A Roman pottery kiln at Khirbet ‘Azzun (Ra‘anana), Israel

This paper focuses on a 3rd–4th century AD pottery kiln from Khirbet ‘Azzun (Ra‘anana), in the Sharon, in the central coastal plain of Israel. The kiln belongs to the updraft type, with an oval-shaped and crater-like firebox, a fuel opening on the north and spanned by brick arches designed to support the floor of the missing ware chamber. Like many other kilns in that region, it produced storage jars. Our kiln is the first from the region dating to the Roman period, to be fully studied. The kiln’s components, technology and supposed process of operation will be examined closely, in light of other kilns from Roman-Byzantine Palestine and ethnoarchaeological evidence.