General Information

This ware family encompasses extremely large, handmade jars found at sites in the regions of the Galilee and Golan of Israel from the late third to mid-2nd centuries BCE. Because the vessels were handmade, their forms were, to some extent, ad hoc. Each was essentially an individual creation, so specific details of rims, handles, and bases differ. These enormous jars were used for the collection and storage of dry agricultural commodities, likely grain. These huge vessels were made from clays available in the immediate vicinity, which means that various petro-fabrics are represented among these vessels.

Despite the difficulty in forming and firing such large vessels, the jars were quite sturdily made, an indication of a high degree of craft competency. This, coupled with the fact that they seem to have been made of locally available clays in each place, may suggest that they are the products of potters who traveled from settlement to settlement. This is a phenomenon well-known from modern ethnographic studies, for example the famous traveling pithos makers of Thrapsano, on Crete.

These enormous, handmade jars are so far attested only in the limited time span of the later 3rd through the mid-2nd centuries BCE. In these years the Galilee lay in the hinterland of the thriving port cities of Tyre and 'Akko-Ptolemais. It may be that the jars are a result of the organized production and distribution of grain intended for the supply of coastal households and markets. In the later part of the 2nd c. BCE, with the disintegration of Seleucid governance and the rise of the Hasmonean kingdom, the integrated market network that connected the coast and rural interior collapsed. This collapse meant that such enormous storage containers were no longer needed; and this may be why these jars disappear by the later 2nd c. BCE.

Moderately hard, extremely coarse fabric with many medium angular gray and white and frequent large round dark brown inclusions and linear voids from fired out straw. Fired orange red on the surface (2.5YR 5/8-5YR 5/6) with a poorly defined dark red brown core (5YR 5/2).

Khirbet el-'Eika (Israel/Galilee)

Khirbet esh-Shuhara (Israel/Galilee)

Mei'ar (Israel/Galilee)

Qedesh/Kedesh (Israel/Galilee)

Qeren Naftali (Israel/Galilee)

Tel Gush Halav (Israel/Galilee)

Yodefat (Israel/Galilee)