History of pottery in Palestine

The history of pottery in Palestine describes the discovery and cultural development of pottery in what are now the modern day polities of Israel, the Palestinian Authority administered areas of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, the western part of Jordan, Syria and Southern Lebanon.

The history of pottery in this region begins in the Late Neolithic period, sometimes known as Pottery Neolithic (PN) or occasionally, based on a supposed local sequence of the site of Jericho, Pottery Neolithic A.

There is no good evidence for pottery production in Early Neolithic (Pre-pottery Neolithic/PP) times, but the existence of pyrotechnology that allowed humans to attain temperatures in excess of 1000 °C for reducing limestone to lime to make plaster, indicates a level of technology ripe for the discovery of pottery and its spread. In the PPN period portable vessels of lime plaster, called "vaisselles blanche" or "white ware" served some of the functions that pottery later fulfilled. These vessels tended to be rather large and coarse and were somewhat rare.

There are some indications that pottery may have been in use in the third and final phase of Early Neolithic, PPNC (recognized Early Neolithic phases are, beginning with the earliest, PPNA, PPNB and PPNC); however such artifacts are rare, their provenance equivocal and the issue remains in doubt. Approximately sometime in the late 6th millennium BC pottery was introduced into the southern Levant and it became widely used. The supposedly sophisticated forms and technological and decorative aspects suggested to archaeologists that it must have been received as an imported, technological advance from adjacent regions to the north and was not developed locally. The evidence for this hypothesis, however, remains equivocal for lack of documentation in the archaeological record. This hypothesis also does not take into account the bulk of simple, rudely fashioned vessels that were part of the ceramic repertoire of this period.

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