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The Distribution of Some Varieties of Early Pottery in South-East Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Ahmet Dönmez  and
W. C Brice
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Extract

In the summer of 1947, we made a journey through South-Eastern Turkey, from Cilicia to Lake Van, to see the antiquities of the region. We hoped to find there traces of some types of early pottery, which would give an indication of the range of the civilizations to which they belonged. In the course of our investigations, we sketched potsherds from some thirty mounds of village ruins throughout the area, and recorded some complete vessels in the Van Museum. This account gives briefly our conclusions.

Our first concern was with the well-known painted wares of the Near East, generally labelled Chalcolithic, and thought to belong to a period before the invention of the potter's wheel, and before the common use of metals. There were three important sites where, about the turn of the century, these potteries were found for the first time in a stratified context. All three excavations—Susa, Anau and Tall Halaf—were in country of a similar and very particular character. To describe this landscape may give a clue to the nature and origins of the civilizations which flourished there in these early times.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Spring 1949 , pp. 44 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1949

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References

page 44 note 1 de Morgan, Jacques, Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, Tôme I. (Première Série)—Paris, 1900— especially pp. 28–31Google Scholar.

page 44 note 2 Explorations in Turkestan (Expedition of 1904)—ed. Pumpelly, Raphael, Two Volumes, Washington, 1908Google Scholar. The pottery of Culture I (North Kurgan), described in Vol. I, Capter VII is comparable with the “Poterie Épaisse” of Early Susa. Both are of simple shapes and profiles, made without the wheel, and painted with regular geometric designs in a similar range of colours.

page 45 note 3 Dr. Baron Von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf. English translation by Gerald Wheeler. See especially Chapter II, where the author attributes the fertility of the region of the Habur headwaters to the large number of springs, and the volcanic nature of the soil.

In Iraq VIII (1946), p. 111 ff.Google Scholar, Professor Mallowan describes the geography of the Baliḫ Valley, which is very similar country.

page 45 note 4 For the origins and nature of loess, a wind-blown soil, see Pumpelly, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 6-9.

page 45 note 5 Heurtley, W. A., Prehistoric Macedonia, Camb., 1959Google Scholar.

page 45 note 6 See Jacques de Morgan, op, cit., Vol. I, p. 31, on the flora of Susiana. He believes that the “sacred forests” of Ashurbanipal in Elam were artificially planted and irrigated.

page 47 note 7 Raphael Pumpelly (op. cit., Vol. I, p. 34), says that in parts of Turkestan (near Samarkand, for example) “-grain is planted on the mere chance of there coming once in two or three years enough rain to mature a scanty crop.”

page 47 note 8 Raphael Pumpdly, in his Turkestan volumes, stresses the importance of the periodic decline of the rainfall. Accotding to him, such a calamity was the stimulus which compelled the first attempts at irrigation (Vol. I, p. 66), and he explains on similar lines the cycles of prosperity and desertion of the site in early times (Vol. I, p. 34).

page 49 note 1 In the District of Tepe Mussian. See Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, Tôme VIII. (Troisième Série)—Paris (1905); p. 82, and p. 92Google Scholar.

page 52 ntoe 1 de Genouillac, H., Céramique Cappadocienne (1926)Google Scholar.

page 52 note 2 Pumpelly, op. cit., Vol. I, Pls. 14 and 15 (Pottery from Middle Strata, South Kurgan. Culture III).