Pottery of Hasanlu (with a Foreword by Dr. Michael Danti)

Afarin Nameh: Essays on the Archaeology of Iran in Honour of Mehdi Rahbar, 2019

Abstract: Pottery used in daily life is normally connected with local traditions. This applies very much to the ceramic production of Central Asia and Western Iran. At times of intensive economic and cultural exchange, though, and in a cosmopolitan environment, local pottery types often adopt inter-regional traits, which are recognisable as common elements in the different ceramic repertoires. The present contribution highlights individual examples for such inter-regional features in pottery assemblages of Hellenistic to Parthian date, from the distant regions of Marw in present day Turkmenistan to Sirvan in western Iran. Similarities between these assemblages relate to vessel morphology, while surface treatments and decorative techniques mostly differ, and follow more regional schemes. The common shapes show connections to Achaemenid Iranian pottery on the one hand, and Hellenistic ceramic design on the other. Originating from two distinct sources, these disparate traditions were both integrated into a new pottery repertoire, which partly reflected continuations from the preceding era, but at the same time illustrated a new self-perception, which facilitated the incorporation of the diverse cultural strands palpable in the cosmopolitan world of the Hellenistic to Parthian periods.

Materials issues in Art and Archaeology IV, Symposium held May 16-21, 1994, Cancun, Mexico, 1994

Hasanlu Tepe and Dinkha Tepe are located in the Ushnu-Solduz valley system of northwestern Iran. A comparison of the pottery assemblages of the Late Bronze Age (Has VI and Din N) and the Early Iron Age (Has V and Din llI) at each site shows that there was an abrupt stylistic change from one period to the next, that change being attributed to the migration of a new people into the region, circa 1450 B.C. INAA and petrographic analysis indicates that this cultural change influenced only stylistic aspects of the local pottery tradition: no new clay sources were exploited, no novel tempering practices were introduced. Rather, all the technological differences we can detect relate to variations within the internal organization of pottery production at each site, suggesting the presence of some workshops which specialized in certain ware types. There is also evidence for appreciable movement of finer painted wares from Dinkha to Hasanlu during the Bronze Age.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2023

The is the review of the book Pottery Making and Communities during the 5th Millennium BCE in Fars Province, Southwestern Iran.

NEOLITHIC POTTERY FROM THE NEAR EAST. PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND USE - Third International Workshop on Ceramics from the Late Neolithic Near East 7-9 March, 2019 – Antalya, 2021

The Early Chalcolithic period (end of the seventh–mid-sixth millennium BCE) witnessed the appearance of the so-called “Early Ubaid” pottery assemblage in Southern Mesopotamia. Several studies have recognized different pottery phases (Ubaid 0–2) mainly on the basis of painted decorative styles; each phase labelled with the name of the site in which the “style” was discovered first (respectively “Oueili”, “Eridu”, and “Hajji Muhammad”). However, a broader discussion about “style” has revealed that this concept is related not only to painted designs, but also to technical choices made by potters. In this paper, the autoptic analysis of a selection of sherds from the site of Qal’at Hajji Muhammad (the typesite of Ubaid 2 phase), conducted at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, has resulted in: on the one hand, debating the uses of the term “Hajji Muhammad” in the archaeological literature; on the other hand, detecting the manufacturing processes through which the analyzed vessels have been realized to broaden the definition of “style” to include technological aspects. Preliminary results highlight distinctive technological traits of the analyzed repertoire. Ubaid pottery assemblages can be analyzed with this approach, using a technological point of view based on pottery production to detect similarities or differences site by site and region by region within the “Ubaid horizon.” Published in: R. Özbal, M. Erdalkiran, and Y. Tonoike (eds.), Neolithic Pottery from the Near East. Production, Distribution and Use - Third International Workshop on Ceramics from the Late Neolithic Near East 7-9 March, 2019 – Antalya, İstanbul, pp. 117-140. If interested, please email me.

Priestman, S.M.N. & Kennet, D. 2002: ‘The Williamson Collection Project: Sasanian and Islamic pottery from southern Iran’, Iran, 40 (Shorter Notices): 265-67., 2002

Pp. 507-594 in J.A. Sauer and L.G. Herr (eds.), Ceramic Finds: Typological and Technological Studies of the Pottery Remains from Tell Hesban and Vicinity. Hesban 11. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2012., 2012

Iranian Journal of Archaeological Studies, 2023

As a less known region with respect to Islamic pottery, Khusf County was surveyed in 2014 to record its historical relics. The intervening years have seen the publication of a lot of archaeological information on the documented relics, but the corpus of Islamic pottery from the region remains virtually unpublished. Its rich diversity in motif and decoration types and attribution to several different Islamic centuries as well as the fact that there were few published studies from South Khorasan province in general regarding regional Islamic ceramics warranted an independent study. Thus, the present study has the potential to not only shed light on the archeology of Khusf but also contribute to the studies of the related Islamic pottery from the province. With these in mind, the major questions addressed here concern the chronology of the pottery corpus in question and the centers from which comparanda could be drawn. This paper embarks on a comparative analysis of the Islamic pottery assemblages from Khusf County to establish a comparative chronology. The data for this descriptive-comparative study comes from both field and library researches. The findings suggest that the Islamic pottery from the county spans at least the 10th to the 19th century AD. In types of motifs and decoration, the pottery finds parallels over a broad swathe of eastern and southern Iran, and for the most part represents potential imports from such regions or centers as Nishapur, Mashhad, and Kerman.

Lyon University , 2023

Since 2015, when I started archeological surveys in the south of northwest Iran to find evidence of Champlevé and Aghkand pottery-producing communities, I have conducted archeological surveys in an area of 5000 km2. 20 sites were identified with such pottery. In addition, the location of Aghkand, the eponymous site of Aghkand-type pottery, was identified for the first time. These archaeological surveys showed the social system of the producers of this type of pottery for the first time. It shows that the producers of this type of pottery were nomadic tribes who lived in places suitable for pastoral life. In the Shahar Dil site (Charaoimaq County), along with a large number of sgraffito-type pottery, evidence of their settlement was found, which included settlements dug-out in caves. Also, the Qara Aghaj site, which shows a series of settlements from the Prehistoric to the early Islamic periods, has rich evidence of this type of pottery. To achieve a suitable result, an archaeological excavation was carried out in one of them that showed rich evidence of settlements, pottery production workshops, and their social system. 23 trenches were dug in the Agcheh Rish site (2020), including the royal settlement, common people's settlement, pottery production workshops with kiln bars and tripod stilts, a large number of glass bracelets, clay statues, and coins belonging to the Al-Buyeh dynasty. In the Agcheh Rish site, sgraffito pottery was categorized into four types: simple sgraffito and Garrus type in the lower layers, sgraffito with splashed glaze in the upper layers, and a very limited number of Aghkand type in the surface layers. In terms of archeological studies in the south of northwest Iran, the relative quantities of sgraffito type pottery are as follows: simple sgraffito (45%), Garrus type (30%), sgraffito splashed type (15%) and Aghkand type (5%). The excavations show that the production of simple sgraffito pottery in northwestern Iran may begin in the 8th century A.D., and then it turned into Garrus type in the 10th to 12th centuries AD. After that, a new type of pottery similar to Garrus started with splashed glaze (12th and 13th centuries AD), and in the 14th and 15th centuries AD, it evolved into a new type of pottery called Aghkand.