Never Ask a Potsherd its (Exact) Age:
From Pottery to Relative Chronology
Eran Arie
Tel Aviv University
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Today’s Lecture
1.What is pottery and how can we
date it?
2.The pottery assemblages of Iron
Age Megiddo.
What is pottery?
Combination of natural elements:
Earth, water, and fire.
The first synthetic material humans
created.
The appearance of pottery
7th millennium B.C.E.
Raw materials
1. Clay (mud).
2. Inclusions (non-plastic
components): sand,
straw, bones,
dung, etc.
3. Water.
The Importance of Pottery for
Archaeologists
• Very abundant (cheap)
• Inorganic material
• Fragile (short “life”)
• Pottery evolution
Pottery typology
1
2
3
4
The whole story…
• Morphology
• Technology
• Decoration
• Marks of use
Ruth Amiran
Ancient Pottery of
the Holy Land, 1969
The
“human”
anatomy
of a vessel
The
presentation
of pottery
Decoration techniques
• Painting (monochrome,
bichrome, etc.)
• Slip – thin layer of liquid
clay (EB, MB, Iron II)
• Burnishing – polishing
(beauty, sealing)
Problems
• Silent evidence
• Regional
• Travels
between strata
Potsherds vs. assemblages
In-situ pottery
Secondary use of pottery
The long way from the field to the
publication
Pottery dating: Step by step
1. Defining clean loci (=The
assemblage).
2. Analyzing the entire
assemblage (all
indicative sherds).
3. Isolating “fossiles
directeurs” (short lived
types).
Pottery dating: Step by step
4. Ignoring intrusive
pottery sherds.
5. Investigating varied
factors: Morphology,
technology, decoration,
etc.
6. Determining relative
chronology of the
assemblage.
The Pottery Assemblages of the
Iron Age in Megiddo
Megiddo
Main features
Relative
Absolute
III
Assyrian palaces
Iron IIc
7th century
IVA
Wall 325, Stables
Iron IIb
8th century
Palaces 1723, 6000
Late Iron IIa
9th century
VB
Fragmentary finds
Early Iron IIa
Late 10th century
VIA
Red Brick City
Late Iron I
Early 10th century
VIB
Fragmentary finds
Early Iron I
11th century
VIIA
Palace, Temple,
Gate
Late Bronze III
12th century
VA/IVB
Stratum VIIA – Late bronze III
K-6
Red Painted Pottery
Egyptianized pottery
Stratum VIA – Late Iron I
K-4
H-9
Late Canaanite decorated ware
Philistine Pottery
Phoenician Pottery
K-4
Stratum VA-IVB– Late Iron IIa
Red slip and hand burnished ware
H-5
Stratum IVA – Iron IIb
H-3
H-3
Advanced pottery researches
• Residue analyses
• Provenance analyses (petrography and
NAA)
• Volume analyses
• Spatial analyses
When you hold a pot in your
hands, be it hundreds or
thousands of years old, you feel
the hands of the potter, his finger
marks, his touch. It is this fact
about a pot that makes it so
endearing, so very personal...
Otto Natzler
Thank you!!!