Negevite pottery

Negevite pottery is the name given to a handmade ware found in Iron Age sites of the Negev desert^[1] and southern Jordan.

It was produced from coarse clay containing straw and other organic materials. It was discovered by C. Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence in the northeastern Sinai, found again by Nelson Glueck in Tell el-Kheleifeh, and at last identified by Yohanan Aharoni as the wares manufactured and used by the people of the desert. Negevite wares show some similarities with Midianite pottery bowls (in form) and with Edomite pottery (in decoration).

Negevite cylindrical vessels found at excavations of Iron Age IIA sites in the Negev Highlands represent the largest and most dominant ceramic assemblage of simple-shaped vessels discovered in Israel.^[2]

References

1. Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, ed. Suzanne Richard
2. 'Ancient Standards of Volume: Negevite Iron Age Pottery (Israel) as a Case Study in 3D Modeling,' Journal of Archaeological Science 33 (2006): 1734-1743

Further reading

• Y. Aharoni, M. Evenari, L. Shanan & N.H. Tadmor. 'The Ancient Desert Agriculture of the Negev, V: An Israelite Agricultural Settlement at Ramat Matred'. Israel Exploration Journal 10 (1960): 23-36, 97-111.
• M. Haiman & Y. Goren. ”'Negevite' Pottery: New Aspects and Interpretations and the Role of Pastoralism in Designating Ceramic Technology”. In O. Bar-Yosef & A. Khazanov (eds.) Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives. Monographs in World Archaeology No. 10. Madison, Prehistory Press, 1992, 143-152.