A Note on the Earliest Appearance of the Hand-Made, Straight-Sided Cooking Pot in the Southern Levant

The straight-sided, flat-based, hand-made cooking pot has long been considered one of the hallmark vessels of the early south Levantine Middle Bronze Age(MB), dated to the beginning of the second millennium BCE. A growing body of evidence, however, now points to an earlier appearance of this vessel type in the Intermediate Bronze Age (IB) (mid-late third millennium BCE). This article outlines the phenomenon, places its geographic origin along the eastern side of the Jordan Valley and portrays, in general terms, its cultural implications.