Pottery Makers and Premodern Exchange in the Fringes of Egypt: An Approximation to the Distribution of Iron Age Midianite Pottery

JUAN MANUEL TEBES

Buried History

Australian Institute of Archaeology

Lugar: Bundoora, Victoria, Australia; Año: 2007 vol. 43 p. 11 - 26

0007-6260

This paper aims to study the distribution of Midianite pottery, a ware that wasmanufactured in the Hejaz and spread over the Negev (most notably Ramesside Timna),southern Palestine, and southern-central Jordan during the Iron Age. The admittedly meagerevidence from local sites suggests that the context of discovery is of particular signifi cance.Since Midianite wares appear consistently in cultic contexts, administrative buildings andburial offerings, they may have been seen as valuable imports, probably due to their richpolychrome decorations, cultic character and/or imported nature. The presence of Midianitewares in these contexts implies that these goods were valued for their social signifi cance aswell as their functional content. This, in turn, points to the existence of exchange mechanismsof some kind, most notably gift-exchange and trade.