General Information

Galilean wheel-made coarse ware is a family of very coarse wares made in several places around the Galilee from the 5th-3rd c. BCE (Persian and early Hellenistic periods). The vessels are all wheel-made, medium to soft, light pinkish brown in color, with some small and medium rounded and angular white, a few small rounded black and medium angular red, and many fine white and small rounded black inclusions, and a light gray core. The defining characteristics of this ware are the wheel-made technique and the added temper, which is usually abundant and large in size. Individual wares in this family can be identified by their different matrix and specific tempers. These likely represent small productions, in various places around the lower Galilee. The shapes made are common household forms—jars, jugs, decanters, and bowls.

This ware should not be conflated with another very coarse ware made in the Galilee: Galilean/Golan Hellenistic handmade coarse ware. This ware includes only enormous, hand-made jars - all apparently dating to the later 3rd through mid-2nd c. BCE. The main way to distinguish between these two wares is by technique: the huge jars are all hand-made, whereas vessels of Galilean wheel-made coarse ware are wheel-made (as indicated by the name). These coarse wheel-made vessels also date earlier than the large handmade jars, as indicated both by their forms and their stratigraphic contexts.

The matrix is ferruginous and slightly silty, There are some voids from burnt-out matter indicating the addition of organic materials such as chaff and straw. Also present in varying amounts are bits of chalk, limestone, shells, fossils, terra rossa soil balls, and ferruginous shale, all of which occur along the wadi beds of Galilee and may have been present when the clay was selected. Within the matrix, these tempers are badly sorted and coarse in size, with grains averaging 2.5 mm across but as large as 8 mm. From sherd to sherd, tempers vary in their relative amounts and also may be present in different quantities. Firing temperatures range between 650 and 700 ºC.

Galilean Coarse Ware (GCW), Red-Brown Gritty (RBG), Pink-Brown Gritty (PBG)