1970s Pottery

June 17, 2013  Monday

After today's dig session, most of the dig participants attended a pottery lecture at the Armenian Museum, located near the Zion Gate in the Old City.  I missed the lecture because I was back at the hotel resting my knee, but Pete attended.

The lecture was given by Willy, one of the staff members who is a pottery expert (among other things). We are finding thousands of pottery fragments as we sift through the fill that we are removing from the dig site.  Willy discussed features of pottery and things that we should look for.  To illustrate his lecture, he had the pottery pieces that were found when the Mount Zion site was first excavated in the 1970s.

Here's an example:  Whole mouth jars.  Even though the jar is wide, the opening at the top is noticeably smaller.  Think of an unopened tin can.  Instead of taking the entire lid off to make an opening, you cut a 1" hole in the center of the lid.  That's how a whole mouth jar is made.  The pottery fragments in the photo below are whole mouth rims -- the lip around that small opening in the top of the jar.

Pete says many of the students' eyes were glazing over during this lecture (no pun intended), so maybe I'll just post one more photo:  Wide collar jars.  These were a fad during the Herodian era.  The collar was a vertical extension of the jar opening.  Generally, the taller the collar, the later the date.   (Maybe they should call them tall collar jars!)

Pottery is a universal archaeological artifact.  Everyone had to cook, eat, and drink, and pottery is the way these things were done.  There were fads and style changes all the time and everywhere, so pottery can be used to estimate dates.