An ivory bowl from Early Iron Age Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel): manufacture, meaning and memory

Abstract

In 2013, an ivory bowl was discovered in a chalky matrix in the Early Iron Age (Philistine) levels in Area A at Tell es-Safi/Gath. Conservation revealed it to be a shallow vessel with a single lug handle, decorated in the interior and on the base with an incised twelve-petal lotus-rosette surrounded by five concentric circles. Applying an object biography approach, we investigate the history and far-flung socio-cultural connections of the Tell es-Safi/Gath bowl, which is unique within Philistia. Specific reference is made to parallels in the ivory hoard from the Late Bronze/Iron Age transition (c. late twelfth century/early eleventh century bce) palace at Megiddo, Stratum VIIA. It is proposed that the Tell es-Safi/Gath bowl was one of a set manufactured somewhere in Canaan. The vessel became separated from the set, ending up as a foundation offering at this Philistine site.

Keywords:

• Philistine
• elephant ivory
• Canaanite
• Aegean
• Late Bronze/Iron Age transition
• Levant

Acknowledgements

AMM would like to thank Dr J. Green and the staff of the Oriental Institute Museum for assistance with the inspection of the Megiddo finds (conducted in April 2014), and Ms Alegre Saraviego, curator of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, for facilitating the examination of one of the Megiddo bowls in the museum (Sept. 2014). The authors would also like to thank: Mr Ron Kehati for assistance in the field; Dr Marian Feldman for drawing our attention to the Megiddo parallels; Dr Ursula Wehrmeister and colleagues of the Institute of Geosciences – Centre of Gemstone Research – Biomineralisation, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, for geochemical analyses of the bowl; and the staff and team members of the Ackerman Family Bar-Ilan University Expedition to Gath for their devoted work and assistance in the field and during post-excavation processing. The ivory bowl was expertly conserved by Ms Gali Beiner of the National Natural History Collections, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Finally, we would like to thank the editor of this issue, Paul Lane, and the anonymous reviewers, for various suggestions and comments which improved this paper substantially.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In order to assess whether the ivory bowls from Tell es-Safi/Gath and Megiddo, could possibly derive from a single tusk, we used the following calculations: (a) the height of the ivory bowl from Safi (2.2cm) was used as an estimated height for all the ivory bowls, so that together all ten bowls required an absolute minimum of 22cm of ivory for their manufacture; (b) using the circumference of the largest bowl Megiddo A22356 (50.2cm) we applied correlations calculated by Parker (1979, Figs 44, 46) for circumference, age and tusk weight. Based on this, we estimate that such a tusk derives from a bull elephant aged at least 50 years and from a tusk weighing at least 45kg, which falls in the top-most size class of Parker’s modern Loxodonta africana africana samples from East Africa, and is equivalent to a tusk length of at least 250cm (Pilgram and Western 1986, Fig. 1). Average tusk length for modern bulls of Loxodonta africana africana is given as 250cm (Parker 1979, 148). This was probably a minimum length for bull tusks in antiquity as demonstrated by the greater size of the finds from Uluburun and Mycenae (Table 1); (c) subtracting from total tusk length (250cm), the minimum amount of ivory needed for manufacture of ten bowls of 2.2cm height (total 22cm), as well as 30cm, which is the estimated length of an average pulp cavity, the hollow portion of the tusk that cannot be used to manufacture a bowl, in Loxodonta africana africana (Steenkamp et al. 2008) would still leave 198cm of tusk. These calculations, although based on averaged size estimations, illustrate the feasibility of our claim that all ten bowls could have been carved from a single, very large tusk.

2 They are mentioned very briefly by Barnett (1982, 26, n. 82), but are omitted in most descriptions of the finds from the hoard (e.g. Decamps de Mertzenfeld 1954; Kantor 1956; Fischer 2007; Feldman 2009; Novacek 2011).

3 Although Dothan (1982, 70–6) had suggested that Philistine Bichrome (Philistine 2) pottery derived from this stage, Mazar (1985) clearly demonstrated that this is not so, and this pottery belongs to the next level, Stratum VIB.

4 While Megiddo, Stratum VIIA, is usually dated to the late twelfth century bce, Toffolo et al. (2014) have recently suggested a slightly later date – sometime in the early eleventh century bce. However, this does not change the stylistic dating of the ivories.

5 Although it was assumed in the past that the extensive production of ivory objects ceased in the twelfth century bce and was substantially renewed only a century or two later (e.g. Barnett 1982, 46), the numerous examples from the late twelfth and eleventh centuries bce (e.g. Tell es-Safi/Gath, Megiddo [Loud 1939], Beth Shean, Tell el-Farah [South] [Fischer 2011], Lachish [Barnett 1982], Tel Miqne-Ekron [Ben-Shlomo and Dothan 2006], Qasile [Mazar 1985, 10–14], Kition and Hala Sultan Tekke [Åström 1992, 101]) clearly demonstrate a continuity of ivory production between the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Most likely, such production enabled the retention of Late Bronze Age traditions in later Iron Age contexts (e.g. Feldman 2012, 2014; Caubet 2013).

Additional information

Funding

The excavations and research described in this article are funded by: the Australian Research Council [Discovery Project no. 1093713 to LAH], the Australian Archaeological Institute, Athens (to LAH) and the Israel Science Foundation Individual Research [under grant number 100/13 to AMM].

Notes on contributors

Aren M. Maeir

Aren Maeir is Professor of Archaeology in the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. Since 1996, he has directed the Tell es-Safi/Gath archaeological project in Israel. He is the author of ‘In the Midst of the Jordan’: The Jordan Valley during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1500 BCE): Archaeological and Historical Correlates (Vienna, 2010 and has edited several volumes, including Tell es-Safi/Gath I: Report on the 1996–2005 Seasons (Wiesbaden, 2012.

Brent Davis

Brent Davis completed his PhD in 2011 at the University of Melbourne on Minoan ritual vessels and Linear A, the undeciphered script of the Minoans, published in 2014 as Aegaeum 36. With a background in both archaeology and linguistics, his interests include the ancient cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and their languages and scripts. He is an adjunct lecturer in archaeology and ancient Egyptian at the University of Melbourne. He has undertaken several years of fieldwork at Tell-es Safi/Gath (Israel), where he is an assistant area supervisor.

Liora Kolska Horwitz

Liora Kolska Horwitz is a freelance zooarchaeologist affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and holds degrees from University of Cape Town (BA and BA Hons), the Hebrew University (MA) and the University of Tel Aviv (PhD). She has published extensively on the archaeozoology of Israel and has wide-ranging field experience on both Israeli and South African archaeological sites. She is responsible for archaeozoology of the Late Bronze-Iron Age strata at Tell es-Safi, and co-directs the Wonderwerk Cave and Kathu Pan projects (Northern Cape Province, South Africa).

Yotam Asscher

Yotam Asscher is a PhD candidate in archaeological sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His work focuses on the absolute chronology of the Bronze to Iron Age transition under the supervision of Dr Elisabetta Boaretto and Professor Steve Weiner. He graduated from Tel Aviv University with a BSc in chemistry in 2006, an MS in archaeology in 2014 and an MSc in chemistry from the Weizmann Institute in 2011. Some of his more recent works explore bone-like material structures and applications to assess their preservation state in archaeology. He has been awarded the 2012 ADAR Foundation Scholarship and the 2012 Salim and Rachel Benin Foundation Scholarship.

Louise A. Hitchcock

Louise Hitchcock is Associate Professor of Aegean Bronze Age Archaeology in the Classics and Archaeology Program at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Minoan Architecture: A Contextual Analysis, Theory for Classics, and Aegean Art and Architecture (with Donald Preziosi), numerous articles dealing with Aegean archaeology, architecture and theory; and is the co-editor of DAIS: The Aegean Feast, Aegeum 29. Her current research deals with Aegean, Cypriot and Philistine connections, and she is an area supervisor at Tell es-Safi/Gath.