Fritz: Pottery Reading and Keeping Strategy

A description of the process relating to pottery retrieval at Schechem in 1969, led by George E. Wright, could as well be of the Fritz excavations 30 years later, and many contemporaneous excavations (SM2014). Cole reported the study – thorough and careful at that time:

All pottery was saved from each digging locus until it had been washed and examined. Usually several basket separations were made within a single digging locus, in order to ensure maximum control over the separation of materials from adjacent soil layers. After the washed sherds from each basket were examined to determine the periods represented by the analytical pieces (pieces showing rim, handle, base or distinctive decoration or ware features) a record was made of this information and the bulk of the pottery was then discarded. From most baskets of potentially significant loci, however, a selec-tion of analytical sherds were retained and given individual registry numbers (Cole 1984: 3).

The process at Tel Kinrot was in line with this tradition: all excavated pottery was collected, washed, and let dry in shallow, plastic baskets. On the next day, each of the baskets was ex-amined individually by a team consisting of area supervisors, the registrar, and the excavation director(s). This joint examination of ceramics, ‘the pottery reading’ (Fig.4.2), is an arena of important decisions. The decision of what to keep as important (diagnostic) relies on the ex-cavation director and on the team taking part in the pottery reading.

Fig.4.2 Pottery reading in 2001. Around the table: Martti Nissinen, Merja Kaario, Sanna Aro-Valjus, Juha Pakkala, Volkmar Fritz, Virpi Holmqvist and Juhana Saukkonen. Photo: Jaana Hyvärinen, © KRP.

“The analyst must select the artifacts he or she considers important enough to catalogue”

(Joukowsky 1980: 32). This decision is very important, as it will determine the assemblage that will serve as the basis for research and the following interpretations. Even in cases where all material is kept, selection is needed when it comes to the documentation. “Most artifact study is susceptible to bias – all too often it is the horizon marker or the pretty object that is selected for documentation at the expense of other artifacts” (Joukowsky 1980: 286). However, all ar-tifacts and artifact fragments are not equally informative, and one should be able to take this into account. Should one aim at a representative random sample of all excavated items, with the cost of leaving some special and informative items outside the study material, or should one rather sacrifice the representativeness and use subjective judgement of what is im-portant? The latter strategy has been common in Israel, and was also used by Fritz. The shard material may be overlooked, especially in situations where there are complete or restorable vessels from the same context. For such a reason, it was decided at the Megiddo excavations (area K), to count all rims only from two rooms of a building with a vast amount of finds, while in a context with meager finds, rims of all loci were counted (Arie 2006: 191).

During the Fritz campaigns, shards were kept mainly if there was no restorable pottery, or if they were of special interest, such as imported wares. Pottery was kept foremost from “clean loci”, that is, loci consisting of pottery of only one period. The aim was mainly to use such shards as a dating device (Fritz 1985: 59; 1994: 61; AW2013; SM2014). There were no clear criteria for keeping or discarding pottery shards. A selection was kept from most loci (SM 2014). There were 1029 loci with pottery finds altogether, out of which 830 had at least a selection kept. However, 192 loci had all pottery baskets discarded. Most of these loci had only one or two baskets, and often they had been considered mixed or chronologically undi-agnostic, with many of them being described as including little material. Seven loci had baskets with missing information. The amount of kept shards bore no fixed relation to the amount originally found in the locus. However, during the selection in the field reading there was a tendency to keep material from a basket in such a way that the retained pieces would roughly reflect the periods originally identified: if a basket mainly included Iron Age pottery and little Early Bronze Age material, a few EB-shards and several shards of the Iron Age would be kept (SM2014). The pottery from the excavations in 1994–1999 was in general neither counted nor weighed, and an indication of the full amount of collected pottery as a whole cannot be re-trieved (Münger 2005: footnote 16).

The principle expressed by Fritz was that all important finds shall be recorded individually (Fritz 1985: 59; 1994: 60). The pottery was treated differently, as only a selection of the re-trieved material was kept, reflecting the attitude that not all of it was important. The material of each bucket (basket) was assigned to its chronological period on a daily basis. If restorable material was expected, all material from the locus was temporarily kept for the restoration.

Rims and bases could be kept for further analyses. Shard material was analyzed further only if it was needed for dating due to the lack of well-preserved ceramics, or because of other spe-cial interests (Fritz 1985: 56, 59; 1994: 58, 61). In principle, the pottery could also be registered

as a group on a separate form, indexed according to the locus where the material derived from: “The pottery which is not marked, and therefore not indexed, is statistically reckoned, together with the marked pottery, on a separate index card, so that all pottery of the individ-ual locus is registered” (Fritz 1985: 59; 1994: 61). However, the practical implementation of such group-documentation remains obscure, and documentation forms for pottery other than the find cards for single items did not exist.

Keeping in mind that the principles have to be adapted to the circumstances, and that the praxis may deviate from them for several reasons, I found it necessary to investigate the praxis of selecting the material as well. The sources for this can be found within the locus cards, which include some information on the “raw data” about the pottery baskets and which ma-terial was marked as being taken for restoration, kept, or discarded. The information of the content and fate of each collected basket was documented in basket lists, and the same infor-mation was transferred manually onto the locus cards, which I have used as the source mate-rial. The information about the baskets in the locus cards includes their number, (lowest) level, list of identified periods under a heading “remarks”, and the keeping policy, coded with + for material (partially) kept, – for all material discarded, and R for all material kept for restoring.

After restoring, at least the body shards that were not fit to the restored vessels would be discarded. In addition, a column marked with 8 (Hebrew tsade for-KX –8 ‘photo’) would be ticked if a photo was taken in the field of the material found in situ. This coding was similar to the forms presented in the Beer-Sheba I report (Aharoni et al. 1973: 121).

While the information in the locus cards is in this respect fragmentary, I interviewed several participants to clarify the situation. I selected the persons that I asked to be interviewed mainly from the permanent staff members. Altogether I held seven interviews of six inform-ants. As the finds treatment was the task of the registrar, I interviewed Anke Welzel, the main registrar of the Fritz excavations (May 2013 in Berlin). I sent a request for an interview for all such area supervisors that had attended the field work at Tel Kinrot at least three times and had some institutionalized archaeological training. Interviewed persons were Merja Alanne (April 2013 in Helsinki), Stefan Münger (twice in March 2014 over Skype), and Axel Knauf (April 2014 over Skype).⁸ In addition to the experts above, I interviewed two participants that did not become permanent members of the excavation team. I interviewed Pekka Särkiö (April 2013 in Helsinki) and Martin Hallascka (September 2014 in Hamburg) in order to gain a per-spective closer to that of the participating students. Särkiö was a square supervisor in the 1998 season. He was thus in a lower position in the excavation hierarchy than the area supervisors.

Särkiö had previous experience of archaeological field work and he had made detailed, illus-trated notes during the field season of 1998 that I was able to use. In addition, he had written an article about the Tel Kinrot excavations and had a special interest in archaeological work (Särkiö 1999). Hallaschka participated as a volunteer during the 1998 season. Interviewing

8 Altogether I sent a request for six expert-informants, but two did not respond: registrar of the 2001 season (Elisabeth Holmqvist) and one former area supervisor (Jürgen Zangenberg).

persons who had different tasks in the excavation team brings about a certain disentangle-ment. I considered this good, as it brings different aspects to the excavation work and organ-ization. I started the interviews with Särkiö because I wanted to practice the situation in Finn-ish with someone, who was not a key informant. The last interviews in 2014 (Knauf and Hallaschka) did not bring notable new information, and therefore I concluded that I had reached a saturation point.

During the Fritz-excavations, a selection ofdiagnostic items was kept from clean loci in order to verify the assigned date of the locus. An item was considered diagnostic if it could be iden-tified as to its period, and often to a functional vessel type as well (AW2013; SM2014). Pres-ence-absence data was considered important, while the frequency information was of lesser interest (AW2013; SM2014). When a pottery basket was marked with a plus, indicating that there was material kept, there is no information about how many and which kinds of items were kept: the code is the same whether only one fragment was kept or if all shards were retained. Because the amount of items originally collected (until 1999) or the amount of items kept as a selection was not recorded, it is fairly impossible to find out from the documentation what kind of a selection was kept and how it related to the original material excavated. In the participant account of the 1998 season, Pekka Särkiö wrote that from the daily pottery reading a few, representative items from each locus would be kept (Särkiö 1999: 433). At the same time, the recollection of Anke Welzel was that not a single rim shard was discarded (AW2013).

In order to find out how large a part of the excavated ceramics were generally kept (in part or wholly), and what kind of baskets were discarded fully, I read closely through the locus cards of six areas excavated in 1994–1998 (areas E, F, G, H, J, and K) and three areas excavated in 1999 and 2001 (H, R, and T), and tabulated the recorded strategy of keeping material from the baskets along with the remarks included on them and the stratification of the loci. I included areas from all excavation seasons, and areas from both the upper and lower slope. Areas E, F, and G lie on the upper slope, while areas H, J, and K are situated on the lower slope (for a map, see Appendix 1). Fritz ascribed the excavated Iron Age phases into three general strata. In all these areas, the baskets that derived from the topsoil or the mixed colluvium below the top-soil have more material discarded than the stratified deposits. From the stratified layers, the baskets that were marked as including undatable/undiagnostic ceramics (abbreviated as

“UD”), were often also fully discarded.

Stratigraphy and Material of Areas E, F, G, H, J, K, R, and T

Area E was excavated already in the 1980’s. The work continued in 1994–95, with six new squares.Area F (one and half squares) was opened on the east side of area E, connected to it.

Three phases of Iron Age habitation were identified in these two areas. The remains were dated to Iron Age II, based on the pottery finds. Area F was excavated only in 1994. The archi-tectural remains of area F were few and badly preserved (locus cards E and F). There was a fair amount of baskets with restorable pottery (21 % in area E; 18 % in area F). Coupled with the fact that Iron Age II material had already been studied and published from the previous

excavations, this probably lead to a fairly low amount of baskets with a selection kept (44 and 55 % respectively) and the high amount of baskets with all pottery discarded (35 and 13 % respectively). The higher amount of discarded material in area E (35 %) is partially explained by the higher share of baskets with little material altogether (7 % in area E vs. 3 % in area F).

Area G was excavated during four seasons (1994–97). It was opened in order to study the city wall and its relation to the habitation within the city and the excavations focused on the de-fensive structures. The city wall had three phases, and the glacis had at least two phases. The oldest phase of the wall and glacis was dated to Middle Bronze Age II, based on the pottery associated with it. A new wall and glacis were built on top of the older ones in Iron Age I, and the latest wall was built later during the Iron Age. It is unclear whether a glacis was also rebuilt in the last phase of the city wall (Fritz 1996; 1997, unpublished). Five phases of habitation could be discerned (G1–G5). The lowermost phases (G4–G5) were dated to Middle Bronze Age II and to the Early Bronze Age respectively. However, these phases were excavated in very restricted scale and only a few loci of Bronze Age remains included pottery. Two phases were dated to the Early Iron Age (G2–G3), and the earlier of them (G3) was in a few contexts divided into two sub-phases. Most of the excavation focused on the remains from the Early Iron Age, and most of the pottery material derives from the Iron Age layers (locus cards G). As a result of the focus on massive structures, a high amount of baskets were marked as including only little material altogether (25 %) – material deriving from constructions. This must have re-sulted in the fairly high amount of baskets with all pottery discarded (33 %).

Area H on the lower slope (Fig 1.2) was opened adjacent to the city wall. Here, the Bronze Age remains were found close to the surface, below a fine grained, grey alluvial fill indicating aban-donment, which was identified below the topsoil. Thus, the excavation focused on these do-mestic remains. No ceramics were foundin situ. The scanty pottery material derived from fills and the shards from floors were considered stray finds. Iron Age remains were few and frag-mentary, due to erosion (Fritz & Vieweger 1996: 83–84). The amount of restorable ceramics is especially meagre (less than 2 % of all baskets). However, the amount of baskets with kept pottery during 1994–96 is especially high. This is most likely because area H was the first en-counter of Bronze Age materials so far largely unattested at the site. The same reason most likely resulted in a high amount of baskets fully discarded during 1999 in area H: there was already a fair amount of Bronze Age material kept, and the fragmentary finds were mostly of forms already attested.

Area J was also opened close to the city wall, at the lowermost part of the slope descending towards the sea. The inner side of the Iron Age city wall was excavated, but remains of earlier fortifications were absent. The excavations focused on domestic structures of the Early Iron Age. These remains were divided into two phases. Restorable vessels were found from floors (Vieweger 1995; Fritz & Vieweger 1996: 6; Kaliff 1996; Schefzik 1996). While not more than 16

% of baskets included restorable pottery, the high amount of baskets with all pottery dis-carded is surprisingly high (37 %). The amount of baskets with little material altogether is fairly

low (4 %) and does not help to explain the amount of discarded ceramics. The fairly high dis-card rate may be due to the accumulation of ceramics dated to the Early Iron Age within the project, and thus less new forms retrieved; to the high amount of restorable Iron Age I ceram-ics from Area K excavated during the same seasons; and to the found ceramceram-ics themselves, which were considered less interesting. In fact, 32 baskets were characterized as including non-diagnostic (“UD”) pottery, which is a higher share of baskets (7.5 %) compared to areas K and G, where the amount of baskets marked as “UD” is 5 % of the total.

Area K was excavated during four seasons (1995–98). With 27 opened squares, it was the largest area excavated in the 1990’s. The domestic remains of the Early Iron Age were ascribed to three strata and (VI–IV), and stratum V was divided into two phases due to the presence of raised floor levels and architectural modifications in some buildings (Fritz & Münger 2002).

The remains ascribed to the earliest phase of Iron Age habitation (K3, Stratum VI) were exca-vated on a limited scale. This phase had suffered from later construction and stone robbing.

No pottery was found to be restorable. In contrast to that, the ceramic finds from the floors of stratum V (K2) were rich and well preserved. The builders of stratum V (K2) used remains of earlier structures as foundations, indicating that this main phase of the Early Iron Age oc-cupation was built soon after the destruction of the earlier, foundation phase (K3). In addition, no layer indicating abandonment appeared between the phases of the Iron Age habitation.

The rich household pottery inventory, working stones, remains of fallen mudbrick walls, burned bricks, and ash layers indicate a sudden destruction of the settlement in the earlier phase of stratum V (K2B), while the contexts of the later phase (K2A) were generally poorer in finds. The later phase K2A had suffered from later construction. Scattered remains of the lat-est Iron Age phase (K1, Stratum IV) were found in less than half of the excavated squares.

These remains were close to the surface and had suffered from erosion, and the architectural features did not make a coherent whole. Only few floors could be identified, of which one was rich in pottery finds (Busch & Sasse forthcoming). Bronze Age remains in Area K were reached in a small sondage, yielding few finds. The fairly high amount of fully discarded baskets (20 %) is probably the result of two factors: first, the amount of baskets with little material altogether is relatively high (9 %), and these were often fully discarded. Second, Area K produced much restorable ceramics (32 % of the baskets) which were kept, and the need to rely on fragmen-tary material for dating or other interpretations was thus diminished.

Area R was opened adjacent to area J in 1998 in order to check the stratigraphy of the habi-tation close to the city wall (Kaario & Zangenberg 1998). The work continued in 1999 and 2001, and again during the KRP. The first two seasons focused on Early Iron Age remains (R1–R2), while some Bronze Age remains were reached on a limited scale already during 1999 (Kaario

& Hagenow 1999). In 2001, the excavators opened three new squares and continued work in six squares opened in 1990’s. The 2001 season aimed to establish a connection between the habitation and the Iron Age city wall, and to clarify the stratigraphy of the Bronze Age phases.

However, the Bronze Age phases were not reached. The Iron Age remains were ascribed into two strata R1 (stratum V) and R2 (stratum VI). Of these two, the later stratum (R1) was badly

eroded, and included only little pottery, while the earlier one (R2) was better preserved and could be divided into two phases (Pakkala & Saukkonen 2001). The fact that it was the earliest Iron Age phase – presumed to be stratum VI, which in other areas had produced little remains and finds – which appeared to be well preserved in area R, probably resulted in a fairly high amount of baskets with material kept (70 %). At the same time, there was very little restorable material from this area (2 %). In order to have material from the foundation phase of the Iron Age occupation included in the research assemblage, the fragmentary material was the only

eroded, and included only little pottery, while the earlier one (R2) was better preserved and could be divided into two phases (Pakkala & Saukkonen 2001). The fact that it was the earliest Iron Age phase – presumed to be stratum VI, which in other areas had produced little remains and finds – which appeared to be well preserved in area R, probably resulted in a fairly high amount of baskets with material kept (70 %). At the same time, there was very little restorable material from this area (2 %). In order to have material from the foundation phase of the Iron Age occupation included in the research assemblage, the fragmentary material was the only