Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She led excavations of Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, from 1952 to 1958, and has been called one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century. She was Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1962 to 1973, having undertaken her own studies at Somerville College, Oxford.
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery. The definition of pottery, used by the ASTM International, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products". End applications include tableware, decorative ware, sanitary ware, and in technology and industry such as electrical insulators and laboratory ware. In art history and archaeology, especially of ancient and prehistoric periods, pottery often means only vessels, and sculpted figurines of the same material are called terracottas.
Terra sigillata is a term with at least three distinct meanings: as a description of medieval medicinal earth; in archaeology, as a general term for some of the fine red Ancient Roman pottery with glossy surface slips made in specific areas of the Roman Empire; and more recently, as a description of a contemporary studio pottery technique supposedly inspired by ancient pottery. Usually roughly translated as 'sealed earth', the meaning of 'terra sigillata' is 'clay bearing little images', not 'clay with a sealed (impervious) surface'. The archaeological term is applied, however, to plain-surfaced pots as well as those decorated with figures in relief, because it does not refer to the decoration but to the makers stamp impressed in the bottom of the vessel.
The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study of the Levant region, also known as Palestine. Often simply known as the PEF, its initial objective was to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Ottoman Palestine – producing the PEF Survey of Palestine. Its remit was considered to fall between an expeditionary survey and military intelligence gathering. There was also strong religious interest from Christians; William Thomson, Archbishop of York, was the first President of the PEF.
The Stepped Stone Structure is the name given to the remains at a particular archaeological site on the eastern side of the City of David, the oldest part of Jerusalem. The curved, 60-foot-high (18 m), narrow stone structure is built over a series of terraces. A casemate wall adjoins the structure from a northerly direction at the upper levels, and may have been the original city wall.
Pottery and ceramics have been produced in the Levant since prehistoric times.
Sebastia is a Palestinian village of about 3,205 inhabitants, located in the Nablus Governorate of the State of Palestine, some 12 kilometers northwest of the city of Nablus.
The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology are a series of lectures delivered and published under the auspices of the British Academy. The Leopold Schweich Trust Fund, set up in 1907, was a gift from Miss Constance Schweich in memory of her father. It provided for three public lectures to be delivered annually on subjects related to ‘the archaeology, art, history, languages and literature of Ancient Civilization with reference to Biblical Study’. The three papers given by each lecturer are published together in book form, by Oxford University Press. There have been many reprintings.
African red slip ware or Phoenician Red Slip ware, is a category of terra sigillata, or "fine" Phoenician pottery produced from the 7th century BC into the 7th century in the province of Africa Proconsularis, specifically that part roughly coinciding with the modern country of Tunisia and the Diocletianic provinces of Byzacena and Zeugitana. It is distinguished by a thick-orange red slip over a slightly granular fabric. Interior surfaces are completely covered, while the exterior can be only partially slipped, particularly on later examples.
Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes. It is found all over the former Roman Empire and beyond. Monte Testaccio is a huge waste mound in Rome made almost entirely of broken amphorae used for transporting and storing liquids and other products – in this case probably mostly Spanish olive oil, which was landed nearby, and was the main fuel for lighting, as well as its use in the kitchen and washing in the baths.
Samaria was the capital city of the Kingdom of Israel between c. 880 BCE and c. 720 BCE. It is the namesake of Samaria, a historical region bounded by Judea to the south and by Galilee to the north. After the Assyrian conquest of Israel, Samaria was annexed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and continued as an administrative centre. It retained this status in the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Persian Empire before being destroyed during the Wars of Alexander the Great. Later, under the hegemony of the Roman Republic and the subsequent Roman Empire, the city was rebuilt and expanded by the Jewish king Herod the Great, who also fortified it and renamed it "Sebastia" in honour of the Roman emperor Augustus.
Eastern sigillata C, also known as Çandarli ware, is a category of Late Hellenistic and Roman terra sigillata. The best known production center is at Çandarlı, ancient Pitane.
Eastern sigillata D is a Roman-period tableware, or terra sigillata, produced in Cyprus. The term 'ESD' was coined by R. Rosenthal in 1978 as an extension of the nomenclature established by Kathleen Kenyon at Samaria.
Diana Victoria Warcup Kirkbride-Helbæk, was a British archaeologist who specialised in the prehistory of south-west Asia.
The Kenyon Institute, previously known as the British School of Archaeology at Jerusalem (BSAJ), is a British research institute supporting humanities and social science studies in Israel and Palestine. It is part of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) and is supported by the British Academy.
Black-glazed ware is a type of ancient Greek fine pottery. The modern term describes vessels covered with a shiny black slip.
Three-phase firing or iron reduction technique is a firing technique used in ancient Greek pottery production, specifically for painted vases. Already vessels from the Bronze Age feature the colouring typical of the technique, with yellow, orange or red clay and brown or red decoration. By the 7th century BC, the process was perfected in mainland Greece enabling the production of extremely shiny black-slipped surfaces, which led to the development of the black-figure and red-figure techniques, which dominated Greek vase painting until about 300 BC.
Grace Mary Crowfoot was a British archaeologist and a pioneer in the study of archaeological textiles. During a long and active life Molly—as she was always known to friends, family and close colleagues—worked on a wide variety of textiles from North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the British Isles. Returning to England in the mid-1930s after more than three decades spent in Egypt, Sudan and Palestine, Crowfoot co-authored a 1942 article on the "Tunic of Tutankhamun" and published short reports about textiles from the nearby Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo (1951-1952) in Suffolk.
John Winter Crowfoot CBE was a British educational administrator and archaeologist. He worked for 25 years in Egypt and Sudan, serving from 1914 to 1926 as Director of Education in the Sudan, before accepting an invitation to become Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem.
Joan Crowfoot Payne was a British archaeologist specialising in the study of lithics from the Ancient Near East and worked as Cataloguer of the Ancient Egyptian collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
