Levant, 2019

Tell Sabi Abyad was a major Neolithic settlement in Upper Mesopotamia, occupied for 1800 years during the 7th to 6th millennium cal BC. Excavations have revealed hundreds of clay sealings, stamp-seal impressions and an even greater number of small, geometric-shaped clay objects or ‘tokens’. Drawing on previous unpublished data from decades of excavations, a detailed, contextual study of the form and distribution of Tell Sabi Abyad’s ‘tokens’ is presented. Though likely used as counting tools in certain specific occupational areas and levels, the evidence does not suggest a singular universal role of geometric clay objects as mnemonic accounting devices.

Çatalhöyük Archive report 2015, by members of the Çatalhöyük Research Project teams. Edited by Ian Hodder., 2015

Spheres of interest: Hollow clay balls at the dawn of ancient Near Eastern history., 2019

This paper discusses hollow clay spheres containing clay symbols ("tokens") from sites of the prehistoric and early historic Near East. A list of them is provided, and an interpretation as information conveyors to sites with central functions is suggested. The hollow clay balls (HCB) represent an important source for the administration of the socially engineered flow of goods in the preliterate societies of Western Asia, and they do constitute a predecessor of writing. The beginnings of literacy in the ancient Near East have received considerable attention , and remarkable progress has been achieved in terms of our knowledge of the cuneiform script, one of the earliest manifestations of writing culture in the history of mankind. In recent times, attempts have been made to elucidate the emergence of cuneiform signs with the aid of the small clay objects of geometrical shapes, "to-kens", which have turned up in a number of excavations of Near Eastern sites (see, for instance, Schmandt-Besserat 1980 and most recently MacGinnis-Monroe-Wicke-Matney 2014; for a critical stance, see Bennison-Chapman 2019). Such "tokens" have frequently appeared within hollow clay balls or spheres (henceforth HCB), the surface of which bears impressions of either stamp or cylinder seals, and which contain small clay objects of geometrical shapes, the so-called tokens. These complex objects constitute the target of my present study, as one of the first efforts to create a comprehensive system of visual and tangible symbols used for the communication of commonly acknowledged semantic units. The HCB have recently been the theme of a thorough and inventive review by R. Dittmann (Dittmann 2012). Thanks to him, we now know that chronologically speaking, the HCB belong to the Late Chalcolithic phases 3 to early 5 (op. cit. 73-74), and that they appeared over an extensive area of the ancient Near East delimited by the sites of Hacınebi in SE Anatolia, Hamoukar in NE Syria, Chogha Mish in SW Iran and Uruk/Warka in S Mesopotamia (op. cit. 72). A fairly instructive picture of HCB chronology follows from the recent excavations at Susa Acropole I. At this site, evidence for cylinder-seal use first turned up in layer 20, followed by the first occurrence of an HCB in layer 19 and their persistence in layer 18 (see also Boehmer 1999: 119). In the latter layer, HCB were found with round tablets bearing numerical signs and OPEN ACCESS

2015

This article presents a set of 16 clay cones conserved in the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH). They entered the Ancient Near East collections of the museum through various pathways since the early 20th century. These cones, nails or pegs were once placed in the foundations or walls of prominent Mesopotamian structures. The inscriptions on them testify to the grand building achievements of the rulers under which they were produced. The cones discussed in this publication are dated to the reigns of Enmetena, Ur-Bau, Gudea, Šulgi, Išme-Dagan and Lipit-Eštar (ca. 2400 to 1900 BC). In addition, the importance of interactive images for the unbiased publication of this type of three-dimensional inscribed objects is demonstrated using the Portable Light Dome system developed by the KU Leuven.

Levant, 2019

Introduction Among the Early Bronze Age pottery of Upper Mesopotamia and adjacent areas we find some special wares which due to their characteristic appearance have received considerable attention in the archaeological literature. The term " ware " is an ambiguous concept which is used in various ways by various authors and at various sites. 1 Every scholar who aims to study ancient Near Eastern pottery on a regional level has to deal with difficulties in correlating pottery from different archaeological sites. 2 For some decades scientific analysis providing reproducible data has been applied in pottery studies to overcome the problems of semantic and typological confusion. This chapter illustrates both the possibilities and the limitations of this archaeometric approach, since traditional typology and chemical or petrographic analysis produce different sets of data with sometimes very different typological borders. While some wares can be clearly defined by their chemical composition, other methods of archaeological typology are based on vessels of distinct decoration, surface treatment, geographic distribution, and chronology.

2019

The extraction of raw clay for the manufacture of mudbricks, pottery, tablets and figurines is rarely described in the cuneiform record. Nevertheless, an examination of the sources reveals that the people of ancient Mesopotamia selected the raw material according to their needs from ‘clay pits’ (clay deposits) or other locations. Ritual texts in particular identify the origin of the clay used for the creation of magical figurines. When an exorcist was instructed to take clay from a clay pit, he first had to ritually appease and compensate the pit for its subsequent exploitation. The origin of clay for mudbricks and tablets is given in specific instances; that of potter’s clay can only be deduced from archaeological and anthropological observations.

2021

(area TB) dated at the transition between the late Akkadian and Isin-Larsa period (2350-1763 BC). The continuity in occupation, and the presence of precise chronological markers make area TB a perfect case study for a diachronic analysis of the ceramic repertoire of this period. The aim of the project is a detailed reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire, fundamental for understanding the pottery repertoire from a technological point of view. Focusing on the late third millennium BC pottery assemblage, the chaîne opératoire approach can be used to discern the organisation and scale of production and the transmission of technical and technological knowledge through time, thus linking pottery production to the economic and social spheres. Macro-and meso-scale observations of pottery allow the identifi cation of manufactural evidences useful for a preliminary reconstruction of the production sequence. Through this approach some aspects of continuity and discontinuity emerged, among which the identifi cation of a new technique (trimming) at the very beginning of the second millennium BC, which can indicate signifi cant technological development in pottery production. 1 22: Trimming is a shaving operation where small amounts of clay are removed by using a cutting tool with RKE. This operation gives the vessel its fi nal shape (Roux 2019: fi g. 3.49).

Among the ceramic vessels recovered from the burial mounds of Bahrain, a small percentage represents Mesopotamian imports or local emulations of such. In this paper two overall horizons are distinguished in these Mesopotamian ceramics. These are significant because both coincide with major stages in Mesopotamia’s interaction with the populations of the ‘Lower Sea’. The first import horizon is comprised of a vessel type found exclusively in the scattered mounds of Early Type which pre-date the rise of the Dilmun ‘state’ proper. The distribution of these vessels outside their areas of production demonstrates how they circulated widely in a network elsewhere considered to reflect the orbit of Mesopotamia’s late third-millennium ‘Magan trade’. Here it is consequently concluded that this particular type represents an important fossile directeur of the ‘Magan trade’ and pre-Dilmun florescence. The vessels that make up the subsequent horizon of Mesopotamian imports are found exclusively in the compact mound cemeteries and thus coincide with the heyday of Dilmun. On these grounds it is argued that the two horizons are the product of, respectively, the Ur III network of ‘Magan trade’ and the contracted Isin-Larsa network of ‘Dilmun trade’.