Pottery Talks

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So often it seems that pottery is boring. But the little bits of sherds that are ubiquitous on excavations tell us a lot. Thanks to pottery we can date structures such as buildings and the contents within them.

But that’s not all that pottery tells us—even if it’s not always easy to plumb its secrets.

Here I want to examine a particular kind of pottery decoration that I believe not only helps us date the potsherds it adorns, but also tells us a great deal about what was happening in ancient Israel at the time the pottery was in use. It can tell us about the passage from a tribal society to a monarchy, about the differentiation of gender roles—about spaces where woman dominated and those where men held sway—and why, in the end, such decoration was no longer needed.

This decoration is for the most part quite simple. It is called slip and burnish—in this case red slip. Burnishing is simply a finishing technique. The potter uses a hard tool to rub the leather-hard vessel before firing to produce a glossy surface.¹ It can be done either by hand or on a wheel. You can tell hand burnish because it has an irregular pattern. Wheel burnish produces a regular pattern.

Slip is a liquid mixture of clay and water applied over the surface of the vessel, coloring it and giving it a different texture.² The red slip I will be talking about here was either made from the clays used to make the pots, or, in the case of the dark red slip, made by using a special clay (perhaps terra rossa) or adding iron to a slurry made of the clay used in the pot.³

This red-slipped burnished ware (such as the example shown above) became fashionable, appearing in relatively massive quantities in about 1000 B.C.E., although we find it somewhat earlier in small quantities. Longtime BAR readers will immediately recognize this date. King David’s reign is generally assumed to have begun in about 1000 B.C.E. This also marks the beginning of Iron Age II—the period of the Israelite Monarchy. The pottery during the first phase of Iron Age II is characterized by a large percentage of burnished and red-slipped vessels. During the preceding Iron Age I period (the period of the Judges, in Biblical terms), it is rare.

The increase in the appearance of red-slipped burnished ware is illustrated at two sites: Gezer and Tel Batash. At Gezer, this decoration appeared on 3 percent of the pottery of the 12th century B.C.E. and on 35 percent of the pottery of the tenth century B.C.E. At Tel Batash, the increase went from 8 percent in Iron Age I to 48 percent in the tenth century B.C.E. The same thing can be observed at other sites, like Tel Qasile and Beersheba.⁴

An examination of the published pottery plates, however, discloses that this decoration was applied selectively. Slip and burnish was used most commonly on bowls of various shapes and on jugs and juglets. It was not used on cooking pots or most storage jars.⁵

In short, slip and burnish seems to have been used especially on vessels used in the consumption of food and beverages. It was rarely employed, if at all, on vessels used in food preparation and storage.

Your first thought might be that slip and burnish had a functional purpose; that is, it was used to make vessels less porous. But this argument, like the vessels, does not hold water. The careless manner in which the burnish was executed indicates that the potter regarded it as decoration.⁶ Moreover, often only part of a pot was burnished, which would not be the case if it were intended to make the vessels more watertight.⁷ And storage vessels for liquids, where porosity would most likely be perceived as a problem, were generally not burnished. So, though slip and burnish does make a vessel less porous, it was not applied for that reason.

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The next idea you will probably think of is that vessels intended to be seen—vessels for food consumption—were decorated, while other vessels—cooking pots and storage jars—were not. On the surface (if you will excuse another pun), this explanation has appeal. But in fact it is quite problematic. In anthropological studies of pottery from other societies, the reverse is sometimes observed to be true.⁸ Moreover, for thousands of years, slip and burnish was common in the Near East. Why, then, did it practically disappear during Iron Age I and then reappear in large quantities only in the tenth century B.C.E.? After all, Iron Age I people must have had guests to impress. More important, if it were true that slip and burnish was simply decoration on vessels intended to be seen, we would be unable to account for the decline and ultimate disappearance of slip and burnish in Israel later in Iron Age II. There must be some other explanation.

Decoration is, after all, a social phenomenon. Decoration conveys a message. We must determine what that message was.

In Israelite society, cooking and food preparation, and quite possibly food storage, were regarded as women’s work and part of the female domain. Communal or public food consumption, on the other hand, was part of the male domain.

This division is apparent in various Biblical passages. For example, in Genesis 18, when the three divine agents appear to Abraham and accept his invitation to tarry, Abraham rushes into his tent and tells his wife Sarah: “Quick, three seahs of the best flour! Knead it, and make it into cakes” (Genesis 18:8). Abraham himself runs to his herd and picks out a plump young calf to be prepared for the men.⁹ The food is set before them under a tree; the texts notes that Abraham waits on them (Genesis 18:8). When the men inquire after Abraham’s wife, he replies that she is “inside the tent” (Genesis 18:9). She is not part of the feast, which was regarded as “men’s business,” so to speak.

The so-called Holiness Code (“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” [Leviticus 19:2]) comprises Leviticus 17 through 26. At the very end, the Lord describes the punishments that will follow from disobedience. Among them is hunger, severe enough that “ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven; they shall dole out your bread by weight, and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied” (Leviticus 26:26). The relevance for our discussion is simply that women do the baking of bread.

A similar point is made when Samuel tries (unsuccessfully) to discourage the people from appointing an earthly king: “He will take your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers” (1 Samuel 8:13).¹⁰

As we have seen from the Abraham story, the division of labor by gender also extended to a division of space: Sarah was excluded from the feast. This corresponds to a widely accepted association of public spaces with men (guest entertainment and communal food consumption) and private or domestic spaces with women (food preparation and storage). Ethnographers in many societies have noted this division. The phenomenon may well be cross-cultural: Public functions are considered male and private ones female.¹¹ Whether or not this dichotomy is universal, we can surely apply it to ancient Israel. Here, public space was usually regarded as male and private space was seen as female.

Modern culture might encourage us to associate decoration with the feminine gender. But this is not true of the modest decoration we are discussing. Various studies show that (in many cases at least) the female is associated with nature (or is closer to it).¹² The male is associated more often with culture than with nature. Again, many scholars have questioned the universality of this equation¹³ and some claim that it exists mainly in modern western societies. (It is sometimes said in this regard that ethnographers find what they are looking for.) One scholar believes that the root of this perception lies, at least partially, in the creation story in Genesis,¹⁴ in which God says that “man shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth and all the creeping things that creep on earth” (Genesis 1:26).^a And man is (perhaps) also given control over women (Genesis 3:16).^b As Carol Meyers has observed, 055“The restriction of women to domestic circles was ingrained in Israelite society and ultimately became the basis for their subordination through the remainder of the biblical period and on into modern times.”¹⁵ It is more than probable, therefore, that the culture-nature dichotomy existed in ancient Israelite society.¹⁶

Applying this dichotomy to our pottery, unburnished and unslipped pottery can be seen as “natural,” in the state of nature (“earthen ware”). Pottery with slip and burnish has been transformed, acculturated. The former is female; the latter male. Only vessels used for food and beverage consumption were transformed, or acculturated, because only they were used in the male domain for “masculine” activities.

Burnished pottery, therefore—used for food consumption—symbolized the public, male and cultural domain, while simpler types of pottery used for food preparation and storage were regarded as part of the private and female domain, and were closer to nature in appearance.

Can we go further? I think we can.

The Israelite society of the Iron Age I was relatively simple, composed of many small, isolated communities. Toward the end of Iron Age I, it became increasingly complex and, eventually, toward the end of the 11th century B.C.E. or the beginning of the tenth century, a state (monarchy) emerged. Similar processes of increased complexity seem to have occurred throughout the land of Israel at the time. These transitions saw parallel changes in material culture in general and in pottery in particular. The pottery repertoire gradually became much richer and more varied.¹⁷ At the same time, local pottery traditions disappeared as pottery production techniques become more uniform.¹⁸ Thus, as pottery became more standardized, it also became more homogenous. This change was not just economic; it is also related to changes in other aspects of society. At the beginning of Iron Age I (1200 B.C.E.), the central highlands where the emerging Israelites lived were very sparsely settled; by the end of this period (about 1000 B.C.E.), the highlands were quite densely populated despite ecological and natural constraints:¹⁹ The terrain was difficult (it was covered with forests), and it lacked permanent sources of water. By the end of Iron Age I, the Israelites had conquered the ecological frontier (“nature”) and dominated it. This is confirmed archaeologically (evidence of terraced farming, cisterns beneath the floors of houses, etc.) and can be illustrated by the Biblical text (Joshua tells the incoming Israelites: “Go up to the forest country and clear an area for yourselves … [Y]ou will clear it and possess it” [Joshua 17:15–18]).

Male-female and culture-nature dichotomies seem also to have increased in Iron Age I. Relationships in both areas seem to have changed during this formative period. This process may well correspond to the victory and domination of men over nature, which in turn strengthens the scenario in which differentiation between males and females is also seen as the differentiation between culture and nature.

The appearance of slip and burnished pottery seems to be correlated with the emergence of the state in ancient Israel. Many scholars regard state formation as a critical stage in the process that creates gender hierarchy,²⁰ and this differentiation seems to have been symbolized in ancient Israel by the appearance of slip and burnished pottery. The development of gender hierarchy began in Iron Age I, but state formation was a major catalyst in the process.

The increase in social complexity as Israel moved toward a monarchy was also accompanied by the crystallization of a new architectural form, the four-room house, which, as Shlomo Bunimovitz and I have shown in these pages, was the product of ideological development.^c In other words, the same social processes involved in the formation of the state brought concomitant changes in gender hierarchy, architecture—and pottery decoration!

In an article on “Why Pottery is Decorated,” the authors insightfully observe:

Designs on pottery, far from being “mere decoration,” art for art’s sake, or messages consciously emblematic of ethnicity, are low-technology channels through which society implants its values in the individual.²¹

Slip and burnish reached its peak in the early years of Iron Age II, the time of the United Monarchy, and gradually declined in the years that followed because the social ideas made manifest by the pottery were absorbed and embedded into the new social order.²² Once internalized, the symbolic manifestation of the change became obsolete. The once-fashionable slip and burnish disappeared.

For more on this topic, see Avraham Faust, “Burnished Pottery and Gender Hierarchy in Iron Age Israelite Society,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, vol. 15, no. 1 (2002), pp. 53–73.

So often it seems that pottery is boring. But the little bits of sherds that are ubiquitous on excavations tell us a lot. Thanks to pottery we can date structures such as buildings and the contents within them.