ABSTRACT
In a previous publication, entitled 'Shrines and ceramics in Chalcolithic Israel: The view through the petrographic microscope' (Goren 1995), I attempted to investigate the nature of Chalcolithic ceremonial contexts through a provenance study of their ceramic assemblages. That study was part of a research project that attempted to investigate the nature of proto-historical social and economic traits through provenance studies of Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age ceramic assemblages from the southern Levant (Goren 1987; 1991). The pronounced differences in the nature and the provenance of the ceramic assemblages of three important sites which bear clear indications for religious activities, namely En-Gedi, Nahal Mishmar and Gilat, had suggested to me that these sites represented different idiosyncrasies of cult that co-existed in the Developed Chalcolithic milieu. In context, this interpretation aimed to clarify at least some of the problems that were raised by the new information that came from the renewed excavations at Gilat (Alon and Levy 1989; Levy et al., Chapter 5, this volume), as well as the increasing interest in the social and economic dimensions of the inhabitants of the southern Levant during the late fifth-fourth millennia BC (cf. Gilead 1989; Levy 1983, 1986, 1998; Levy and Alon 1987; Perrot 1984; Rosen 1986).
