Vessel Functions in Agricultural and Pastoral Societies of Byzantine and Early Islamic Israel

Abstract

The identification of pastoral nomads in archaeological contexts in the Near East is generally based on demonstrating how pastoral campsites differ from farms, towns, and villages. The recognition of mobile pastoralists at multi-period ephemeral sites is more difficult because the architectural remains from earlier periods do not provide insights into the socioeconomic organization of the people who reused these settlements in later periods. To address this issue the pottery from the site of Rekhes Nafha 396 in Israel is used to test the observation that pastoral encampments and sedentary occupations exhibit different percentages of cooking pots and storage jars. The results of this study suggest that high percentages of cooking pots and low percentages of storage jars within the total pottery assemblage at ephemeral sites, such as Rekhes Nafha 396, provide a means to identify, from an archaeological perspective, the reoccupation of these settlements by pastoral nomads. The identification of pastoral campsites on the fringe of agricultural settlements in the Negev Highlands is important for modeling symbiotic relationships between pastoral nomads and complex societies in the 6th through 8th centuries A.D.