Diachronic and Spatial Distribution of Khabur Ware in the Early Second Millennium BC

Alessio Palmisano

doi:10.5334/4f8d6ed49bd54

Alessio Palmisano

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/4f8d6ed49bd54

Copy DOI

Abstract

The dataset provides the diachronic and spatial distribution of Khabur ware in upper Mesopotamia and central Anatolia in the early second millennium BC (ca. 1900-1750 BC) by evaluating the ceramic evidence coming from excavated archaeological sites. Khabur ware is wheel-made pottery with monochrome geometric painted decoration in red, brown or black, which owes its name to the archaeologist Max Mallowan after that great quantities of it were found by him at the site of Chagar Bazar, in the Upper Khabur valley. Nevertheless, the data yielded from the archaeological excavations show that this pottery is not just confined in the Khabur basin, but spreads in northern Iraq, Syria and in a few sites in Iran and Turkey. This kind of pottery can be studied and analysed as fossil guide for detecting possible political and economic dynamics that caused its spread in Upper Mesopotamia and Central Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age.

Highlights

Khabur ware is a suite of wheel-made pottery with monochrome geometric painted decoration in red, brown or black, which owes its name to the archaeologist Max Mallowan who found great quantities of these ceramics at the site of Chagar Bazar in the Upper Khabur valley[1]
Since the absence of workshop or kiln evidence does not allow us to define individual production centres, the only criterion that has been adopted by the scholars for identifying such centres has been the mere number of potsherds and whole vessels yielded by each archaeological site[4,3]
Two kinds of distribution areas have been delineated for Khabur ware by other commentators: 1) a core, main distribution zone (Upper Khabur valley) and 2) a secondary or peripheral distribution zone

Summary

Data paper

Diachronic and Spatial Distribution of Khabur Ware in the Early Second Millennium BC. Khabur ware is a suite of wheel-made pottery with monochrome geometric painted decoration in red, brown or black, which owes its name to the archaeologist Max Mallowan who found great quantities of these ceramics at the site of Chagar Bazar in the Upper Khabur valley[1]. Since the absence of workshop or kiln evidence does not allow us to define individual production centres, the only criterion that has been adopted by the scholars for identifying such centres has been the mere number of potsherds and whole vessels yielded by each archaeological site[4,3] Despite these issues, two kinds of distribution areas have been delineated for Khabur ware by other commentators: 1) a core, main distribution zone (Upper Khabur valley) and 2) a secondary or peripheral distribution zone.

Spatial Coverage

Methods

Object Name

Language English