The Wedge-Impressed Bowl and the Assyrian Deportation

Large, deep bowls with wedge-shaped impressions have been discovered in excavations and surveys in the Samaria region and elsewhere in the southern Levant over the last 100 years. The bowls have typical Iron II forms, but the wedge-shaped incision is unique. These findings enable us to establish the chronology of the bowls, their geographic distribution and the nature of the sites in which they were found. In this article we show that most of the bowls date to the 7th–6th centuries BCE. Many were found at unfortified, single-period rural sites near valleys in the northern Samarian highlands. We introduce a petrographic study, which shows that the bowls were locally produced. We also examine their function and explore the similarities between these wedge-impressions and those found in bowls in Mesopotamia. Based on these considerations, we propose a historical explanation for their appearance, which we maintain is related to questions of ethnicity in the Assyrian period.