ABSTRACT
The Palestinian pottery industry was essentially a nondecorat ive tradition, and though red slip, burnish and coarsely applied geometric decoration in red was usually in vogue from neolithic times onwards, for the most part the industry did not witness the fine detail and careful surface finish of the products of some adjacent areas, in particular Cyprus, Perhaps this was due to an essentially Semitic preference for non-figurative art, but for whatever reason, one can generally say that in Palestine the taste for such styles was simply not found and its absence provides a strong sense of continuity of population and potting traditions over the millennia. But how then does one explain the great popularity of decorated Cypriote and Mycenaean wares in the Late Bronze Age? That Cypriote and Mycenaean vases were not imported simply for their contents is surely made clear both by the open shape of Cypriote White Slip milk bowls and by the local imitations of Mycenaean and Cypriote wares. The latter, though not uncommon, were generally less well decorated, apparently of local clay, thicker walled, heavier and readily discernible as copies; but over some aspects of imitation the potter has taken some care. So we have a series of apparent contradictions. If the people of Late Bronze Age Palestine had a taste for Cypriote pots, why did they not produce a decorative style of their own? And why copy? Were the imported vessels too expensive for many people to buy, but not so expensive that it was worth the local potter taking time to corner the market with better imitations? Or were the Palestinian potters incapable of making good copies? With different tastes and traditional skills, perhaps they were hindered by differences in local clays and traditional preparation techniques, both of clay and in manufacture. For example, the tradition of making pots by hand had almost completely died out in Palestine three to four centuries earlier, while in Cyprus, though the potters’ wheel was introduced in the preceding century (MC III), the tradition of making pots by hand continued as a major industry alongside the new technology throughout the Late Bronze Age.
