Tel Beth-Shemesh: Iron IIA Judahite Pottery Typology and Finger Impressed Jar Handles

Abstract

The article presents two pottery assemblages exposed in 2017 at Tel Beth-Shemesh, in the Level 3 Iron IIA Judahite administrative centre that replaced the Iron I Canaanite villages of Levels 7–4. The assemblages contribute to the study of the typological-chronological development of Iron IIA pottery in Judah. Both date to the mid-/late Iron IIA, i.e., the first half/mid-9th century BCE. Two storage jars in the assemblages bear finger impressions. Contrary to recent suggestions that these impressions testify to early Iron IIA Judahite or Israelite centralised administration, we understand them as a Bronze Age phenomenon affiliated with the Canaanite population of the Shephelah and the northern valleys that reached its apogee during the late Iron I/early Iron IIA.

Keywords:

• Iron IIA
• Pottery typology
• Judah
• Beth-Shemesh
• Finger impressed jar handles

Acknowledgments

The excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh are directed by S. Bunimovitz and Z. Lederman under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. Participating consortium institutions include the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada and Harding University, Arkansas, USA. The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) (grant nos. 898/99; 980/03; 1068/11), the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and by an Early Israel grant (New Horizons project), Tel Aviv University. Pottery drawing: A. Perry and Y. Gottlieb; photography: S. Flit.

Notes

1 Notably, a krater with eight handles also bears a finger-impression on each handle (Kang and Garfinkel 2018: 33, KQ KR9; Pl. 3: 9).

2 Most recently, rescue excavations at two village sites in Ramat Beth-Shemesh (eastern Shephelah) yielded two more finger-impressed jar handles in LB III and LB III/Iron I contexts (Tal et al. 2018).

3 Also missing from Fig. 7 is Tel Yarmuth where two complete jars bearing finger impressions were found in Stratum Acr-III from the 11th century BCE. See Jasmin 1999: Pls. 86: 1; 92: 1. To these sites one may now add Khirbet al-Ra>i near Lachish where a couple of finger-impressions were found in a Khirbet Qeiyafa/Beth-Shemesh Level 4 context (Garfinkel and Ganor 2018: 952).

4 As convincingly shown by Na’aman 2017: 17–19, not a single artefact discovered at Khirbet Qeiyafa attests to any reciprocal relations between this site and the highlands of Judah and Benjamin.

5 Unfortunately, the spatial/chronological distribution maps of finger-impressed jar handles in this essay lack quantitative information which is crucial to assess the validity of the authors’ argument. Moreover, their claim that a sequence of finger-impressed jar handles, royal (lmlk) and rosette impressions at the grain-storage site of Moza supports the interpretation of the finger-impressed jar handles as part of a royal administrative system is misleading since not a single example of the latter was found at that site (Greenhut 2009: 136–137)!