Pottery and glass sherd-tools from Roman and Byzantine workshops at the Gerasa hippodrome and other sites. A reappraisal of earlier findings

Abstract

Byzantine city, a fully urbanised society, resort to such basic and in many eyes ‘outdated’ tools, reminiscent of prehistoric cultures and an altogether different life style? However, the consistent recovery of quantities and varieties of these tools from our excavations of the Roman circus, its workshops and simple dwellings substantiated the fact of their existence and indeed regular occurrence, the study of which I first published in 1992 (Kehrberg 1992)2. It suffices here to mention that I have worked for over 30 years at Jarash. I identified sherd-tools in a variety of assemblages at several sites in and around Jarash whose archaeological data I have been in charge of studying: the corpi now span find-contexts from Late Hellenistic to Islamic townships3. That is to say I retrieved these tools from a dispersed area of excavations, and not only a specific concentration like the workshops at the hippodrome. The latter concentration led me to advocate a specific association in a second brief publication updating my findings (Kehrberg 1995), in which a direct association of the tools with the workshops was demonstrated. Views at FIG. 1 expose the hippodrome Research Background and Find Contexts Before discussing the hippodrome sherdtools I would like to recap some vital information about the Jarash hippodrome and its structural history, the excavation of which led to my discovery and classification of this group of artefacts. There are many signatures one may assign to a site or town from chronological and cultural or civic developmental aspects, Classical-periods sites like Decapolis cities being mostly equated with their imposing architectural remains. In the case of Roman Gerasa and Jarash of the late Antiquity, this association has arisen from two centuries of exploration focusing on exposures of the monumental ruins and their anastyloses. Some of the monuments have been explored, excavated and studied over many years and in great detail by teams of architects and archaeologists from independent institutes as well as the Department of Antiquities, the hippodrome project having been one example1. My identification of pottery and glass sherdtools and assertion of their manufacture in these ancient urban settings were initially met with some incredulity. How could a Roman Dr Ina Kehrberg Dept of Archaeology / A14 The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia Email: ina.kehrberg-ostrasz@sydney.edu.au Ina Kehrberg