Jebel Khalid is the site of a Seleucid settlement on the river Euphrates in North Syria, excavated by an Australian team between 1986 and 2010. This limestone plateau, situated near a crossing place, offered an ideal strategic position for monitoring both river and land traffic and trade. The settlement was established, on bedrock foundations in the reign of Seleucus I Nicator c. 300 BC but was abandoned by the middle of the first century BC. The largest building, set high on the Acropolis and separately walled, was the Governor’s Palace, which would have dominated the view for a long distance down- and up-river. Graeme Clarke directed its excavation from 1989 to 1996. This volume publishes the pottery from that excavation. Previously published has been the domestic corpus of pottery from the excavated Housing Insula, affording a basis for comparison between palatial and domestic contexts. A pottery assemblage can tell us much about the life of the inhabitants: activities, preferences, customs and diet. Not surprisingly, the Palace assemblage contains considerable evidence of feasting. This evidence is particularly valuable today, when, as result of the Syrian civil war, the remains of the Palace have been bulldozed and the pottery itself lost. The importance of the Palace assemblage is that it represents usage within a Seleucid administrative centre in the Late Hellenistic period. It is likely to be the only comprehensive survey of pottery so far published from a full-scale Seleucid Governor’s Palace.
