General Information

Neo-Assyrian Style Ware was a provincial imitation of Assyrian Palace Ware, produced on the Southern Levantine coast, in the 7th c. BCE (Iron IIC). It was first recognized by Flinders Petrie from his excavations at Tell Jemmeh, where the largest amount has been recovered, mostly from Field IV; vessels have been found at Ashdod, Ashkelon, and as far north as Hazor.

Vessels were wheel-made in two main forms: bowls and beakers/goblets. It is often made of a light whitish clay (Munsell 5Y 8/2, white, to 5Y 8/3, pale yellow, grey) or a reddish clay (Munsell 2.5YR 6/6-2.5YR 6/4, light red) as well as a minority of pinkish clays (Munsell 5YR 7/3, pink). Typically, the clay is well levigated, the exception being a not insignificant number of large bowls of reddish clay being made of a coarser material with larger inclusions. Body walls were extremely thin and fired at high temperatures. 

Bowls occur in two forms: globular bowls, which were the most common, and shallower, wider bowls. Ben-Shlomo has postulated that the shallow, wider bowls may be a stylistic hybrid of Assyrian and indigenous Canaanite/Phoenician forms, based on similar pottery forms excavated at several sites (Hazor, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and ‘Arad).  The beakers/goblets can also be divided into further groupings of larger, thicker beakers or thinner versions with a sharply flared rim and a “dimpled” decoration on the body, typical of Assyrian decorations intended to imitate metal vessels.  

In terms of provenance, petrography of some Neo-Assyrian-style bottles from Ashkelon, as well as other Iron II vessels sharing this same white-green fabric, were made with loess from the Negev or southeastern Philistia. This type of loess may reflect several clay sources, similar to the variability in Goren’s “western Negev cluster” *Gilead and Goren 1989:8, fig. 2). The inclusion suite consists of the angular quartz fragments typical of loessial parent soils and argillaceous rock fragments of unknown composition. No clear match for this fabric was found in the reference material that was examined, so no precise provenience is possible. One sherd of this Neo-Assyrian ware is so well levigated that it is hard to assign it to a petrographic category. It could been made with a well-levigated clay of the Negev group; however, it is also possible that it was made with levigated clay from another source.

Whitish or pinkish smoothed exterior in most cases; well levigated, highly fired; thin walled.

Neo-Assyrian Palace Ware