Jug

MU163 is a wide-mouthed jug with a squat, globular body. The base of the vessel is an elliptical curve which continues into the vertical, convex sides of the body. The shoulder is a shallow curve, although a notable feature is the convex profile of the shoulder, and there is a similar curve at the top of the wide neck of the vessel. The handle is adjoined to the top of the rim and the middle of the shoulder with splayed joints, and bears a vertical rill. There is minimal evidence of an external and internal slip which would have been applied before the vessel was fired; the lack of evidence for construction techniques is largely due to the vessel’s poor state of preservation, with it being very fragmentary. On the handle of the vessel, there is a discernible thumb-print that was left by the potter, and given that this feature appears in many other vessels from Stratum III at Beersheba, it is highly likely that this inclusion was intentional. It is possible that the thumb-print was a mark of the potter’s or workshop’s craft, or was a mark of the owner of the vessel. The jug is characterised as a wide-necked jug, specifically class J-6. This object bears resemblance to jugs used in funerary rites during in the Iron Age II (late 7th Century to early 6th Century BCE) and may have been used for purification of the body before it was interred in a rock-hewn communal tomb. This vessel is significant because we are able to provide an exact provenance archaeologically.