Die fruhbronzezeitliche Keramik von Hirbet ez-Zeraqon mit Studien zur Chronologie und funktionalen Deutung fruhbronzezeitlicher Keramik in der sudlichen Levante.

• Author: Joffe, Alexander H.
• Position: Book Review

Die fruhbronzezeitliche Keramik von Hirbet ez-Zeraqon mit Studien zur Chronologie und funktionalen Deutung fruhbronzezeitlicher Keramik in der sudlichen Levante. By HERMANN GENZ. Deutsch-Jordanische Ausgrabungen in Hirbet Ez-Zeraqon 1984-1994, ed. Moawiyah M. Ibrahim and Siegfried Mittmann. Endberichte: Band V. Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palastina-Vereins, vol. 27.2. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2002. Pp. viii +166, illus., plates. [euro]74.

It has been almost seven decades since G. Ernest Wright's pioneering analysis of Early Bronze (EB) Age ceramics in the southern Levant. In those years an enormous amount has been learned, so much perhaps that it has become difficult to know what to make of it all. Hermann Genz's work on the ceramics from Khirbet ez-Zeraqon in northern Jordan is a welcome addition to this growing morass.

Genz's book originated as a Tubingen dissertation under Siegfried Mittmann, who also directed the excavations at Zeraqon, a large walled EB II-III site in northern Jordan. Among the most notable discoveries at the site were a large corpus of seal impressions, a water system dug into the tell, and a temple compound in the upper city, complete with a small circular altar and broadroom temples analogous to that of EB III Megiddo, as well as a portion of a possible palace.

The exercise of creating a typology is familiar; the world is made up of lumpers and splitters. After providing a stratigraphic outline of the site Genz, proceeds in a sensible manner by identifying fourteen basic types and a number of subtypes. Most of Genz's tables are easily recognized within larger patterns of ceramics in the northern part of the EB southern Levant. Materials originate from both the upper city and the lower city, where domestic structures are flanked by a fortification wall.

Genz performs a basic statistical analysis of the chronological and spatial distribution of ceramics. As with the overall stratigraphic picture, typological change is gradual. Spatial distributions of cooking and storage types show some contrasts between domestic and public buildings. It is unfortunate in this respect that Genz was unable to utilize the late Ornit Ilan's work ("Household Archaeology at Arad and Ai in the Early Bronze Age, II," in Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighboring Lands, In Memory of Douglas L. Esse, ed. S. Wolff [Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2001], 317-54) for comparison. As is often the case with publications of ceramics, the...