Interregional contacts in the 6th millennium BC: tracing foreign influences in the hole-mouth jar from Ein El-Jarba, Israel

Abstract

This paper discusses a unique vessel of the Early Chalcolithic Wadi Rabah tradition of the 6th millennium BC, uncovered at Ein el-Jarba, Israel. Technical skill and iconographic language set this hole-mouth jar apart from other decorated vessels of the period. While the shape of the vessel fits well with the typology of the Wadi Rabah assemblage, its iconographic motifs can be traced back to ceramic traditions of northern Levant, and, we argue, even Caucasia and south-eastern Europe. The Ein el-Jarba hole-mouth jar adds a further layer to the still poorly understood trans-regional interaction between the Early Chalcolithic societies of the southern Levant and other cultural entities, indicating that its creator was familiar with the aesthetic traditions of distant communities.

Keywords:

• interregional contacts
• Early Chalcolithic
• Levant
• iconography
• ceramics
• Wadi Rabah

Acknowledgment

Many thanks to Daniel Leviathan, who kindly photographed, arranged and edited Fig. 3.

Notes

1 The ascription of the Wadi Rabah culture of the southern Levant to either the Neolithic or the Chalcolithic has been suggested and both terminologies remain used (Garfinkel 1999: 4–6; Gopher 2012: 1542–47). After his excavations at Wadi Rabah, Kaplan (1958: 160) identified the ‘Wadi Rabah culture’ as a distinct entity, which he perceived as an early phase within the Chalcolithic sequence. Garfinkel (1999: 6) revived this original terminology and emphasized the similarities discernable between the Wadi Rabah and the subsequent phase. Gopher (2012: 1546) on the other hand sees the Wadi Rabah as the apex of the Neolithic Revolution, followed by a significant break in cultural continuity. In this paper I will rely on Kaplan's original terminology for the southern Levant, while being fully aware of competing chronological models, particularly as the key site of Ein el-Jarba was published by the excavator using this terminology.

2 The category of decoration includes all surface treatments represented at the site, such as slip, burnish, painted, combed, incised, impressed and plastic decoration.