Negevite pottery, Negev pottery, Negebite ware, etc. are the names given to a hand-made ware, i.e. without using the

potter's wheel In pottery, a potter's wheel is a machine used in the shaping (known as throwing) of clay into round ceramic ware. The wheel may also be used during the process of trimming excess clay from leather-hard dried ware that is stiff but malleable, ...

, found in Iron Age sites of the

Negev The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...

desert, southern

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, and the

Shfela The Shephelah () or Shfela (), or the Judaean Foothills (), is a transitional region of soft-sloping rolling hills in south-central Israel stretching over between the Judaean Mountains and the Coastal Plain. The different use of the term "Jude ...

of Israel. However, its use was not limited to the Iron Age, starting instead in the Bronze Age and continuing uninterruptedly until the Early Muslim period. It was produced from coarse clay containing straw and other organic materials. It was discovered by C.

Leonard Woolley Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...

and

T. E. Lawrence Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British Army officer, archaeologist, diplomat and writer known for his role during the Arab Revolt and Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the First W ...

in the northeastern Sinai, found again by

Nelson Glueck Nelson Glueck (June 4, 1900 – February 12, 1971) was an American rabbi, professor, academic and archaeology, archaeologist. He served as president of Hebrew Union College from 1947 until his death, and his pioneering work in biblical archaeolo ...

Tell el-Kheleifeh Tell el-Kheleifeh (also Tell el-Chulefi) is an archaeological site in Jordan at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba immediately northwest of the city of Aqaba. Its older identification with the 10th-century port from the Hebrew Bible, biblical King Solo ...

, and at last identified by

Yohanan Aharoni Yohanan Aharoni (; 7 June 1919 – 9 February 1976) was an Israeli archaeologist and historical geographer, chairman of the Department of Near East Studies and chairman of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Life Born to the Ar ...

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.

Date and significance

Negevite pottery has been used in the Negev, without typological changes, from the Early Bronze II and Middle Bronze I ages throughout the Early Muslim period. This means that it can not be used independently as a marker for the Iron Age or any other period for that matter, and can itself only be dated indirectly, based on the wheel-made pottery found in the same stratigraphic context, which is mostly non-local and is period-specific. However, Negevite pottery is found everywhere at Iron Age sites in the Negev and southern Jordan, and constitutes almost the only source of information about the

pastoralists Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals (known as "livestock") are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands (pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The anima ...

who lived there, available to the archaeologists. Juan Manuel Tebes suggests that Negevite ware was produced in pastoral households for domestic use, and that the movements of the pastoral groups dictates its geographical distribution.

References

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Date and significance

References

Further reading