware type found in the Hejaz (northwestern Saudi Arabia), southern and central Jordan, southern Palestine and the Sinai, generally dated to the 13th-12th centuries BCE, although later dates are al ...
bowls (in form) and with
Edomite pottery Edomite pottery, also known as 'Busayra Painted Ware' and 'Southern Transjordan-Negev Pottery' (STNP), is the name given to several ware types found in archaeological sites in southern Jordan and the Negev dated to the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. It ...
(in decoration).
Negevite cylindrical vessels found at excavations of Iron Age IIA sites in the Negev Highlands represent the largest and most dominant ceramic assemblage of simple-shaped vessels discovered in Israel.
'Ancient Standards of Volume: Negevite Iron Age Pottery (Israel) as a Case Study in 3D Modeling,' ''Journal of Archaeological Science'' 33 (2006): 1734-1743
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Date and significance
Negevite pottery has been used in the Negev, without typological changes, from the Early Bronze II and Middle Bronze I Ages throughout the Early Muslim period.[ This means that it can not be used independently as a marker for the Iron Age or any other period for that matter, and can itself only be dated indirectly, based on the wheel-made pottery found in the same stratigraphic context, which is mostly non-local and is period-specific.][
However, Negevite pottery is found everywhere at Iron Age sites in the Negev and southern Jordan, and constitutes almost the only source of information about the pastoralists who lived there, available to the archaeologists.][ Juan Manuel Tebes suggests that Negevite ware was produced in pastoral households for domestic use, and that the movements of the pastoral groups dictates its geographical distribution.][
]
References
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Further reading
* Y. Aharoni, M. Evenari, L. Shanan & N.H. Tadmor. 'The Ancient Desert Agriculture of the Negev, V: An Israelite Agricultural Settlement at Ramat Matred'. '' Israel Exploration Journal'' 10 (1960): 23–36, 97–111.
* M. Haiman & Y. Goren. 'Negevite' Pottery: New Aspects and Interpretations and the Role of Pastoralism in Designating Ceramic Technology'. In O. Bar-Yosef & A. Khazanov (eds.) ''Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives''. Monographs in World Archaeology No. 10. Madison, Prehistory Press, 1992, 143–152.
* M.A.S. Martin et al., Iron IIA slag-tempered pottery in the Negev Highlands, Israel', '' Journal of Archaeological Science'' 40/10 (2013): 3777–3792.
* J.M. Tebes, 'Iron Age 'Negevite' Pottery: A Reassessment', '' Antiguo Oriente'' 4 (2006): 95–117.
* N. Yahalom-Mack et al., 'Lead isotope analysis of slag-tempered Negev highlands pottery', '' Antiguo Oriente'' 13 (2015): 83–98.
Ancient pottery