Sharon Plain Hellenistic Slipped Fine Ware is yet another version of the many regional slipped tableware productions in the eastern Mediterranean in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. It is contemporary with Cilician Hellenistic Slipped Fine Ware, Cypriot Hellenistic Colour Coated Ware, Southern Phoenician Hellenistic Red Slip Ware, Idumean Hellenistic Slipped Fine Ware, and Southern Coastal Plain Hellenistic Red Slip Ware. In each of these wares, potters produced a similar series of small vessels for individual table use, specifically saucers with a central depression and folded or drooping rim, and bowls with incurved and everted rims. In some of these areas, e.g., Cilicia, Cyprus, and Idumea, potters also made larger vessels for table service, such as kraters, table amphoras, and pitchers. Such larger vessels are not attested in Sharon Plain Hellenistic Slipped Fine Ware; instead potters here made only small saucers and bowls.
The distribution zone for vessels of this ware appears to be confined to the smaller settlements that dotted the inner, eastern edges of the Sharon Plain. They have not been identified in the region's major city and market center, Joppa. That city's inhabitants instead received a wide range of high quality black-slipped tablewares via Mediterranean shippers, likely traveling between Alexandria, Cyprus, and Asia Minor.
Vessels in Sharon Plain Hellenistic Slipped Fine Ware appear in several different fabrics, and with minor variations in form and finish, an indication that there were several small workshops throughout this area. Potters must have used various clay sources, ranging from bright red-brown terra rossa soils to lighter clays from soils formed above limestone. In all cases vessels have smoothed surfaces, partially covered with a thin, matte slip fired along a continuum from red to brown, and sometimes gray to black.
