The Provenance of Aegean- and Syrian-type Pottery Found at Tell Kazel (Syria), with an appendix by M. Kerschner

Foreign ceramic tradition, local clays: the Handmade Burnished Ware of Tell Kazel (Syria)

“…All local clay pastes were fired in a well controlled oxidising firing atmosphere (kiln firing) with a thorough blend of clays and inclusions. The inclusions are larger and more frequent in these local Syrian wares than in the clay pastes of the locally produced Mycenaean pots (Badre et al, 2005). These local petrographic groups do not contradict the mineralogy of the four clay tablets analysed by Goren et al (2004, pp.…”

“…With these new results, it is now possible to re-evaluate the previous NAA chemical data (Badre et al, 2005) in light of the petrographic groupings and try to explain the different results obtained by the two analytical techniques. In the 2005 study, of 11 HMBW samples analysed by NAA, only five were thin sectioned for petrographic analysis.…”

“…Late Bronze II and transitional LB II-Iron Age I levels in areas II and IV. In common with the previous analytical programme (Badre et al, 2005) which clarified a number of issues related to the provenance of Aegean style pottery at Tell Kazel, two samples of non-Trojan Grey Ware, a stylistically non-local pottery type contemporaneous with HMBW pottery, were also analysed. In addition, 13 geological samples were analysed, including sediments, clays, sand and rocks collected in the vicinity of the site, the beach and the banks of the al-Abraš river which runs directly south of the site.…”

Neutron activation analysis of Hellenistic pottery from Boeotia, Greece

“…Also the hydria No. 117 is an import from this region: it has a composition similar to a group of pottery made most probably in Ephesos (EPHX, [7]). …”

A provenance study of Mycenaean pottery from Northern Israel

“…Several studies using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (henceforth, INAA) on Mycenaean pottery from various contexts around the eastern Mediterranean were performed in the last decades (e.g., Asaro and Perlman, 1973;Gunneweg et al, 1992;Mommsen et al, 1992Mommsen et al, , 1995Mommsen et al, , 2002Mommsen et al, , 2005Hoffmann and Robinson, 1993;Maran et al, 1997;Gunneweg and Michel, 1999;Hein et al, 1999;Mommsen andMaran, 2000-2001;French and Tomlinson, 2004;D'Agata et al, 2005;Badre et al, 2005;Mommsen and Sjö berg, 2007;Yellin, 2007). Despite the fact that some of these studies refer, directly or indirectly, to examples of Mycenaean pottery found in LBA southern Levant, no systematic large-scale provenance study has yet been carried on this group (a notable exception is the analysis of 86 Mycenaean sherds from Tell Abu Hawam, published in a cursory manner in Hoffmann and Robinson, 1993).…”