An Eleventh-century Pottery Production Workshop at al-Raqqa. Preliminary Report

Abstract

This article is a preliminary report on an assemblage of pottery found at al-Raqqa in the course of excavations earned out in 1995 as part of The Raqqa Ancient Industry Project. The assemblage was excavated from a pottery production area located in the modern suburb of Mishlab; it includes a large number of pottery wasters of an early sgraffito ware variety which had been labeled elsewhere as Shahin ware. Various examples of kiln furniture are also published. The pottery excavated has been attributed to the eleventh century; the material evidence related to this period in northern Syria is still very little known