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Yanik Tepe, Shengavit, and the Khirbet Kerak Ware

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Ruth Amiran
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Extract

The problem dealt with in the following note, concisely worded in the title, has been occupying the attention of many scholars for quite some time, but seems now to have anchored at a haven, from which further research is already in progress. It may be considered a generally consented assumption, that the phenomenon of the Kh. Kerak Ware (which comprises all the occurrences of this distinctive ware, from Tabara el Akrad Levels IV–I, Amuq Phase H, Hama Niveau K5 in the north, to all the sites in Palestine, as far south as Jericho Tomb A, Tomb F4, etc.) is part of a much larger phenomenon, which stretches over a much wider area. It is evident that we cannot understand a single element, the Kh. Kerak Ware, unless we see it as belonging to a whole phenomenon. It is the great affinity, indeed almost homogeneity of the pottery, both shapes, surface treatment and decoration, which unifies the whole wide range of separated regions, from Transcaucasia (the Kura-Arax culture of B. Kuftin), Armenia and Azerbaidjan, through Eastern and Central Anatolia, to the whole length of the Levant, into one phenomenon.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 15 , December 1965 , pp. 165 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1965

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References

1 MissLamb, W. incorporated all the literature written up to her article in Anatolian Studies, IV, 1954Google Scholar (“The Culture of North-East Anatolia and its Neighbours”).

2 Burney, C. A., “Eastern Anatolia in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age,” AS. VIII, 1958, pp. 157–209Google Scholar.

Edith Porada, in a brief communication on the session held in the Tiflis Museum during the 25th Orientalists' Congress in August, 1960, in Archaeology 13, 1960, p. 286Google Scholar.

Machteld Mellink, in a Review article on Braidwood, R. J. and Braidwood, S. B., Excavations in the Plain of Antioch, I, in Bibliotheca Orientalis, XIX, 1962, pp. 223–24Google Scholar.

Piotrovsky, B., “The Aenaeolithic Culture in Transcaucasia in the Third Millennium,” VI International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistory: Sciences, Moscow, 1962Google Scholar.

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3 Out of simple conservatism this long-known term, well-rooted in archaeological literature, is preferred here to the newly-coined one, Red-Black Burnished Ware, of R. J. Braidwood (Braidwood, Robert J. and Braidwood, Linda S., Excavations in the Plain of Antioch, IGoogle Scholar, “The Earliest Assemblages Phases A–J,” The University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Publications, volume LXI, 1960Google Scholar; cf. e.g. pp. 358 ff.).

4 Much evidence has accumulated since the writing of the colossal work by Braidwood, which speaks against the conclusions arrived at there. Neither the date he assigned to the material (op. cit., p. 519: before the EB III in Palestine), nor the origin he proposes for this ceramic culture (op. cit., p. 519: “We tend to feel that the Red-Black Burnished Ware is the result of some one regional ceramic variant in a general Anatolian development of the old Syro-Cilician Dark-faced Burnished Ware”) may be accepted. The material published as Phase H shows a mixture of cultures, which if disentangled stratigraphically, either by working through the existing material, or preferably by doing more excavations in one of the numerous tells of the Amuq, is bound to reveal the Kh. Kerak Ware in a clearer context. The situation at Tabara el Akrad Levels IV–I, is the best proof for the validity of such an assumption

5 Burney, C. A., Iraq, XXIII, 1961, pp. 138–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pls. LXVI–LXXV. Id., ibid., XXIV, 1962, pp. 134–152, Pls. XL–XLV. Id., ibid., XXVI, 1964, pp. 54–61, Pls. XIII–XV. Id., “Circular Buildings found at Yanik Tepe in North-West Iran”, Antiquity, XXXV, 1961, pp. 237–240.

6 Mazar, B. Maisler, Stekelis, M., Yonah, M. Avi, “The Excavations at Beth-Yerah (Khirbet el Kerak) 1944–46,” Israel Exploration Journal, 2, 1952, pp. 165–173 and 218–229Google Scholar, Pls. 17–19. cf. especially Plan, Fig. 3 on p. 224.

7 Op. cit., supra n. 2, p. 4.