The Grindel Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts Collection

Dr. Grindel Poses with artifacts from his donated collection

In 2017, former Cerritos College administrator, Dr. John Grindel, generously donated a collection of thirty artifacts from the Ancient Near East to the Cerritos College Foundation. Collected by Dr. Grindel himself over the course of his academic career, the artifacts range from the middle Iron Age to the Bronze Age (approximately 3,500 to 2,000 years ago), with a few more recent pieces from the Hellenistic/Roman eras (300 BCE - 300 CE), and vary in their geographic origin, though most are from the Levant (today: Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq). Primarily consisting of ceramic wares of everyday usage, there is also a wooden spoon, a couple bronze toga pins (fibulae), and fragments of flint and iron tools. Though most of the ceramic pieces are in surprisingly good condition for their age, a few only remain as incomplete pieces (sherds), some still showing remnants of painted decoration (ostracon).

Cerritos College and the Cerritos College Art Gallery would like to thank Dr. Grindel for this generous donation, which will no doubt be used as a wonderful resource for teaching students of history, art history, anthropology, and archeology for many years to come. The Cerritos College Art Gallery would also like to thank the former Cerritos College Foundation director, Steve Richardson, for facilitating the donation and Cerritos College Art History and Visual & Cultural Studies professor, Dr. Lisa Boutin-Vitela, for her thoughtful identification/classification of many of the pieces in the collection.