Ancient Jewish Material Culture

The wealth of Jewish textual sources from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods presents an embarrassment of riches, but this fact should not eclipse the equally important role of material culture in allowing for a reconstruction of ancient Jewish daily life. The particular significance of archaeological remains is that they often shed light on aspects of life that escaped the attention of ancient authors. Importantly, material culture represents segments of the population that remain voiceless in literary sources, which are often biased and tendentious.

A wide range of objects were used on a daily basis. The most common were vessels made of ceramic—the “plastic” of the ancient world—but there were also bowls, cups, plates, kraters, jugs, flasks, cooking pots, casseroles, juglets, bottles, storage jars, lamps, and more. In the land of Israel, the forms were generally determined by a combination of local traditions and foreign influences. Some lamps were decorated with floral designs or Jewish motifs, such as the menorah.

In certain periods, the local repertoire was supplemented by fine imported wares and amphorae, attesting to the consumption of foreign foods or drinks and to a culture of display and prestige among some of the more affluent members of society. While seemingly mundane, ceramic vessels are of crucial importance, for they shed light on dining practices, trade networks, and more.

Archaeologists tend to focus on pottery, owing to its ubiquitous nature, but ancient Jewish households contained a variety of other objects, including metal tools, objects, and vessels; wooden utensils; various stone objects; basketry; and textiles. Many of these artifacts, aside from those made of stone, are rare in the archaeological record because of either natural or cultural factors, which makes the corpus of material from the refuge caves in the Judean desert of paramount importance. The arid environment and the relatively undisturbed nature of these caves have preserved what can be described as a time capsule of everyday household objects from the early second century CE.

In the early Roman period, we also find chalkstone vessels—mugs, bowls, cups, plates, as well as jars and stoppers—all fashioned out of a very soft white limestone. The corpus is unique to the period and, for the most part, found only in Jewish settlements. As a result, some scholars suggest that chalkstone vessels had a special function in relation to purity practices, owing to the widespread notion that stone could not become ritually impure.

Glass was another important material. Prior to the mid-first century BCE, the production of glassware was both time-consuming and limited in typological scope. The most popular vessels were small bottles, amphoriskoi (small amphorae), and cast bowls, often decorated with colorful wavy designs, linear grooves, or ribbing. Free blowing, which became popular at the start of the early Roman period, facilitated the manufacture of glassware of any shape and size. Moreover, the swiftness of the technique meant that glass could become more affordable and more widely available. Significantly, Jerusalem has yielded the earliest known archaeological evidence for free blowing, dating to the second half of the first century BCE. Free-blown glass went on to become ubiquitous, although it never surpassed pottery in popularity because the latter was still a less expensive and often more durable alternative. Still, the use of glass offered several advantages, foremost among them being the fact that it was odorless; glass vessels did not affect the taste of food or drink. Glass was also easier to clean. Moreover, because glass was aesthetically appealing, it could also serve as an alternative to costlier fine wares. From the late Roman period onward, the use of glass lamps became especially common in synagogues and churches; their main benefit was that they emitted more light for the same amount of oil burned in ceramic or metal lamps.