RT Article
T1 The Morphology of Iron Age Storage Jars and Its Relation to the Handbreadth Measure (Biblical Tefach)
JF Bulletin of ASOR
VO 384
SP 183
OP 190
A1 Karasik, Avshalom
A1 Harush, Ortal
A1 Smilansky, Uzy 1941-
LA English
PB The University of Chicago Press
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/188047459X
AB In this paper we compare morphological features of three groups of Iron Age storage jars that were unearthed in several Judahite and Israelite sites. The most famous group is the royal Judahite storage jars with stamped handles ("lmlk," "rosette," etc.). The other two groups are the "Hippo" jars found abundantly in Israelite sites and the jars from Khirbet Qeiyafa (Judah), assigned chronologically to the early 10th century b.c.e. We scanned most of the available jars in 3D and compared them in a detailed morphological study. We extracted several metric measures and observed large variations between jars within a group and, to a larger extent, between jars from different groups. The only exception is the inner rim diameter, which shows surprising uniformity. Moreover, the distribution of inner rim diameters is consistent with anthropometric measurements of the handbreadth of the human male. We provide a detailed description of our methodology and findings and offer a few alternative explanations for the clear correlation between the measured inner rim diameter and the human tefach.
K1 3D scanning
K1 Iron Age pottery
K1 handbreadth
K1 tefach
DO 10.1086/710529