General Information

This cooking ware is dense, warm red-brown in color, with notable quantities of small and medium white lime flecks studded throughout the fabric. It is typical of cooking vessels found in the southern central hills and the Shephelah from the 3rd through later 2nd centuries BCE. Petrographic analyses show that vessels were made of clays typical of the area around Jerusalem, including Israel/Jordan/Central Highlands/Ferruginous clay/calcareous sand quartz silt and sand/dolomite silt (Terra Rossa) (Ben-Shlomo and Mommsen 2018), as well as clays from the Moza formation, with quartz added as additional temper (Anat Cohen-Weinberger, pers. comm.).

This was a specialty ware for cooking vessels, particularly medium and large-sized cooking pots with high necks and sack-like, piriform bodies. It is the Judean analogue to Southern Phoenician Persian-Hellenistic Sandy Cooking Ware, which is found at sites along the central and northern coast of Israel as well as throughout the Galilee. Worth noting is that while Jerusalem potters produced only cooking pots, potters along the coast also made casseroles (i.e., open cooking vessels) in various forms and sizes. It is also associated with Shephelah/Central Hills Persian and Hellenistic Cooking Ware.

In the later 2nd/early 1st century BCE, Jerusalem potters adopted a new technology in which they used clay that was more finely levigated, without added quartz, and also fired at higher temperatures. This new ware is Judean Late Hellenistic-early Roman Compact Cooking ware.

Amazia (Israel/Shephelah)

Khirbet er-Rasm (Israel/Shephelah)

Jerusalem, City of David/Ophel (Israel-Palestinian Authority/Central Highlands)