Same medium, different messages: stamped storage jar handles in Judea from the Iron Age to the Early Islamic period as evidencing regional memory and acquaintance with the past

ABSTRACT

This study provides an original cross-period theoretical perspective on the unique regional phenomenon of storage jar stamping in Judea between the Iron Age 2 and the Early Islamic period (eighth century BC to ninth/tenth century AD). A six century-long tradition of jar stamping for economic and administrative (and possibly religious) purposes under governmental initiative and control ended during the Hellenistic period, to be renewed under different circumstances and expressing different messages in the late Byzantine or the beginning of the Early Islamic period. Thus far, no attempt has been made to discuss together these two episodes of Judean jar stamping, or to interpret the renewal of this custom in the first millennium AD. As argued in this article, the key to understand the reappearance of jar stamping in Judea after a gap of at least 700 years is the existence of close, constant contact between local people and ancient remains and artifacts, in this case stamped jar handles. These region-specific objects had become part of the local cultural heritage, albeit in a level of a ‘dormant memory’ during the centuries which passed since their final phase of usage, and the idea of reviving this memory was apparently borne in the minds of local potters in late Byzantine or Early Islamic times.

KEYWORDS:

• Stamped jar handles
• Judea
• Iron Age to Early Islamic period
• regionalism
• memory
• knowledge about the past

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Yulia Gotlieb (Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University) and Natalia Zak (IAA) for their assistance in the preparation of the illustrations accompanying this article. My thanks go also to the IAA Photographs Archive and to the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University for the permission to publish some of the photographs which accompany this article. I am also indebted to Nitzan Amitai-Preiss, Assaf Nativ and Ianir Milevsky for their useful comments on early versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Itamar Taxel

Itamar Taxel received his Ph.D. in archaeology from Tel Aviv University in 2011. Currently he is the head of Pottery Specializations Branch at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) Archaeological Research Department. He is involved with various fieldwork and research projects on behalf of the IAA as well as of Tel Aviv University and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. He has authored and co-authored four monographs and numerous articles and book chapters on the archaeology of Early Roman to Late Islamic Palestine.

1. Noteworthy in this regard is an ongoing research study, carried out by Nitzan Amitai-Preiss (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Anat Cohen-Weinberger (IAA), which integrates archaeological, epigraphic and petrographic data in order to identify the production centers and distribution of Early Islamic stamped jars (for some of the results of this research see Amitai-Preiss, Cohen-Weinberger, and Har-Even 2017).

2. Recent discussions on all of the eighth- to second-century BC types of Judean jar stamps appear also in the final report of Yohanan Aharoni’s excavations at Ramat Raḥel (Lipschits, Gadot, and Freud 2016, 287-460). For a chronological summary of these impressions see also Ben-Yosef et al. (2017). Note that according to Fantalkin and Tal (2012, 17, n. 49), the yhwd (and earlier) impressions were connected to the Jerusalem Temple – and not necessarily to governmental/civic administration – as a means by which the priests verified the purity of the goods consumed by the Temple personnel.

3. The area of geographical Judea was included during the Byzantine period within the territories of two cities – Jerusalem and Beth Govrin (Eleutheropolis). This situation continued more or less unchanged well into the Early Islamic period.

4. A few locally-produced bag-shaped storage jars bearing round figurative impressions (potter’s marks?) on their handles are documented also in some Late Roman/early Byzantine (fourth-early fifth century AD) contexts from more northern regions of Palestine, i.e. the Carmel Range and the Galilee (e.g. Getzov et al. 2009, 52, fig. 2.37: 15, 16). However, this negligible phenomenon has no contemporaneous equivalents from Judea and other parts of the country.

5. There is a possibility that the stamping of ceramic roof tiles with simple producer’s marks begun in Judea somewhat earlier (maybe in the sixth century AD). However, this custom too was rather marginal, and at any rate no firm chronology of either stamped or un-stamped roof tiles in the region has yet been published.

6. The Christians formed the overwhelming majority of the population of Jerusalem and most of Judea in the later Byzantine period and during much of the Early Islamic period. Jewish presence in Judea before the Muslim conquest was mostly confined to the southern Judean Hills, though after the conquest Jews also settled in the city of Jerusalem. Starting in the mid-seventh century AD, Muslims (both migrants and converts from among the local population) first inhabited Jerusalem and gradually spread throughout Judea (see Avni 2014, 109-159, 249-257; Di Segni and Tsafrir 2012).