General Information

Beth She'an Valley Hellenistic Semi-Fine Ware is a characteristic production of the Beth She'an Valley region through the Hellenistic period. The ware was identified and defined based on the pottery assemblage from the dwellings of Tel Istabbah - Nysa/Scythopolis. It was used to make small and large table and personal vessels, such as incurved rim bowls, table amphorae, lagynoi, and unguentaria. Vessels were hard-fired, with smoothed surfaces. 

The ware was defined based on a visual study but has not yet been analyzed petrographical. Many of the vessels produced in Beth She'an Valley Hellenistic Semi-Fine Ware are identical or very similar to ones produced in other regional semi-fine (i.e., non-slipped) productions. These include Cilician Hellenistic Semi-Fine Ware, Phoenician Semi-Fine Ware, a product of the coastal region between Tyre and 'Akko, and Idumean Hellenistic chalk-flecked Semi-Fine Ware. All of these 'semi-fine' wares are a distinctive development of the Hellenistic period. During this time in the southern Levant, an integrated market network connected cities, towns, and rural estates on the coast and inland. That, along with a broad cultural turn towards the niceties of a Mediterranean-inflected lifestyle, led to the development of a middle class with time and interest in entertaining. Local potters served this new market via an eclectic array of vessels made of fine local clays.

Both the beginning and the end of the production is unclear since the site was fiercely destroyed by the end of the second century BCE (108/7 BCE) and abandoned for a long time. It seems probable that some of the types defined as Fine Levantine wares in the report from Beth She'an/ Tel Husan and dated to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE belong to this ware (Johnson 2006). 

The exterior is reddish-yellow in color (75YR 6/6), while the interior is light brown (7.5YR 6/4), with gray and black inclusions. The surface finish depended on the shape. Incurved rim bowls, amphoras, and lagynoi were often covered with red slip, usually on the upper part of the vessels. Some vessels (usually lagynoi and unguentaria) seem to have been better levigated, with more evenly smoothed surfaces.

Tel Istabbah (Israel/Beth She'an Valley)