Lodian culture

The Lodian culture or Jericho IX culture is a Pottery Neolithic archaeological culture of the Southern Levant dating from the first half of the 5th millennium BC, existing alongside the Yarmukian and Nizzanim cultures. The Lodian culture appears mainly in areas south of the territory of the Yarmukian culture, in the Shfela and the beginning of the Israeli coastal plain; the Judaean Mountains, and in the desert regions around the Dead Sea and south of it.^[1]

The Jericho IX culture is defined by its distinctive pottery. It was first identified by John Garstang during his excavations of the eponymous Layer IX at Jericho. Thomas Levy later coined the term Lodian, shifting the type site to that of Lod, first excavated by Jacob Kaplan in the 1950s. The relationship between the Lodian culture and the two other Southern Levantine Pottery Neolithic cultures, the Yarmoukian and the Wadi Raba culture, has been debated for many years. Levy argued that it was a short-lived but distinct tradition that emerged after the Yarmoukian and before the Wadi Raba.^[2]