Stone

The beginning of the Roman period introduced mass-scale production of stone vessels and other stone objects. Some craftsmen may have begun carving cups, plates, bowls, tables, and even ossuaries (boxes used for storing bones of the dead) out of soft limestone in response to the abundance of material that resulted from the quarrying around Jerusalem during Herod the Great’s aggrandizement of the Second Temple (Magen, Stone Vessel Industry). Shortly afterward, Jews adopted the objects because they understood them as being impervious to ritual impurities (Miller, “Observations,” 409–19). Jerusalem appears to have been the main production and distribution center, though two production centers have recently been identified in Lower Galilee. They appear to have continued to be in use possibly through the third or fourth centuries (Weiss, Sepphoris Synagogue, 310).