Gerasa: Jerash Bowls Project

Gerasa: Jerash Bowls Project

Sub-project (funded by the DPV) within the „International Jerash North-
West Quarter Project“

Achim Lichtenberger (Bochum); Dorothea Csitneki (Bochum)

This project’s main goals are typological and chronological, but especially iconographic studies of the Jerash fineware bowls. As the so-called Jerash Bowls are seen as one of the region’s very few fineware types from the early Byzantine era, systematic classifications and well-founded age determinations are of special interest to all research and excavation projects conducted in this region. Only bowls of this type were decorated with bichrome figurative paintings, which is an exception within an extended geographical radius and of immense importance for the analysis of the era’s painting. Many mosaics but only very few paintings dating to this period are preserved. Therefore, questions concerning general aspects of early Byzantine painting and its iconographic spectrum could be answered by studying these vessels.