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A Late Uruk Pottery Group from Tell Brak, 1978

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Kate Fielden
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Extract

During the second season of excavations at Tell Brak, in 1978, work was continued in Area CH, Trench B. The small sounding below the two-staged dais in Room 1 of the “temple” was further deepened and its lowest levels were found to contain evidence of Late Uruk occupation. The small sample of pottery from these levels is of some importance. It is the first stratified group of north Mesopotamian locally-made Uruk pottery to be found immediately below an early third millennium B.C. pottery sequence of reliable stratification; it shows certain typological affinities with the third millennium material and with pottery from other Late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age sites. Of particular interest is the first recorded occurrence of Ninevite 5 ware in a Late Uruk context.

It is our intention to describe briefly the principal Late Uruk wares found at Brak and to illustrate some of the characteristic sherd and vessel types.

Over 50% of each sherd batch was of coarse, Chaff-Tempered Ware. The light, brittle, medium to poorly fired fabric is pale to dark red, orange or brown in colour and is usually carbonized at the core. Sherds from larger vessels are more substantial and better fired. Particularly characteristic of the ware is its high chaff content, though other fillers were used: lime, basalt and sand grits (some of them fairly large) and shell being the most obvious.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1981 , pp. 157 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1981

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References

1 For a summary report on the 1976 excavations at Tell Brak, see: Oates, D., Iraq 39 (1977), 233 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The late fourth and third millennia B.C. pottery from Tell Brak, 1976–8 will be more fully discussed in the writer's forthcoming D.Phil, thesis.

3 For descriptions of “flint-scraped” bowls, see: Lloyd, S., Iraq 7 (1940), 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lloyd, S. and Safar, F., JNES 2 (1943), 153, Pl. XXIIa: 4Google Scholar; and Nissen, H., in McAdams, R., Land Behind Baghdad, 127, Fig. 11cGoogle Scholar.

4 Among others: Braidwood, R. and Braidwood, L., Excavations in the Plain of Antioch I, 234Google Scholar.

5 There has been some confusion and lack of identification of the coarse flowerpot on a number of sites. It is therefore impossible at present to determine the exact relationship of the coarse flowerpot to the bevelled-rim bowl or its possible chronological significance in the Uruk sequence.

6 The term “flowerpot” is used to denote the clumsily wheel-made Simple Ware cup whose sides flare out from a string-cut base. The form is often uneven and the fabric rough owing to the presence of large sand or limestone grit inclusions. For complete examples from Brak, 1976, see: Iraq 39, Pl. XIII, 3, 4. Rim shapes vary but are generally similar to 1976 types (Iraq 39, Pl. XIV, 7–9). The terms “flowerpot” and “conical cup/bowl “have both been used for this vessel in excavation reports, thus causing some confusion.

7 Fielden, K., Iraq 39 (1977), Pl. XIV, 11, 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. We wish to point out an error in the title of Plate XIV: Frequently Occurring Rim Types in Fine Ware should read 2–28 and 85 instead of 2–82 and 85.

8 References to similarities between specific examples are made in the Catalogue of Illustrations.

9 Lloyd, S., Sumer 4 (1948), 47Google Scholar.

10 K. Fielden, op. cit., 248–9.

11 Mallowan, M. E. L., Iraq 4 (1937), 142–3, Fig. 19: 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Fukai, S.et al., Thalathat III, 41, Fig. 2, Bowl VIGoogle Scholar; Pl. XXXIII, 1: 1 and Pl. LII, 15.

13 D. Sürenhagen, Untersuchungen zur Keramikproduktion innerhalb der Spät-Urukzeitlichen Siedlung Habuba Kabira-Süd in Nordsyrien, in Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 5/6 (1974/1975), 67 and Tab. 35: 1Google Scholar.

14 R. and L. Braidwood, op. cit., 232 ff.

15 The finds from Brak support Braidwood's statements (op. cit., 513–4) concerning the northern affinities of the chaff-tempered wares. The absence of the ware type at the Amuq G stage (except in bevelled-rim bowl form) is puzzling.