JULY, 1946
307 EARTH'S TREASURE HEAPS
Paul R. Bauman, Th .B ., D .D .
WHY DOES THE ARCHAEOLOGIST STUDY POTTERY?
It was Sir Flinders Petrie who, in 1890, when excavating Tel-el-Hesy, laid the foundation for all scientific studies in Palestine. Through his ex perience in Egypt, he had learned the value of such inconsequential trifles as potsherds. As a result, we have learned that, on the average, broken pottery possesses a higher value even t h a n inscriptions, especially as a means of dating ancient civilizations. Petrie said, "Once settle the pottery of a country and the key is in our hand for all f u t u r e exploration.”1 Just what did he mean by this? The famous archaeologist had learned that the commonplace p o t s h e r d has a valuable story to tell. Pottery has always been a house hold necessity. It was easily made, and every home in the community was supplied with earthen vessels. More than this, p o t t e r y is brittle. No housewife keeps s u c h vessels very long before they are broken. Made - of earthen m a t e r i a l , the texture is practically indestructible. Being commercially worthless, broken pots are not carried awáy by ma rauders. Where they have fallen, there they remain for the archaeologist who can read their story. People have always been faddists, and each generation has had to pro duce its own characteristic style of pottery. Petrie realized that the fash ions of the p o t t e r y , the shape of vases, material from which they were made, the color, etc., changed from generation to generation. Through his work at Tell-el-Hesy, he was led to annunciate three principles of Pales tinian archaeology which guide us to this day. They are: (1) Palestinian cit ies lie in layers; (2) Each layer has a characteristic pottery; (3) The chro nology of Palestine may be worked out according to the pottery of the strata. In other words the ruins of Palestinian cities lie in layers, each layer representing a distinct period of occupation and each possessing its own characteristic style of pottery. Through a multitude of such observations, it has been possible to construct a sort of chronological scale for Palestine which may be applied to any new site opened up in that country. The accuracy of these d e d u c t i o n s led Petrie to say later that “ a single glance at a mound of ruins will show asi much to any one who knows the
styles of pottery as weeks of work may reveal to a beginner.”2 To illustrate this method of chro nology suppose it were possible to date a certain level of excavation at one site through the discovery of a coin or a scarab bearing the name of a king whom we know through the Egyptian records lived at a certain time. At the time of excavation all pottery would be removed and care fully catalogued. Then suppose that at a later date we should uncover another site some distance away and find pottery corresponding exactly to that which we had found at the first site. The obvious conclusion would be that the two civilizations were con temporaneous, and, knowing the ac curate date for the first, we would be able to establish the )roper date for the second. The mound of Jericho furnishes a splendid example of the value of the science of pottery chronology. So great was the importance of verifying the date of Jericho’s destruction that in 1930 Prof. G a r s;t a n g and his wife cleaned and examined no less than 60,000 fragments from the strata of the burned city. The next year, an ad ditional 40,000 were treated in the same manner. All of the 100,000 pot sherds attested the same date for the destruction of Jericho as being about 1400 B. C., which agrees with the ac cepted Bible chronology. These dates were confirmed definitely by the dis covery of a large number of scarabs which were f o u n d in the Jericho cemetery. Royal s e a l s bearing the name of Amenhotep III (1413 to 1377 B.C.) were the latest of any discovered in connection with this burned city level. Therefore, the city must have been destroyed during his lifetime. This conclusion was extremely dis concerting to the critics who had said that the fall of Jericho had taken place some 220 years later. Thus the humble shard has' become the most important single factor in Palestinian archaeology. “Pere Vincent, who is an expert of experts in Palestinian pot tery, once said that if ultimately he could not work out the chronology of Old Testament times from the pottery to within a half century, ha would give (Continued on Page 324)
PART I* “ Then I went down to the potter’s house,, and . . . the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the. hand of the potter, he made it again an other Vessel, as seemed good to the potter-to make it” (Jer. 18:3-4 R. VJ. TT IS DIFFICULT for the average per- 4- son to understand the rapture with which the modern archaeologist gazes at old pieces of broken pottery. It is hard to appreciate his spending so many hours sorting these in typical jigsaw puzzle fashion, and cement ing them together. Also, it is a curious fact that for a long t i m e broken pottery was no more attractive to the archaeologist himself than it is to us. In the earlier days, excavators looked only for large or apparently important objects. Many of the earlier discoveries were c o n c e r n e d with the more spectacular side of archaeology. In Egypt, these included such monu ments as pyramids, temples, obelisks, sphinxes and sepulchers. Sometimes secret underground passages led the excavator to treasure chambers filled with incalculable wealth. In Mesopo tamia and Assyria likewise, there were discoveries of in astonishing nature. It is no wonder, therefore, that the thousands of pieces of broken pottery which abound on nearly every site were at first ignored almost com pletely by the excavators. Little did they realize that this very lack of at traction was one of the factors which helped to make these often unbeauti ful relics so tremendously valuable.
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