‘Mycenaean IIIC’ and related Pottery from Beth Shean

Susan Sherratt & Amihai Mazar in A.E. Killebrew & G. Lehmann (eds), 2013. The Philistines and other ‘Sea Peoples’ in Text and Archaeology [Archaeological and Biblical Studies 15], Atlanta/Georgia, 349-392.

From the introduction

A restorable stirrup jar and fragments of two other stirrup jars from Level VI of the University of Pennsylvania excavations at Beth Shean were published over thirty years ago by V. Hankey and have since continued to provide the only direct link between imported Late Helladic (LH) IIIC pottery and Egyptian historical chronology. In 1989 Warren and Hankey classified these sherds as “LH IIIC Middle”. Since Beth Shean Level VI is dated to the Twentieth Dynasty, and probably continued until the end of the Egyptian domination of Canaan, perhaps during the reign of Ramesses V or VI, the implication of this was that “LH IIIC Middle” had begun by at least the beginning of the reign of Ramesses VI in 1143 B.C.E.