General Information

This is a well levigated, porous-free version of Southern Phoenician Persian-Hellenistic Sandy Cooking Ware. Potters used the same raw material, but did not add anything additional to the clay. Vessels are extremely thin-walled (some less than 2 mm thick). Vessels were generally fully fired at high temperatures, giving them a notably harder texture. In the early Roman period workshops near urban centers in the northern coastal region of Israel made an array of cooking vessels in this ware, some similar to earlier examples (e.g., globular cooking pots) and some new shapes (e.g., cooking ware jugs, wide shallow cooking bowls). 

In the 1st c. BCE potters in Judea also manufactured vessels made of a more refined, compact clay, also fired at higher temperatures. The analogous ware in this zone is Judean Late Hellenistic-early Roman Compact Cooking Ware. Coastal potters made cooking vessels similar to the shapes produced in Judea, as well as some not made there, such as wide shallow cooking bowls. 

The fabric is sandy very thin compact and hard, fills hard and difficult to break. The clay is very levigated, dark red to dark brown with a dark gray core with diffused margins. The inclusions consist of medium-sorted yellowish brown inclusion quartz (~20%) subrounded to subangular. moderately sorted limestone very angular (~5%), and occasionally shells fragments (~3%).

Horbat Zefat 'Adi (Israel/Northern Coastal Plain)

Tel Dor (Israel/Carmel coastal plain)