Amb. arch. epig. 1996: 7: 140-142 Priiifed in Derrmnrk. All rights reserved

Copqrtyht 0 M u n k s y a n r d 1996

Arabian archaeology and epigraphy

ISSN 0905-7196

A ’Hut pot’ in the National Museum,

HARRIET CRAWFORD AND KHALID AL SINDI University College, London, UK and National Museum, Ministry of Information, State of Bahrain

This note presents a fine softstone vessel which has not previously been fully published. Its findspot supports the recent suggestion that such pots continued to be manufactured until the end of the third millennium.

The unpublished softstone ‘Hut Pot’ which is the subject of this note (Fig. 1) came from a burial in sector B of the main grave com- plex at Sar, Bahrain, which was excavated in 1986. This complex, a great stone-built ‘honeycomb’ of contiguous burials, each lying in a rectangular cist surrounded by a ring wall, lay in the path of the causeway linking the main Bahrain island with Saudi Arabia. The area was excavated over a number of years by a joint Arab expedition as part of a rescue project sponsored by the Ministry of Information of the State of Bah- rain (1). The grave in which the pot was found had a single alcove, or recess, on the north side of the stone cist in which the pot had been deposited. A single bead is re- corded as the only other find from this burial which is unpublished.

The pot is made of the fine-grained dark grey stone usually referred to as steatite or chlorite. In the absence of chemical analyses it is not possible to say what the stone is and the generic term softstone is used in this note. The complete pot is cir- cular, with a diameter of 12.2 cm, and the

walls are 7.5 cm high. The rim is flat. The whole of the external surface of the vessel is decorated with a complex design, di- vided into panels, of which the most im- portant element is a motif usually thought to represent a doorway with multiple sag- ging lintels. This motif is repeated four times. Between the ‘doors’ are panels of various geometric patterns which probably represent matting or woven materials. It has been suggested that a light construc- tion of some perishable materials is repre- sented, perhaps made of reeds or barasti.

This design is well known in Mesopot- amia, Arabia and Iran, but until now no complete vessel has been found in the Gulf, although sherds from containers of similar type have been found at third-millennium sites in the region, such as the settlement on Umm-an-Nar island (2). The occurrence of this design over such a wide geo- graphical area, and the fact that vessels decorated in this way are often found in funerary or religious contexts, has led Lam- berg-Karlovsky (3) to suggest that certain rituals pertaining to death and burial, and

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A 'HUT POT' IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, BAHRAIN

Fig. 1.

by implication, the ideology associated with the rituals, were common to the dif- ferent countries. If this suggestion is ac- cepted, then one might go further and de- duce that the buildings depicted on the pots were also specifically associated with burials. There is very limited archae- ological evidence from Mesopotamia for structures associated with important graves. At Ur Woolley proposed that some sort of buildings had been erected above the so-called Royal burials of the mid-third millennium, and the fact that virtually nothing remained suggested to him that they had been built of flimsy materials (4). It must not be forgotten, however, that these pots are found in temple as well as funerary contexts and so may not be ex- clusively associated with death and mor- tuary rituals.

The 'Hut pots' first appear in the second quarter of the third millennium, and are re- garded as part of the Intercultural style or sk i e ancienne group of artefacts as defined by Kohl (5) and Miroshedji (6). Vessels dec- orated in this style first occur about 2700 BC in the Early Dynastic I1 period of Meso- potamia and become most popular in the ED I11 period, 2600-2400 BC. Kohl claimed

that the hut motif was more popular in Eastern Iran where it occurs on 33.7% of the corpus, than in Mesopotamia where it is found on 22.6% and where figurative de- signs are common (7). Since Kohl wrote his thesis the picture has been augmented and many new examples of the hut motif have now been published from Tarut in the Eastern Province of Arabia where vessels with both figurative and geometric decor- ation were being manufactured. The dating of these vessels has also undergone modifi- cation recently as it has been shown that some 'Hut pots' are found in well-stratified Ur I11 contexts, suggesting that they con- tinued to be produced until the very end of the millennium (8). This later dating agrees well with the Early Dilmun date attributed to the majority of the graves in the Sar complex, as this period is now thought to date back to the end of the third millen- nium (9). An earlier date for the Sar pot is still possible if it was already an heirloom when it was deposited in the grave.

We do not know where the Sar pot came from. It is unlikely to have been made on Bahrain as there is no local source of the stone. It has already been pointed out that there is evidence for the manufacture of such vessels at Tarut in the Eastern Prov- ince where Zarins claimed that vessels were sometimes turned on a lathe (lo), a sophisticated technique. Another work- shop was identified at Tepe Yahya in south- eastern Iran, where vessels were appar- ently hollowed out by indirect percussion (11). Recently, Stocks (12) has shown that many stone vessels appear to have been made by using a combination of drills and stone borers which were used to complete the hollowing out of the vessel begun by a drill. Circular striations on the interior sur- face of the base of the Sar pot indicate that it may have been made with a stone borer or even turned on a lathe. There is no evi- dence for the use of a drill. There are also

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H. CRAWFORD & K. AL SINDI

some regular scratch marks on the interior wall surfaces. These are curved striations at an angle of approximately 45" to the base and are more difficult to explain. They may have resulted from the final polishing of the surfaces. If the pot is lathe-turned, this would point to an origin in Tarut as we have seen that this technique is unknown in Iran at this period. This conclusion would fit well with the indications that, in the Early Dilmun period, Tarut was an inte- gral part of Dilmun and so in close contact with the islands of Bahrain.

The publication of this vessel from the collections of the Bahrain National Mu- seum allows us to fill in a puzzling gap on the distribution maps of this distinctive type of vessel already known to be present in Syria, Mesopotamia and on both sides of the Arabian Gulf. Its presence on the island also confirms once more Bahrain's interna- tional status at the end of the third millen- nium and the far-reaching nature of its con- tacts in the Early Dilmun period.

Catalogue details Softstone 'Hut pot'. Complete. Height: 7.7 cm Diameter: 12.2 cm Findspot: grave A/2 Sar Burial Complex, area B Museum no. 358-2-88 Excavation no. B-A / 2 Remarks: Base cracked and flaking on in- side.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to express their warmest thanks to Shaikha Nayla a1 Khalifa, Director of the National Museum, for permission to publish this note.

References 1. Ibrahim M. Excavations of the Arab expedition at Snr

el-Jisr. State of Bahrain: Ministry of Information, 1982. Mughal MR. The Dilrnun burial complex a t Sar: The 1980-82 excavations in Bal~rain. State of Bahrain: Ministry of Information, 1983.

2. Frifelt K. The island of Umm-arz-Nnr, vol. 2. The third triilleririiuiii settleriieiit. Aarhus: JASP, 26.2: 1995: 98.

3. Lamberg-Karlovsky CC. The 'Intercultural Style' carved vessels. IrAiit 23: 1988: 55.

4. Woolley CL. Ur excaoatiorrs, 7101. 2: Tire Royal Ccnz- etery. London: The British Museum, 1934: 37.

5. Kohl PL. Seeds of upheaval: the production of chlorite, at Tepe Yahya. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1975.

6. Miroschedji P dc. Vases et objets en steatite sus- iens du mus6e du Louvre. Cahiers Lie la DAFI 3: 1973.

7. Kohl, Seeds of upheaval: 177. 8. Potts TF. Mesopotamia aiid flit, east. Oxford: Oxford

University Committee for Archaeology Mono- graphs, 37: 1994: 255ff.

9. Hvrjlund F & Andersen HH. Qala'at al-Bahrain 1. The tzortlierii city wall and the Islamic fortress. Aarhus: JASP 30.1: 1994: 141.

10. Zarins J. Steatite vessels in the Riyadh museum. Atlal 2: 1978: no. 501.

11. Kohl, Seeds of upheazinl: 110. 12. Stocks DA. Making stone vessels in ancient Meso-

potamia and Egypt. Antiquity 67 1993: 596-603.

Address: H. E. W. Crawford Institute of Archaeology University College London 31-34 Gordon Square London WClH 0PY U.K.

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