The Weekly Find – Late Philistine Decorated Ware

I know its been more than a week since I’ve contributed to the blog, but with the week of excavation and the Holidays, I just haven’t had the time. anyway, Aren has been doing a great job keeping everyone updated, so its not like you’ve missed much. I thought I would get back to the weekly find corner that I began a while back. this week’s find is a special group of pottery, which in the past has been called “Ashdod Ware”, but more recently was renamed Late Philistine Decorated Ware – LPDW. A few of the team members published an extensive article on this family of vessels in BASOR.

The vessels are uniquely decorated with vertical red burnishing on all or most of the surface. Along the body, the vessels are usually decorated with alternating black and white horizontal bands.

LPDW vessels appear after the disappearance of the classic Philistine decorative elements, and last until the end of the 8th and possibly into the 7th Century BCE, when the Philistine material culture ceases to exist. The decoration seems to combine elements of the classic Philistine decoration (like the bichrome decoration) along with elements of the contemporary Phoenician material culture. the vessels have also been tested petrographically, and it seems that they were locally made at Tell es-Safi/Gath and Ashdod.

The above mentioned information led Ben-Shlomo, Shai and Maeir to the conclusion that these vessels in essence are the succesors of the Iron Age I Philistine pottery. In other words, whether the Philistines underwent acculturation, creolization or any other process of change, they maintained a unique decorative element in their pottery which continued throughout their existence.