What can pottery tell us? - University of Notre Dame

Daily Life in Early Bronze Age

Towns: What can pottery tell

us?

Dr. Meredith S. Chesson

Dept. of Anthropology

University of Notre Dame,

USA

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Invention of Earliest Fortified Settlements in

the Southern Levant

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Early Bronze Age I - III:

3600 - 2350 B.C.E.

Intermediate Bronze / EBA IV:

2350 - 2000 B.C.E.

Southern Levant

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Early Bronze Age Walled Towns: Inventing New

Types of Communities

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Slab-built built Tomb

at Safi/Naqa

Early Bronze Age Transformations

Population

aggregation in

walled

communities

West Gate at

Bab edh-Dhra’

Increasing social differentiation (individual

and group) seen in mortuary practices

Administrative

Compound at Zeraqon

Non-residential storage facilities

Intensification of

agricultural

production

(irrigation

technology, water

management,

ownership, use,

surplus storage

and management)

Irrigated fields

on Wadi Zarqa

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Why is this research important to anthropologists?

• Inventing a new type of Place:

place and identity key still

today

• Dawn of urbanism: tracking

the diversity of urban life

• Tracing the roots of social

differentiation: the prehistoric

foundations for the “haves”

and “have-nots”

• Seek to understand how

average people lived their daily

lives: 95% of archaeology

explores the lives of the

richest/wealthiest 5% of any

society

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“Human ordinariness is an extraordinary accomplishment: it is

the sheer ability of humans to believe and to act.” (Robb 2007: 2)

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Context as Key to Interpretation

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Mortuary Contexts

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Room 10(2A/2B) pit with pot

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Social and

Technological Aspects

of Pottery Production

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Decision-making by Potters:

•Resources (local vs. external)

•Surface Treatments

•Forms

•Function/Use

•Distribution

•Seasonal Tempo

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Multi-scalar research: moving

from local to regional

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• Potsherds connected to

People and Societies

• Ordinary Life as Crucial

Key to Understanding

the Past