A Basalt Vessel Workshop and its Products at Iron Age Hazor, Israel

Abstract

Evidence for the production of basalt vessels is virtually unknown from archaeological sites in the Levant. Several unfinished basalt vessels were discovered at Tel Hazor, Israel, during excavations directed by Y. Yadin in the 1950s and in 1968, and 25 more were identified during the analysis of the large ground stone assemblage excavated at Hazor 1990–2003, suggesting that a workshop must have been located at the site. The 2010 discovery of a 9th century b.c.e. workshop for manufacturing basalt vessels in the context of a public building in Area M at Hazor confirms that basalt vessels were produced at the site and has the potential to shed new light on this little-known industry. This paper offers a preliminary descriptive account of the context of the basalt vessel workshop, the unfinished basalt vessel preforms or blanks found within it and in other archaeological contexts at Hazor, and the significance of this discovery for our understanding of basalt vessel manufacture in antiquity.