Jerich plaster craft full#
Jerich plaster craft series#

A wide range of often unusual mortuary installations and practices are documented, including single and multiple, primary and secondary burials, as well as several plastered skulls. Ongoing excavations at Kfar HaHoresh, nestled in the Nazareth Hills of Lower Galilee, have unveiled a modest but hitherto unique Middle/Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B funerary site that probably served nearby lowland farming communities.

Accordingly it is suggested that, while broad pyrotechnological and ritual information was most likely disseminated by oral communication, the artisans producing the plastered skulls were locally based and working within the framework of powerful on-site traditions.

This conclusion is further reinforced by recent information concerning plastered faces from Ain Ghazal, as well as the preliminary reports on skulls from Ramad. Thus, although the artisans shared general concepts of the objects to be created and their means of manufacture, strong site-specific traditions were displayed. Similar conclusions are reached on the basis of iconographic features. All appear to have been locally produced. These revealed that all share a common general technological background, and yet marked intra-site details of fabrication can be identified.

Jerich plaster craft series#

The manufacturing techniques of two PPNB plastered skulls each from Jericho, Kfar HaHoresh and Beisamoun were studied by a series of different and complementary analyses.

Jerich plaster craft full#

The full implications of this issue are discussed in detail in the paper. The results of the mineralogical and chemical analyses, when compared to data obtained from similar artifacts from other sites, demonstrate pronounced inter-site variability in the methods of production of the skull and sculpture modeling. In the present study two modeled skulls and a collection of plaster sculptures from Jericho were examined by means of thin section petrographic analysis (TSPA)., inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP AES), scanning electron-microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier- transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry. Amongst the variety of plaster products which appeared in the PPNB, it seems that the practice of skull plastering and sculpture production was the most 'socially oriented' one, lacking any apparent relation to daily, functional use. This was probably the reason for the wide spectrum of uses to which it was put, amongst which 'daily' architectural functions appear to coexist with the symbolic or spiritual applications of this material. Lime plaster was the first product that entailed the intentional chemical alteration of materials and the complete control over their properties. The occurrences of lime products in numerous Levantine sites have raised questions concerning their methods of production, their role in the development of craft specialization and their social and economic implications. During the last two decades, considerable interest has been expressed in the development of lime and lime plaster products in the Near Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB).