Putting chaînes opératoires back in their workspace and tracking down their entanglements. The evolution of the Logardan workshop (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of the Early Bronze Age

Abstract

Data from recent work at Logardan (Iraqi Kurdistan) makes it possible to approach the history of a vast ceramics workshop from a brand-new perspective. Indeed, not only do Logardan kilns and production structures constitute, at this stage, the largest Mesopotamian set of remains inherent to the manufacture of ceramics, but the extensive excavation of the workshop on several levels also offers the possibility of tracking the evolution of this workspace. This diachronic perspective was adopted on the basis of a techno-spatial analysis of the ceramic chaînes opératoires. First, in-situ ceramics were examined in order to reconstruct the different production techniques that were performed in the workshop. Then, the qualitative, quantitative, and spatial evolution of these different technical traditions were observed throughout the stratigraphic sequence and according to the location of the kilns and other work installations. The aim of tracing the history and spatial interaction of the techniques was to record the evolutionary dynamics of the relationships between the potters who worked at Logardan over several generations.