An Experimental Archaeological Approach to Persian Period Mortaria Construction through the Lens of Tell el-Hesi

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mortaria are vessels associated with kitchen pottery, particularly in the Persian period (approx. 550–330 BCE), and are often overlooked for flashier finds. In the 1970s, during excavations of Israeli site Tell el-Hesi, questions regarding vessel construction arose about recovered fragments of mortaria: namely that they were not wheel-made. At Hesi in 1973, potter Richard Fineman created a mortarium nearly identical to those recovered, using a rolled slab method. Later, in the early 1980s, Bill Glanzman examined the Hesi mortaria with X-ray of a flat piece as well as a cross-section. Both of these studies were in concurrence with the theory that these mortaria were not wheel-made. Since Glanzman’s research, little more has been done to understand the process of creating this vessel so popular in the Persian period kitchen. For this poster, I employ experimental archaeology and recreate my own mortaria using Fineman’s proposed method of construction and composition. Then, drawing on Glanzman’s method of study, I examine my own sherds and compare my images with his. Through this re-creation and comparison, I will evaluate the hypothesis that Persian period mortaria were not wheel-made and shed light on a topic often overlooked in modern archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36636.0