General Information

From the 4th-2nd centuries BCE potters along the southern Phoenician coast, from Tyre in the north down to the Sharon plain in the south, produced vessels for individual table service - mostly small saucers and bowls - in this ware. The fabric is rather rough and granular, ranging in color from pale pink to reddish brown (5YR 5/4–5YR 7/4), with fine lime and gray inclusions, and usually fully fired. Vessels carry a thin, matte slip, fired variously from dark reddish brown to light orange, covering the entire interior and the upper exterior walls ("semi-slipped"), with an uneven, sometimes drippy edge. Petrographic analysis of samples from Tel Kedesh conform with soils from Rosh Ha-Niqra in the north to the Carmel range around ‘Akko (Anastasia Shapiro, pers. comm.). Saucers and bowls in this ware are the most common table vessels along the coast and throughout Galilee in the later Persian and early-mid Hellenistic periods. In the second century BCE, they are gradually replaced by better quality products from further north along the Levantine coast such as Cilician Hellenistic Slipped Fine Ware, BSP, and, by the later second century BCE, by ESA.

Fabric is fairly soft and granular (sandy), moderately well levigated with occasional small to medium rounded white inclusions and voids. Fired a pale pink brown color throughout (5YR 6/8-7/5YR 8/3). Vessels are coated on the interior and upper portion of the exterior with a matte orange red slip (10R 4/6-2.5YR 5/8) that often drips down the exterior wall that is occasionally misfired to black. The clay has medium pores, moderately sorted, very coarse angular sand. Made of variety of sand sources such as Hamra and quartz. The inclusion consists of- about 3% small white- gray calcites inclusions and 5-10% dark red-orange inclusions.

Central Coastal Hellenistic Fine Ware (CCF), Carmel Coast Persian-Hellenistic Table Ware, Local Fine

'Akko, Harbor (Israel/Northern Coastal Plain)

'Akko/Acre (Israel/Northern Coastal Plain)

Horbat Zefat 'Adi (Israel/Northern Coastal Plain)

Qedesh/Kedesh (Israel/Galilee)

Tel Dor (Israel/Carmel coastal plain)

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