Foreign Stone Vessels of the Late Third Millennium B.C. from Southern Mesopotamia: Their Origins and Mechanisms of Exchange

Abstract

It has long been realized that much of the stonework recovered from sites in southern Mesopotamia must have been imported, either as finished artefacts or as raw lumps which were then fashioned locally. The rare outcrops of stone which occur in the alluvium, principally around Uruk and Ur, are restricted to limestone and its light-coloured derivatives (calcite, gypsum, etc.). These were exploited extensively for sculpture, vessels and other relatively small objects throughout the third millennium and beyond, forming the staple medium for the bulk of the Mesopotamian stoneworking industry. Along with these materials, however, a not insignificant proportion of the stonework found on early Babylonian sites consists of dark igneous and metamorphic stones, of which the nearest sources are the mountains and plateaux which border Mesopotamia to the north-west, north and east, extending across the Gulf into Oman. Notable categories which illustrate this phenomenon are the numerous vessels deposited in private graves of the Jemdet Nasr to Early Dynastic II periods, the elaborately decorated “steatite” vessels of the mid-third millennium, and the royal statuary of the Sargonids and their successors.