The Potter's Will: Spheres of Production, Distribution and Consumption of the Late Iron Age Southern Transjordan-Negev Pottery

JUAN MANUEL TEBES

Strata: The Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society

Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society

Lugar: London; Año: 2011 vol. 29 p. 61 - 101

0266-2442

This paper makes a reassessment of the Southern Transjordan-Negev Pottery (STNP), traditionally known as ?Edomite? ware, discovered in archaeological sites in the Negev and southern Transjordan dating to the Late Iron Age. It is built upon three main parts: building a typology of the STNP in the Negev, focusing on both their functional and taxonomic aspects; dating them using well stratified assemblages from the Negev; and investigating their spheres of production, distribution and consumption. Scholars have proposed several models for explaining the distribution of STNP, and while many of these proposals have much to commend, they nevertheless focus on a few specific pottery types and stress only one or a few factors for the spatial allocation of the ceramics. However, this ceramic group, being composed of discrete entities, is neither homogeneous nor static. While each of its constituting is congruent inside the typology, they were part of different spheres of production, distribution, consumption and symbolic meaning.