The Pottery of Babylonian-period Jerusalem: Stratum 9/10 at the Summit of the Southeastern Hill

Abstract

The 2005–2008 excavations conducted by Eilat Mazar in Area G at the Southeastern Hill (‘the Summit of the City of David’) included stratified dump layers on the eastern slope. Reevaluation of the pottery uncovered in the three layers of the dump designated by Mazar as Babylonian Stratum 9/10 show that it consisted mainly of Iron IIC types with a few later types and that while some of the new types became popular during the Early Persian period, others either did not become common or did not continue. This, then, is a transitional assemblage, representing the 6th century BCE, with Iron Age types appearing alongside new variants. About a quarter of the bowls recovered from Stratum 9/10 are ‘non-typical’ for Iron IIC types but are not typically Persian either. We therefore suggest that they be identified as ‘Babylonian types’.

Keywords:

• Iron Age
• Babylonian period
• Persian period
• City of David
• Jerusalem
• Clay fabric
• Terra rosa
• Rendzina
• Moza clay

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express her gratitude to Oded Lipschits, Ido Koch and the anonymous readers for their valuable input that improved this article, as well as to Yulia Gottlieb for preparing the figures and to Tsipi Kuper-Blau for her meticulous editing of the article.

Disclosure statement

The author reports that there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 See summary of research and further literature in Lipschits 2005: 185–191; Faust 2012: 181–207.

2 On this subject, see, e.g., the title of Stern’s article (1998: 19–20) ‘Is there a Babylonian Period in the Archaeology of the Land of Israel?’, as well as his article (2000) ‘The Babylonian Gap’. Faust 2007; 2011; 2012: 181–207; see also Finkelstein and Singer-Avitz 2009: 40–42.

3 According to Barkay (1993; 1998), the date of the destruction 587/586 BCE is not at all relevant to the history of most parts of the Southern Levant. He noted that it seems that the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem influenced modern scholarship, which fixed the date of the end of the Iron Age according to a historical fact and not on the basis of the archaeological picture.

4 Contra Faust (2007; 2011; 2012), who continues to claim that the land was almost completely devoid of population, based on burial customs, economic considerations and settlement distribution.

5 See publications by Franken and Steiner (1990) and Franken (2005: 65, 93) of Kenyon’s (1974: 183) excavations of the same fills adjacent to Mazar’s excavations. While their research on the pottery sherds was of great importance from the technological and petrographic perspective, the limited typological knowledge available at that time, coupled with the erroneous assumption that the land was left empty in the post-exilic period, led to the division into ‘pre-exilic’ (Iron Age) and ‘post-exilic’ (Persian period) times.

6 See, e.g., Wampler 1947: 9; Tushingham 1985; Stern 2000; 2001: 343, 514–515; Mazar and Panitz-Cohen 2001: 187; Ben-Arieh 2000: 13; Berlin 2012: 7; Lipschits 2005: 192–206.

7 Conducted within the framework of my Ph.D. dissertation (Freud 2018).

8 Phase XIA contains pottery types typical of the Iron IIC, such as rosette storage jars (Ben-Ami 2013: Fig. 3.7:10–14), alongside a few non-typical Iron IIC or ‘Babylonian types’ (ibid.: Figs. 3.6:1,8,19, 3.7:2,4–5,7–8, 3.8:2). Strata X and IX feature many parallels (ibid.: Figs. 3.10:1,15–18, 3.11:1,8–9,11–14) of the ‘Babylonian types’, as described above in Stratum 9/10 from the Summit of the City of David. In addition, Stratum IX yielded a sherd of a Persian cooking pot (ibid.: Fig. 3.11:9). I have therefore suggested (Freud 2019: 133–134) that Stratum XIA should be dated to the 586 BCE destruction and that Stratum X should be dated within the 6th century BCE to the Babylonian period. Stratum IX should be dated to the beginning of the Persian period—the second half of the 6th century to the beginning of the 5th century BCE.

9 Since some loci were disturbed over the years, only clean loci are discussed (Mazar 2015: 43–45). I am grateful to the late Dr. Eilat Mazar for allowing me to use and include this material in my Ph.D. dissertation (Freud 2018) and to her sister, Avital Mazar-Tsairi, for her permission to include the material in this article.

10 Most of the pottery types under discussion are well known and have been widely studied.

11 See Figs. 1:16–21, 2:2, 3:12,16, 4:3–6,24 and 4:26, respectively.

12 See Figs. 1:7–9,19, 2:4–6, 4:9,20,23,25,27 and 5:4, respectively.

13 For B5, B7 and B9, see Figs. 1:23, 2:9 and 3:5, respectively.

14 This gradual transition, evident in the excavations at the Summit of the Southeastern Hill of Jerusalem, from the use of the terra rosa and terra rosa/rendzina clay to the use of Moẓa clay was noticed by Franken (2005: 198) with regard to sherds from Kenyon’s excavations.

15 Isolated sherds from layer 10-1, which were not included in the excavation report, have been tested at the IAA storehouse at Beth Shemesh and can be added to the above list of Babylonian types from this layer: flat bowl B2: Reg. Nos. 21178/2 L2033; outfolded rim bowls B6: Reg. Nos. 21049/1 L2033, 20874/5 L2033, 20738/2 L2028 and 20874/1 L2033; bowl with cut rim B7: Reg. Nos. 21031/8 L2036 (layer 10-2); jars JR1: Reg. Nos. 21075/8, 20779/7, L2028, 20281/5, 20613/1, 20613/2 L2024, 21471/4 L2042; flat lamp L2: Reg. No. 20650/6 L2028.

16 As already noted by Franken and Steiner (see above, holemouth jars).

17 A third lion stamp impression is a surface find (see Winderbaum 2015: 541–543 for further discussion and references).

18 Thanks are extended to Yuval Gadot and Yiftah Shalev for giving me permission to examine the pottery from the GivꜤati Parking Lot excavations. On the wide distribution of holemouth jars in rural sites around Jerusalem, with chronological discussion and references, see Freud 2019; see also Barkay, Fantalkin and Tal 2002 for the history of the research.

19 Franken and Steiner already pointed out that the number of holemouth jars increased dramatically at the end of the Iron Age and that like other types, they are made of Moẓa clay that contains dolomite sand. This type of clay was very popular at the beginning of the Iron Age, but then declined; toward the 6th century and the Persian period, the use of this type of clay increased, and it became the most common material for the pottery industry (Franken and Steiner 1990: 83, 112–113; Franken 2005: 65–66, 98; Steiner 2001: 57).

Additional information

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Liora Freud

Liora Freud: The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University