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ZEV RADOVAN / BIBLELANDPICTURES.COM

TELL-TALE POTTERY. Qurayyah Painted Ware is a distinctive type of painted pottery associated primarily with the site of Qurayyah in northwestern Saudi Arabia. By tracing the spread of this type of pottery across the region, including to sites in southern Israel, experts are able to shed new light on the far-flung trade, craft, and industrial networks that may have connected communities and cultures during the early Iron Age (c. 1200–1000 BCE), when ancient Israel first emerged. This kind of focused work on specific questions or problems in the archaeological record represents a promising path forward that necessitates ongoing dialogue between biblical studies, biblical archaeology, and the broader discipline of archaeology as a whole.