The three sites discussed in this volume provide a series of overlapping sequences that flesh out the cultural developments in East-Central Anatolia during most, if not all, of the third millennium BC. The ceramic evidence, forming the greater part of the material remains, is generously illustrated.
Tel Maresha is located in the foothills of Israel's Judaean Mountains. It was established in the Iron Age II (circa 700 BCE) and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Josh 15:44; I Chron. 2:42). But it was mainly a Hellenistic-period town - a major Idumean political and administrative center. One of the unique and fascinating aspects of Maresha is its subterranean city - hundreds of underground galleries and chambers filled to the gills with artifacts. This volume is a report of the excavations of one of these rich subterranean complexes - SC 169 - which contained a full corpus of Hellenistic pottery forms - both local and exotic altars, figurines, amulets, seals and seal impressions, hundreds of inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic, coins, jewelry and much more. These finds tell the story of an affluent cosmopolitan society comprised of Idumeans, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Jews, who lived together in a vibrant urban setting until the city was destroyed, probably by the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom in 104 BCE.
Excavations on the Koukounaries Hill, Paros, Greece from 1976-1992 revealed a 12th century B.C.E. Mycenaean building, an Iron Age settlement, and an Archaic sanctuary. This volume presents the pottery from five areas inside the building, as well as the pottery from a limited reoccupation after the building's destruction and abandonment.
This volume is the second of two that represent the final publication of Sector I of the Prepalatial to Postpalatial Minoan urban settlement and palace of Petras, Siteia, located in eastern Crete. It presents in detail the Late Bronze Age pottery recovered during the excavations conducted there from 1985 to 2000. The Neopalatial and Late Minoan II to III pottery from Houses I.1 and I.2 is analyzed and discussed with a focus on the main Neopalatial period of the Petras settlement and its Postpalatial reoccupation. The petrographic analysis of a select group of pottery from House I.1 is also detailed, allowing for a discussion of patterns in production and consumption over time.