2017-2018 Grant in Aid of Research
Building an Iron IIB-IIC Pottery Assemblage for Tall Jalul
Michael Orellana
Tall Jalul is the largest tell site in the central Jordan plateau (Clark et al. 2011: 58), and is part of the Madaba Plains Project (MPP). Its ceramic corpus includes an important assemblage of Iron Age IIA-C pottery, which is known only in a general way in Transjordan (Bienkowski 2015: 419; Herr 2015: 281). This project, which is part of a doctoral research program, intends to increase the knowledge of Transjordan Iron IIB-IIC pottery by analyzing the assemblage found in Field G, locus 41, at Tall Jalul. The pottery from this locus has been selected for three reasons: (1) it contains Iron IIB pottery, (2) it has an unusual concentration of pottery in just one locus, and (3) it contains possible Moabite ceramics. These three elements make this study very important to determine the horizons of Iron Age II pottery at Jordan. The research includes typological and comparative analysis of the ceramics within the limits of Tell Jalul and MPP. In addition, it applies some technological-informatics elements such as 3D scanning and advance data processing techniques. The results presented in this paper includes statistical data, and parallels or similitudes with others findings at MPP.