Impressions from the Early Bronze Age that were found at Bet Yerah.
Thoughts about Impressions in the Early Bronze Age and in the Byzantine Period.
In the Early Bronze Age II and in the Byzantine period pottery vessels were marketed over vast distances and most of the vessels were traded for their intrinsic value and not for their content. Some of these pottery vessels are decorated with impressions of patterns that have religious significance and of patterns that appear to be ornamental. It is plausible that the decorative patterns were also of religious significance. The similarity between the assemblages from the two periods provides for an analogy between the Byzantine reality and that of the Early Bronze Age II.
In the research of the Early Bronze Age various suggestions have been proposed for interpreting the message which these impressions convey. Most scholars were inclined to view it as a message from the ruler to his subjects who were required to pay tax, raise contributions or even establish a uniform ideology.
In the Byzantine period Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. This brought with it a great deal of cultural unity, but this was not translated into a unified government and in the lands of the Mediterranean two main empires ruled: in the east the Byzantine Empire and in the west the Roman Empire. The religion and its symbols accompanied the rulers and created a basis for ideological unity, but the religious symbols should not be viewed as government symbols. It seems that the potters stamped the religious symbols on the vessels as part of a basic effort by the manufacturer to establish ties between himself and his customers located far away from him, a distance that precluded any possibility of creating personal ties.
Impressions on Byzantine bowls from North Africa, based on Hayes 1972
We are proposing here the possibility that in Early Bronze Age 2, like in the Byzantine period, the impressions were used for establishing the connection between the potter and his clientele. On the one hand this connection was required due to the great distance that separated them which made direct communication impossible, and on the other this connection was possible owing to the cultural unity in the region shared by both parties. Based on this proposal the impressions do not express a message that was conveyed by the ruler to his subjects, rather it is a message sent from a manufacturer to his customers.
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