Investigating cross‐Gulf trade in the Iron Age III period: chronological and compositional data on Burnished Maroon Slipped Ware (BMSW) in southeastern Arabia and Iran

Abstract

Recently obtained ceramic compositional data from the late Iron Age sites of Tepe Yahya in Iran and Sharm in the United Arab Emirates is presented in this paper. Analysis of this data suggests that a distinctive ceramic, Burnished Maroon Slipped Ware (BMSW), was produced somewhere in southern Iran and exported across the Gulf to eastern Arabia. That this trade was not limited to any defined historical period, such as that represented by the Achaemenid Empire, is suggested by a series of new AMS C14 dates from Tepe Yahya. The paper concludes with speculative comments on the possible elite nature of BMSW in societies on either side of the Straits of Hormuz.