Same medium, different messages: stamped storage jar handles in Judea from the Iron Age to the Early Islamic period as evidencing regional memory and acquaintance with the past

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study provides an original cross-period theoretical perspective on the unique regional phenomenon of storage jar stamping in Judea between the Iron Age 2 and the Early Islamic period (eighth century BC to ninth/tenth century AD). A six century-long tradition of jar stamping for economic and administrative (and possibly religious) purposes under governmental initiative and control ended during the Hellenistic period, to be renewed under different circumstances and expressing different messages in the late Byzantine or the beginning of the Early Islamic period. Thus far, no attempt has been made to discuss together these two episodes of Judean jar stamping, or to interpret the renewal of this custom in the first millennium AD. As argued in this article, the key to understand the reappearance of jar stamping in Judea after a gap of at least 700 years is the existence of close, constant contact between local people and ancient remains and artifacts, in this case stamped jar handles. These region-specific objects had become part of the local cultural heritage, albeit in a level of a ‘dormant memory’ during the centuries which passed since their final phase of usage, and the idea of reviving this memory was apparently borne in the minds of local potters in late Byzantine or Early Islamic times.