Making and meaning : The Hellenistic mosaic from Tel Dor

This article is a careful, precise study of a fragmentary mosaic of Hellenistic date from Tel Dor, which examines the pavement’s technical features, the origins and types of materials used to make it, and the various artistic influences that helped shape the mosaic’s design and production. When complete, the pavement represented a central field of figural content (not clearly discernible) framed by a few different borders, including a perspective meander band and a wide frieze of masks and garlands. The craftsmanship is of high quality, indicating that this work of art probably was made by an itinerant mosaicist and was commissioned by a patron belonging to the social elite at Tel Dor. Dating to the later 2nd c. BCE, the pavement helps broaden our picture of the geographic diffusion of mosaic art in the eastern Mediterranean during the late Hellenistic period. It adds the Levantine coast to well established centers of mosaic production at Pergamon, Alexandria, and Delos. The site of Tel Anafa in the region of Tel Dor also has yielded mosaics of fine quality dating to the same general era.