Characterizing the Early Bronze III–IVA1 pottery of the northern Levant through typological and petrographic analyses. The case study of Tell Mardikh/Ebla and Tell Tuqan (Syria)

Abstract

This article uses the results of petrographic analyses carried out on the Early Bronze (EB) III–IVA1 ceramics from Ebla and Tell Tuqan, combined with the functional and morphological classification of the ceramic repertoire, with the dual aims of building a regional ceramic chronology and analysing pottery production at both sites in a diachronic perspective. These datasets indicate, on the one hand, a continuous trend in ceramic production between the EB III and EB IVA1–2 periods, both in term of vessel shapes and in the selection of pastes employed in pottery manufacture. On the other hand, some substantial changes can be detected, suggesting a growing degree of standardization in manufacturing processes and a functional specialization of the ceramic assemblage (with an emphasis on drinking vessels) occurring around the mid-3rd millennium BC. In conclusion, an attempt is made to link these changes to major socio-political developments that took place in the northern Levant and upper Mesopotamia around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.

Keywords:

• Ebla
• Tell Tuqan
• Early Bronze Age
• pottery typology
• petrography
• standardization
• urbanization

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Paolo Matthiae, Frances Pinnock and Luca Peyronel, who have supported and encouraged my research on earlier periods at Ebla and Tell Tuqan. The petrographic study on EBA ceramics from Ebla and Tuqan would not have been possible without the funding from the ERC (FP7-IDEAS 249394). The project was carried out in close co-operation with Luca Peyronel and Marta D’Andrea, as well as with Laura Medeghini, Caterina De Vito and Silvano Mignardi, who carried out the petrographic analysis; I am grateful to all of them for sharing and discussing data with me. I wish to thank warmly Dr. Stephen Lumsden (Assistant Curator) of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Antiquities of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, for allowing me to study some of the K5-1 and J8-7 vessels and sherds from Hama. I also wish to thank Marta D’Andrea, Nicola Ialongo, Alessandro Vanzetti and Giacomo Benati for their thorough comments on this article, as well as Simone Mantellini for providing GIS data elaborated within the ECP. My thanks also go to the two anonymous peer reviewers for providing very helpful comments on the manuscript.