Bronze-Age Pottery Amphora 3000 BC

Substantial Holy Land storage vessel with spherical body and two ledge handles. The vessel has a wide mouth and two ledge handles decorated with a gently crimped appearance to the edges. Standing on a flat base. Most of the vessel, both inside and out, is covered in a thin layer of lime-plaster (see note below), making the vessel heavier than usual. Early Bronze age Palestine: Circa 3100-2900 Bc. Complete and intact rim ragged. With the emergence of urban culture in the southern Levant in the Early Bronze Age, new types of pottery and ceramic techniques appeared, among them pottery coated with a white material. A selection of sherds from Early Bronze strata was studied in an attempt to analyze this material. Using microscopy and various other methods, it was determined that the white material was a lime-plaster applied to the vessels after firing. The most likely reason for applying the lime-plaster was functional - to decrease permeability and protect the contents of the vessels. cf. Early Bronze Age Pottery Covered with Lime-Plaster: Technological Observations: Adi Eliyahu-Behar, Itzhaq Shai, Lior Regev, David Ben-Shlomo, Shira Albaz, Aren M. Maeir & Haskel J. Greenfield (2016) Early Bronze Age Pottery Covered with Lime-Plaster: Technological Observations, Tel Aviv, 43:1, 27-42, Doi: 10.1080/03344355.2016.1161373 For best references, see chapter 3, Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land: Ruth Amiran, also Der Konigs Weg 9000 Jahre Kunst und Kultur, Koln 1987.