SAS is excited to announce the winner of the Charles C. Kolb Award for Archaeological Ceramics for 2025. This annual prize honors the best paper published on science-based archaeological research of ceramics, particularly interdisciplinary approaches.

This year’s winner is Sabine Kleiman of Tel Aviv University, for her paper title "Interrelated communities of practice in the Late Bronze Age southern Levant: a ceramic perspective from the Shephelah.”

The article examines how pottery-making knowledge circulated among Late Bronze Age communities in the southern Levant, focusing on bowls from the Judean Shephelah. Using petrography, typology, and techno-stylistic analysis on vessels from Azekah, Tell es-Ṣafi/Gath, Lachish, Beth Shemesh, and Tel Batash, the study identifies both shared and site-specific ceramic practices. All sites used wheel-coiling, but two different base-forming chaînes opératoires were found. The string-cut method at Gath and Lachish suggests Egyptian technological influence, transmitted through close social interaction rather than observation alone, revealing connections between Canaanite potters and Egypt’s imperial system.

Sabine’s research focuses on the history of the southern Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages, through the lens of ceramic analysis. Her primary focus is set on the area of the Judean Lowlands but her research includes sites across the country, like the typological analysis of ceramics from Timna and Jaffa, or petrographic investigations of the pottery from Tel Moza.  Sabine is also the field director of the Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition. Congratulations!

Kleiman, S., 2025. Interrelated communities of practice in the Late Bronze Age southern Levant: a ceramic perspective from the Shephelah. Levant 57, 296–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2025.2584874