Geochemical provenance studies of basalt vessel preforms from the Iron Age workshop at Tel Hazor, Israel, and potential geological sources

Tatjana M. Gluhak, Jennie Ebeling, Danny Rosenberg

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The discovery of an Iron Age basalt vessel workshop at Tel Hazor revealed numerous discarded preforms in different production stages. Provenance analyses allow us to reconstruct the vessels' journey from the mining of raw material off site to production in the workshop. To determine the extraction sites, the geochemical compositions of the artifacts were compared to an extensive set of geochemical data on basaltic rocks in Israel. Combined with petrographic features and insights from field surveys on the relevant locations, the results show that the raw material was extracted most probably from two different locations, each several kilometres distant from Tel Hazor.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)25-38
Number of pages14
JournalArchaeometry
Volume64
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The analyses of the Tel Hazor basalt vessels were funded by an Alumni Research and Scholarly Activity Fellowship from the University of Evansville. The geological field survey and the analyses of the geological samples were funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. We would like to thank the student assistants from the University of Haifa and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, B. Tzin and M. Drackert for their support in the field work, and M. Drackert and N. Diri? for their support in sample processing. Thanks also go to N. Groschopf and R. Mertz (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) for facilitating the geochemical analyses of both artifact and field samples. Amnon Ben-Tor, Shlomit Bechar, and the late Sharon Zuckerman, co-directors of the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin, kindly gave us permission to study the basalt artifacts from Hazor.

Funding Information:
The analyses of the Tel Hazor basalt vessels were funded by an Alumni Research and Scholarly Activity Fellowship from the University of Evansville. The geological field survey and the analyses of the geological samples were funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. We would like to thank the student assistants from the University of Haifa and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, B. Tzin and M. Drackert for their support in the field work, and M. Drackert and N. Dirié for their support in sample processing. Thanks also go to N. Groschopf and R. Mertz (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) for facilitating the geochemical analyses of both artifact and field samples. Amnon Ben‐Tor, Shlomit Bechar, and the late Sharon Zuckerman, co‐directors of the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin, kindly gave us permission to study the basalt artifacts from Hazor.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Archaeometry published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of University of Oxford.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • History
  • Archaeology

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