Discussions on the production, distribution, use, and consumption of pottery from the Neolithic Near East. Ceramics from the Neolithic period carry visual messages through their shapes, styles, and painted decorations. Honoring the work of Dutch archaeologist Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, the chapters in this volume go beyond the technical to address issues of ideology, symbolism, feasting, and communalism in pottery productions in the Near East. Essays exploring aspects of the chaîne opératoire of ceramic production, including archaeometric and experimental techniques in the neolithic pottery tradition, provide new insights into how the vessels were distributed and used. This international volume brings together papers presented at the Third International Workshop on Late Neolithic Pottery from the Ancient Near East.

The second half of the seventh millennium BC saw the demise of the previously affluent and dynamic Neolithic way of life. The period is marked by significant social and economic transformations of local communities, as manifested in a new spatial organization, patterns of architecture, burial practices, and in chipped stone and pottery manufacture. This volume has three foci. The first concerns the character of these changes in different parts of the Near East with a view to placing them in a broader comparative perspective. The second concerns the social and ideological changes that took place at the end of Neolithic and the beginning of the Chalcolithic that help to explain the disintegration of constitutive principles binding the large centers, the emergence of a new social system, as well as the consequences of this process for the development of full-fledged farming communities in the region and beyond. The third concerns changes in lifeways: subsistence strategies, exploitation of the environment, and, in particular, modes of procurement, consumption, and distribution of different resources.

This study focuses on a major issue in Near Eastern prehistoric archaeology: the rise of the Halaf culture, ca. 5900 - 5400 cal. BC. The book presents in a detailed, quantified and lavishly illustrated manner the ceramics excavated by the National Museum of Antiquities Leiden at Tell Sabi Abyad, northern Syria. Concentrating on the 1996 - 2000 campaigns, the book also synthesizes much earlier work in order to come to a comprehensive overview. Tell Sabi Abyad thus far remains the only archaeological site in the Near East where the shift from a Pre-Halaf to an Early Halaf cultural assemblage can be followed within a continuous, meticulously stratified sequence. This shift occured during a short-lived transitional stage, radiocarbon dated at 6100-5900 cal. BC, In terms of the ceramics, this transition is characterized by the gradual replacement of plain Coarse Ware by intricately painted Fine Wares, and by numerous innovations in ceramic technology, morphology and decorative style. More than merely a pottery report, the book offers a lively discussion of past and present views on the origins of the Halaf culture. It also places the excavated ceramics in the broader socio-economic and symbolic context of Late Neolithic societies in northern Syria. Using the concepts of feasting and emulation, the study aims to gain insight in patterns of rapid ceramic innovation and change. The book is of interest not only to specialists of prehistoric pottery but to a wider archaeological audience as well.

Presents new insights into the evolution, technology, painting techniques, distribution and consumption of ceramics in Neolithic of the Near East

This volume brings together the latest results and discussions from research carried out in the eastern Fertile Crescent, the so-called hilly flanks, and adjacent regions, as well as providing key historical perspectives on earlier fieldwork in the region. The emergence of sedentary food producing societies in southwest Asia ca. 10,000 years ago has been a key research focus for archaeologists since the 1930s. This book provides a balance to the weight of work undertaken in the western Fertile Crescent, namely the Levant and southern Anatolia. This preference has led to a heavy emphasis on these regions in discussions about where, when and how the transition from hunting and gathering to plant cultivation and animal domestication occurred. Chapters assess the role of the eastern Fertile Crescent as a key region in the Neolithization process in southwest Asia, highlighting the key and important contributions people in this region made to the emergence of sedentary farming societies. This book is primarily aimed at academics researching the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in southwest Asia. It will also be of interest to archaeologists working on this transition in other parts of Eurasia.

A long-overdue advancement in ceramic studies, this volume sheds new light on the adoption and dispersal of pottery by non-agricultural societies of prehistoric Eurasia. Major contributions from Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia make this a truly international work that brings together different theories and material for the first time. Researchers and scholars studying the origins and dispersal of pottery, the prehistoric peoples or Eurasia, and flow of ancient technologies will all benefit from this book.

Over the past fifty years or so early pottery complexes in the wider region of West Asia have hardly ever been investigated in their own right. Early ceramics have often been unexpected by-products of projects focussing upon much earlier aceramic or later prehistoric periods. In recent years, however, there has been a tremendous increase in research in various parts of West Asia focusing explicitly on this theme. It had generally become accepted that the adoption of pottery in West Asia happened relatively late in the history of ceramics. Several regions are now believed to have developed pottery significantly earlier. Thus, pottery occurs in Eastern Russia, in China and Japan by 16,500 cal. BC and in north Africa it is known in the 10th millennium. However, while the East Asian examples in particular do mark chronologically earlier instances, the picture in West Asia is actually rather more complex, in part because of the tyranny of the Aceramic/Ceramic Neolithic chronology. For the first time, The Emergence of Pottery in West Asia examines in detail the when, where, how and why pottery first arrived in the region? A key insight that emerges is that we must not confuse the reasons for pottery adoption with the long-term consequences. Neolithic peoples in West Asia did not adopt pottery because of the many uses and functions it would gain many centuries later and the development of ceramic technology needs to be examined in the context of its original cultural and social milieu.

Peoples of the distant past lived comfortably in cities that boasted well-conceived urban planning, monumental architecture, running water, artistic expression, knowledge of mathematics and medicine, and more. Without the benefits of modern technology, they enjoyed all the accoutrements of modern civilization. Technology of the Ancient Near East brings together in a single volume what is known about the technology behind these acheivements, based on the archaeological, textual, historic, and scientific data drawn from a wide range of sources, focusing on subjects such as warfare, construction, metallurgy, ceramics and glass, water management, and time keeping. These technologies are discussed within the cultural, historic, and socio-economic contexts within which they were invented and the book emphasises these as the foundation upon which modern technology is based. In so doing, this study elucidates the ingenuity of ancient minds, offering an invaluable introduction for students of ancient technology and science.

The transition from foraging, farming and the neolithic village to the city-state is a complex and fascinating period. Studies on the prehistory of the Near East by nineteenth and twentieth century pioneers in the field transformed archaeology through the creation of the 'Ages System' of Stone, Bronze and Iron. The Near East provides a developmental account of this period contextualised by discussion of the emergence of archaeology as a discipline. The Near East details the causes and effects - enviromental, organizational, demographic and technological - of the world's first village farming cultures some eight thousand years ago. Charles Maisels explains how cities such as Uruk and Ur, Nippur and Kish formed as a result of geological factors and the role of key organizational features of Sumerian society in introducing the world's first script, system of calculation and literature.