Stone mortars and tripod mortars in Eastern Mediterranean between 2nd and 1st millennium BC

Abstract

The main purpose of this contribution is to outline a general framework on the origins and functions of stone tripods, a particular and multifunctional class of material, attested for the first time in Syria in the 3rd millennium BC. The tripod bowl, or tripod-mortar, appears in the sites of the Southern Levant in the Middle Bronze Age and spread during the Iron Age. These specimens will know a wide diffusion throughout the Eastern and Western Mediterranean basin; in fact, mortars/bowls on three feet in stone - and in ceramic - are also attested in the Phoenician colonies of the West