"Cypriot and Levantine Cooking Pots during the Late Bronze-Iron Age Period: Social Perspective"

A comparative study of cooking pots in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Levant and Cyprus aims at identifying cultural or social groups fluctuating in this pivotal area of the Mediterranean at the time. The suggestion is that cooking traditions may influence shape and technology of pottery vessels, and that may be a clue for distinction or casting of social and cultural groups. The presence of cooking pots of Aegean and Cypriot tradition in the Levant since the Iron Age I perhaps indicates, more than the diffusion of renown painted wares, the presence in the Northern Syro-Palestinian coast of foreign human groups connected to western cultural tradition; these groups, identified with the Philistines or the Sea Peoples, bear a new material culture that overlaps on the local background without a neat break in the traditional local production of cooking ware.