Arab. arch. epig. 2005: 16: 6778 (2005) Printed in Singapore.

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In the beginning: Marhashi and the origins of Magans ceramic industry in the third millennium BC
Ceramics from the Jiroft plain in southeastern Iran are compared with material of Umm an-Nar-type dating to the mid- and late third millennium BC in the Oman Peninsula. Technological and stylistic comparisons suggest the strong possibility that potters from the Iranian side of the Straits of Hormuz may have been the instigators of Magans earliest ceramic industry. Keywords: Iran, Oman, Ceramics, Bronze Age, Umm an-Nar

D.T. Potts University of Sydney, Australia

Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. e-mail: dan.potts@arts.usyd.edu.au

Introduction Several years ago, while conducting eldwork in the Jaz Muriyan basin of southeastern Iran, Hamideh Choubak of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization (now Iranian Cultural Heritage & Tourism Organization) rst uncovered the systematic looting of a cemetery in the Jiroft plain (Fig. 1) which has since attracted headlines around the world (1). Her perseverance led to the surrender by local residents of large quantities of already looted objectsalabaster, ceramic and metal vessels, stamp seals, and rie ancienne or above all the elaborately carved se intercultural style soft-stone vesselswhich were published last year in a catalogue by Y. Majidzadeh (2). Comparable material was already well known from excavations at Tepe Yahya (3), from numerous sites outside Iran (4) and from the art market (5). The massive quantity from the Jiroft, and the proximity of the latter plain to Tepe Yahya, the only production centre yet identied (6), strongly suggests that the industry was indigenous to this region. But we can go further and use this material to identify the ancient name of this corner of southeastern Iran. Twenty years ago the Sumerologist Piotr Steinkeller suggested that the stone known in cuneiform sources as marh as u/marh us u took its name from 6 6

the geographical name Marhashi, denoting southeast Iranian soft stone (7). Moreover, he pointed to the presence of two carved soft-stone vessel fragmentsone of unknown provenance in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (8) (Fig. 2) and one from Woolleys excavations at Ur (9) (Fig. 3)which were inscribed by the Old Akkadian king Rimush with the text: Rimush, king of Kish, the slayer of Elam and Marhashi (Fig. 4). At the time Steinkeller raised the very likely possibility that both vessels had been taken as booty from Marhashi, and this inference is almost certainly conrmed by the shared decoration on the Berlin fragment and on numerous pieces from the Jiroft (Fig. 5). Southeastern Iranat least that part as far west as Tepe Yahya and as far east as the Jiroft plaincan therefore be identied with ancient Marhashi (10). How far to the north, south, east and west Marhashi may have extended is unknown at this time. Of course it has long been recognised that large numbers of similar soft-stone vessels circulated in the Gulf region as well. By far the greatest concentration comes from Tarut island in eastern Saudi Arabia (11). In contrast, just a few pieces have turned up over the years in the Oman peninsula. These include one fragment from a third-millennium

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Fig. 1. Map showing southeastern Iran and the Oman peninsula with the main sites mentioned in the text. A Jiroft plain. B Tepe Yahya. C Tell Abraq. D Umm an-Nar. E Hili/Jabal Hat.

Fig. 3. U.231 from Ur (after Woolley L. The early periods. Philadelphia: Ur Excavations, 4: 1956: Pl. 36).

very ne, complete vessels were discovered on Bahrain in tombs at Saar (14) (Fig. 8) and al-Hajjar (15) (Fig. 9). Yet if the distribution of soft-stone vessels in the Oman peninsula and northeastern Arabia attests to relations between Marhashi, Magan and Dilmun (of which Tarut was almost certainly a part), then it is equally true that the distribution of ceramics does as well. The ceramic evidence, moreover, points in the direction of an unexpected insight.
Fig. 2. VA 5298 in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin showing a snake entwined around and attacking a feline, facing right (after Klengel & Klengel, Zum Fragment: Abb. 1.

grave on Umm an-Nar island (12) (Fig. 6) and six fragments (ve of which come from one vessel) from a second-millennium grave at Sharm in the Emirate of Fujairah (13) (Fig. 7). Additionally, two

Ceramic problems Ceramics have been interpreted as indicators of ties between southeastern Iran and southeastern Arabia ever since Knud Thorvildsen recognised the striking similarities between black-on-grey ware vessels from the tombs on Umm an-Nar island and material excavated and collected on survey in Iranian Baluchistan by Sir Aurel Stein during the early

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MARHASHI AND THE ORIGINS OF MAGANS CERAMIC INDUSTRY

Fig. 5. Complete soft-stone vessel from the Jiroft showing a snake attacking a feline, facing left (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 80; height 10 cm, rim dia. 16.5 cm).

Fig. 4. Text of Rimush inscribed on VA 5298 (after Klengel & Klengel, Zum Fragment: Abb. 3).

Fig. 6. Mat-weave soft-stone fragment from tomb IX on Umm an-Nar island (after al-Tikriti, Reconsideration of the late fourth and third millennium BC.: Pl. 154B).

1930s (16). To that extent, the discovery of yet more material in the Jiroft with obvious parallels in the Oman peninsula could be said to merely add to an already extant body of material illustrative of this fact. What I wish to do here, however, is to reconsider the entire topic of ceramic origins in southeastern Arabia in light of these strong parallels, asking the question, why do such strong parallels exist between the ceramics of the Umm an-Nar period and those of southeastern Iran? And what is their particular signicance in light of the well-known archaeological record of ties between

southeastern Arabia and other regions? To begin with, however, a brief review of what we know about ceramic origins in the region is necessary. The prehistoric occupation of both coastal and inland southeastern Arabia has been investigated for roughly thirty years. Excavations at Ras al-Hamra (17); investigations around Al Ain (18) and in the Wadi Wutayya (19); survey and sondage on the U.A.E. coast and offshore islands (20); and ongoing work at Jabal Buhays (21) in the interior of Sharjahto name just a few of the more prominent

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Fig. 7. Soft-stone vessel from Sharm, emirate of Fujairah (after Ziolkowski. The soft stone vessels: Fig. 1.

Fig. 9. Soft-stone vessel from al-Hajjar, Bahrain (after Lombard, ed. Bahrain, the civilisation of the two seas: 93, no. 88.

Fig. 8. Soft-stone vessel from Saar, Bahrain (after Ministry of Information. Calendar 1993. State of Bahrain, December).

projectshave given us a wealth of data on life in the sixth and fth (and less so the fourth) millennia BC. As the Uerpmanns have stressed, the earliest, middle-Holocene inhabitants of the region arrived and it is fairly clear they cannot have been indigenous as there is no Palaeolithic or early Holocene evidence of occupationfrom another part of the Near East, bringing with them domesticated sheep and goat (22). Similarities between the Qatar B blade-arrowhead industry and Levantine lithic types rst suggested to Peder Mortensen many years ago

that a connection with the North Arabian-Syrian desert region was likely (23), and indeed the Uerpmanns continue to see the southern Levant as the most likely source of the core population that arrived with domestic ovicaprids, stressing the fact that eastern Arabia lies well outside the natural habitat of the wild progenitors of either sheep or goat and that both species must therefore have been introduced. Yet if a broadly Levantine/North Arabian origin for the earliest population of southeastern Arabia is correct (24), that population is unlikely to have been made up largely of town dwellers. Rather, they are much more likely to have been aceramic herders and hunter-gatherers. This is likely if only because, by 60005000 BC, the use of ceramics was widespread in the Levant. Yet it is clear that the vast majority of middle-Holocene sites in southeastern Arabia are aceramic. No Levantine Chalcolithic ceramics have appeared on sites anywhere in eastern Arabia. Having said that, a small number of sites do show evidence of ceramics, albeit imported from southern Mesopotamia rather than the southern Levant. The pottery in question is of so-called Ubaid type, as rst dened in southern Iraq (25). A sizable literature has grown up in recent years which examines and seeks to explain the diffusion of Ubaid pottery from sites like Ur and the eponymous al-Ubaid in southern Iraq to sites in Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the islands and coast of the U.A.E. (26) Leaving aside the underlying

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reasons for this diffusion, several points which relate specically to ceramics and ceramic manufacture are of particular interest. First, whenever analyses have been undertaken, the result has always been the same: the well-(often over)red pottery with its clear parallels to Ubaid 24 material from southern Mesopotamia is not just similar, rather it is compositionally identical to material from sites in Iraq, suggesting that all of it was imported (27). Second, only in northeastern Arabia (Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia) and Kuwait do we nd sherds of a coarse red ware which are compositionally distinct from the imported pottery with which it is associated (28). Given the fact that this type of coarse red ware is unknown in southern Iraq, and that kiln wasters of this red ware were found at Dosariyah (29), it is safe to assume that this pottery was made locally (30). That it was made by visiting Mesopotamians seems unlikely, particularly given the ceramic technology employed, strikingly different from what we nd in contemporary southern Mesopotamia. That it was possibly made by indigenous, east Arabians (descendants of the earlier Levantine migrants), seeking to make ceramic containers using local clays that would be functionally, if not stylistically, similar to the foreign Ubaid vessels which reached the area, seems prima facie more likely. However, the small quantity of such material and its very restricted distribution obliges one to draw two conclusions: 1) contact between aceramic east Arabians and their ceramic-using Mesopotamian neighbours did not result in technology transfer; 2) the experimental attempt to produce ceramics (coarse red ware) locally was not sustained and did not lead to the burgeoning of a local industry. Thus, the rst episode of ceramic contact between eastern Arabia and the outside world was, from an evolutionary perspective, unproductive. Chronologically, the second episode of ceramic contact involving southeastern Arabia is probably indicated by the discovery, at Ras al-Hamra in the capital area of Muscat, of a fragmentary, carinated vessel of burnished grey ware, fragments of which were recovered between 1982 and 1985. Although I originally queried whether this should indeed be dated to the fourth millennium BC, as suggested by the excavators (31), let us assume for the sake of argument that it is correctly dated. More than two decades after its discovery, this vessel remains the sole example of its kind. As in the case of the Ubaid contact, the presence of the burnished grey ware at Ras al-Hamra led nowhere from an evolutionary point of view. It could well be that, unlike the Ubaid diffusion which probably involved the actual movement of people, the burnished grey ware vessel was not brought by someone from southeastern Iran who understood ceramic manufacture. It may have been acquired by a native of coastal Oman, by whatever means, arriving as a curiosity in an aceramic community incapable of reproducing it or of reconstructing either the ceramic technology behind its manufacture or the pyrotechnology involved in its ring. Again, we seem to be faced with an evolutionary cul-de-sac, at least as far as ceramics go. The third ceramic contact episode occurred at the end of the fourth millennium BC. Tombs of Hat type, principally around Jabal Hat but also at Jabal al-Emalah in the interior of Sharjah, have yielded a number of squat, carinated jars which have long been compared with nds of Jamdat Nasr date from southern Mesopotamia (32). Compositional analyses ry have conrmed that each of the by Sophie Me vessels analysed is in fact of Mesopotamian origin (33). As no non-local ceramics co-occur with these nds in the Hat graves (contemporary settlement sites are still lacking), it must be concluded that this third episode of ceramic contact was, like the rst two, unproductive in an evolutionary sense. Finally, the fourth ceramic contact episode which we can identify dates to the middle of the third millennium BC. Typical southern Mesopotamian storage jars of Early Dynastic III type appear on Umm an-Nar island (34) and, with lugs, at Hili 8 (35). Most probably they were sent to southeastern Arabia containing a liquid, perhaps oil, after which they were discarded. Neither from the perspective of shape nor through the technology of manufacture did these vessels make an impact locally. Furthermore, the fact that some ended up in graves is intriguing. This may be an indication of the fact that once emptied of their original contents they were considered unsuited to local utilitarian functions and yet too exotic or symbolically valuable to simply throw away. On Umm an-Nar the Mesopotamian storage jars occurred together with a range of other pottery vessels. These included material which compositional analyses suggest was imported from

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southeastern Iranincised grey ware and black-ongrey wareas well as typical Umm an-Nar-style sandy reddish/orange and ne black-on-orange rys analyses have shown that the latter wares. Me two categories were made of local clays. Thus, all indications are that by the middle of the third millenniumED II-III times in Mesopotamian chronological termsa local ceramic tradition had emerged in southeastern Arabia. What do these observations mean? In essence, they mean that over 2000 years of contact between the peoples of southeastern Arabia and the ceramicusing societies around them had failed to effect either a transfer of technology to locals interested in ceramic manufacture or the immigration and settlement of foreign potters capable of starting a new tradition in what was otherwise an aceramic part of the Near East. The arrival of Ubaid ceramics, burnished grey ware from southeastern Iran, Jamdat Nasr pottery and Early Dynastic storage vessels all failed to kick-start a local ceramic industry. I shall not speculate on why this was the case, but clearly there must have been no need for the sorts of red containers then current in other parts of the Near East. What sorts of containers made of perishable materialsperhaps of basketry or woodmay have existed we do not know. At any event, the failure of these early instances of ceramic contact to spark a local industry means that when the earliest Umm an-Nar ceramics, which we see clearly in the graves and settlement on Umm an-Nar itself (36), were produced, this production occurred in a cultural milieu which, although exposed to Mesopotamian shapes and ceramic technology in the form of the Early Dynastic storage jars, had no history of ceramic manufacture. In many other parts of the Near East one can clearly chart the evolution of ceramics from the Neolithic onwards. Not so in southeastern Arabia. I submit that the shapes, decorations and manufacturing techniques of the earliest Umm an-Nar ceramic repertoire presuppose an experienced and knowledgeable community of potters. It is hardly credible that they represent the rst efforts of local potters and it is indefensible as an hypothesis when we consider again just how close the technical, formal and decorative resemblances are with the ceramics of southeastern Iran where ceramics had been made since the Neolithic (37). In short, I believe we must conclude that the ceramic industry of the Umm an-Nar period was started by migrant potters from southeastern Iran. Moreover, I believe that the recent discoveries in the Jiroft lend this conclusion additional, robust support.

Jirofti ceramics and the Umm an-Nar tradition As noted above, the very close similarities between nds from the Umm an-Nar graves and sites in southeastern Iran were rst noted over forty years ago. These correspondences, by themselves, may rys indicate nothing more than trade. After all, Me analyses have shown that the black-on-grey and incised grey vessels found at a number of sites in southeastern Arabia were all, in fact, manufactured in southeastern Iran. Indeed, the material published by Majidzadeh includes three black-on-grey canisters of Bampur type (Figs 1012) which display decorative elements (stylised palm trees, hatched Ms, vertically hatched isosceles triangles) all found on a vessel from the late Umm an-Nar tomb at Tell Abraq (Figs 1314) and although the Tell Abraq exemplar has not been analysed, it is difcult to avoid the conclusion that it was an import (38).

Fig. 10. Black-on-grey canister from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 162; height 10.8 cm, rim dia. 9.2 cm).

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MARHASHI AND THE ORIGINS OF MAGANS CERAMIC INDUSTRY

Fig. 11. Black-on-grey canister from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 162; height 10.8 cm, rim dia. 9.2 cm). Fig. 13. Black-on-grey canister (TA 2209) from Tell Abraq (height 10.22 cm, rim dia. 8.04 cm, base dia. 10.134 cm).

Fig. 12. Black-on-grey canister from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 162; height 10.8 cm, rim dia. 9.2 cm).

Fig. 14. Drawing of black-on-grey canister (TA 2209) from Tell Abraq.

On the other hand, the squat canister is a shape which is far from common, generally speaking, across the Near East. The squat body, sharply

carinated, high shoulder and short, everted rim also appear in the local Umm an-Nar repertoire, but the presumption must be that the direction of inuence

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is from Iran to the Oman peninsula, not vice versa. This is, moreover, supported by the presence in the Jiroft collection of black-on-grey jars with short, diagonal strokes on the shoulder and a wide band of chevrons between two or three parallel lines on the upper body of the vessel. One example published by Majidzadeh (Fig. 15) is virtually identical to ne black-on-orange examples of Umm an-Nar type from Jabal al-Emalah (Figs 1617) and further examples could be cited as well (39). Moreover, the chevron pattern occurs on a wide-mouthed bowl with everted lip (Fig. 18) from the Jiroft which, while stylistically comparable to Umm an-Nar material, was produced in a reducing atmosphere and hence appears black-on-grey. It is therefore highly unlikely to have been produced in the Oman peninsula where there is no evidence of ring in a reducing atmosphere in the indigenous ceramic industry and

Fig. 16. Black-on-orange jar (SM 3073) from Jabal Emalah (after Benton J & Potts DT. Jabal al-Emalah 1993/4. Sharjah: Report compiled for the Dept. of Culture and Information, 1994: Fig. 69; height 12.9 cm, rim dia. 7.05 cm, base dia. 5.4 cm).

hence no indication that black-on-grey pottery was ever produced locally. Furthermore, while the decoration of this piece can be paralleled in Oman, the shape is not one which occurs commonly in the Umm an-Nar repertoire. Two other black-on-orange Jirofti vessels (Figs 1920) are similar to what seems to be an anomalous Umm an-Nar black-on-orange vessel from Jabal al-Emalah, JE 2523 (Fig. 21), suggesting the latter may also be an import from southeastern Iran.

Fig. 15. Black-on-grey jar from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 162; height 10.8 cm, rim dia. 9.2 cm).

Conclusion The striking similarity between ceramics from southeastern Iran and Umm an-Nar-style pottery has long suggested to me that an actual inux of potters from the former region was responsible for the inception of the ceramic industry in the latter area. However, it was not until the realisation that

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Fig. 17. Black-on-orange jar (SM 3072) from Jabal Emalah (after Benton & Potts, Jabal al-Emalah: Fig. 70; height 10.8 cm, rim dia. 6.2 cm, base dia. 4.5 cm).

Fig. 19. Black-on-orange jar from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 163; height 12.2 cm, rim dia. 6.2 cm).

Fig. 18. Black-on-grey jar from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 161; height 7 cm, rim dia. 7.4 cm).

some of the recently published material from the Jiroft closely paralleled Umm an-Nar vessels, and that the Jirofti specimens were made of what

Fig. 20. Black-on-orange jar from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 163; height 10.8 cm, rim dia. 5 cm).

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Fig. 21. Black-on-orange jar (JE 2523) from Jabal Emalah (after Benton & Potts, Jabal al-Emalah: Fig. 61; height 11.6 cm, rim broken, base dia. 4.3 cm).

analyses of comparable pieces have shown was a local black-on-grey tradition, that the likelihood of Marhashi being the source of Magans (at least western Magans) ceramic industry became virtually unavoidable. We can see, moreover, that in addition to potters moving into southeastern Arabia, trade must have continued across the Straits of Hormuz, for there are more and more vessels which seem to be southeast Iranian imports in Umm an-Nar contexts, not to mention of course the smaller numbers rie ancienne or intercultural style soft stone of se found in the Gulf region. At the same time, a vessel such as Figure 22, a ne orange canister on which the original black decoration has been almost totally effaced, looks very much like an Umm an-Nar type which has travelled in the opposite direction, from Magan to Marhashi (40). Naturally only analyses

Fig. 22. Orange (black paint no longer visible) canister from Jiroft (after Majidzadeh, The earliest Oriental civilization: 163; height 12.8 cm, rim dia. 5.7 cm).

will tell if these attributions are correct. The main point of this article, however, has been to underscore the observation that a ceramic industry of the sort we see in the Umm an-Nar period in the Oman peninsula does not spring sui generis where little exposure to foreign ceramic imports and no evidence of a prior industry exist. An external stimulusin the form of potters from southeastern Iran settling in the regionseems the best explanation for the technological and stylistic sophistication seen in the Umm an-Nar ceramic repertoire from its inception.

References
1. See e.g. Lawler A. Rocking the cradle. Smithsonian 35/2: 2004: 4048; Covington R. Irans archeological Renaissance. Saudi Aramco World Sept/ Oct: 2004: 811. 2. Majidzadeh Y. Jiroft: The earliest Oriental civilization. Tehran: Printing and Publishing Organization of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, 2003. 3. See particularly Lamberg-Karlovsky CC. The Intercultural Style carved vessels. IrAnt 23: 1988: 4595. 4. E.g. Kohl PL. The balance of trade in southwestern Asia in the mid-third millennium BC. Current Anthropology 19: 1978: 463492; Potts TF. Mesopotamia and the East: An archaeological and historical study of foreign relations 34002000 BC. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph, 37: 1994, both with extensive earlier bibliography. 5. E.g. Pittman H. Art of the Bronze Age: Southeastern Iran, Western Central Asia

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MARHASHI AND THE ORIGINS OF MAGANS CERAMIC INDUSTRY

and the Indus Valley. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984. 6. Despite the analyses of material from Tarut (Kohl PL, Harbotte G & Sayre EV. Physical and chemical analyses of softstone vessels from Southwest Asia. Archaeometry 21: 1979: 131159), I am not convinced that it was a production rie ancienne soft stone during centre of se the third millennium. To begin with, a glance at the catalogue of soft-stone nds from Tarut (Zarins J. Steatite vessels in the Riyadh Museum. Atlal 2: 1978: 6593) shows that the bulldozing and sand mining on Tarut which originally brought the soft-stone nds there to light revealed a large amount rie of later third-millennium Omani (se cente) as well as Hellenistic material. re Just as the Omani material is demonstrably imported from the Oman peninsula, where production was rie prodigious, I cannot see that the se ancienne, so strikingly similar to the Tepe Yahya and Jiroft material, could be anything but southeast Iranian in origin. The alleged semi-nished and raw pieces of soft stone could well be of Hellenistic date. Furthermore, the x-ray diffraction analyses of Kohl, Harbottle and Sayre really only tell us about compositional groups, not about production centres. In this regard, the fact that a Susa-Adab-Persian Gulf group was distinguished in no way necessitates the hypothesis of an Arabian manufacturing centre on Tarut. Rather, it simply indicates that some vessels at Susa, Adab and Tarut may have come from a common source, wherever that may be. Given the small size of Masrys soundings in the fort on Tarut, one should not read too much into the fact that, No steatite objects were recovered from any stratum of the main test trench (Masry AH. Prehistory of northeastern Arabia: The problem of interregional interaction. Coconut Grove: Field Research Projects, 1974: 145). On the other hand, I think it very likely that Tarut was a production centre of rie ancienne using the inferior pseudo-se muscovite schist which has a pale brown or sandy colour. i: 7. Steinkeller P. The question of Marhas 6 A contribution to the historical geography of Iran in the third millennium BC. ZA 72: 1982: 251. 8. Klengel E & Klengel H. Zum Fragment eines Steatitgefa es mit einer Inschrift von Akkad. Rocznik Oriendes Rimus talistyczny 41: 1980: 4551 (VA 5298). 9. Gadd CJ. Ur Excavations Texts. London: British Museum, 1: 1928: 3 and Pl. II.9; Woolley CL. Ur Excavations. Philadelphia: British Museum, 4: 1956: 51, Pl. 36 (U.231). 10. Cf. Steinkeller P. Contacts between Babylonia, Makkan and southeastern Iran (Marhashi) during the second half of the third millennium BC. In press. My thanks to Prof. Steinkeller for providing me with a copy of this paper prior to its publication. 11. In chronological order, see Burkholder G. Steatite carvings from Saudi Arabia. Artibus Asiae 33: 1971: 306322; Porada E. Excursus: Comments on steatite carvings from Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Ancient Near East. Artibus Asiae 33: 1971: 323331; Zarins, Steatite vessels in the Riyadh Museum: 6593; Burkholder G. An Arabian collection. Boulder City: GB Publications, 1984; Potts DT. Miscellanea Hasaitica. Copenhagen: CNIP, 9: 1989, with earlier bibliography. 12. al-Tikriti WY. Reconsideration of the late fourth and third millennium B.C. in the Arabian Gulf with special reference to the United Arab Emirates. Cambridge: Unpubl. PhD dissertation, 1981: Pls. 130.I and 154.B. I am not including a bell-shaped bowl from Al Sufouh or an undecorated canister from the Danish excavations on Umm an-Nar as these do not have the typically naturalistic decoration of the Jirofti examples. 13. Ziolkowski MC. The soft-stone vessels from Sharm, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. AAE 12: 2001: Figs 12. 14. Crawford H & Al Sindi K. A hut pot in the National Museum, Bahrain. AAE 7: 1996: 140142. 15. Lombard P, ed. Bahrain, the civilisation of the two seas: From Dilmun to Tylos. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 1999: 93, no. 88. 16. Thorvildsen K. Burial cairns on Umm-en Nar. Kuml 1962: 1963: 219. 17. See e.g. Biagi P. The prehistoric shermen settlements of RH5 and RH6 at Qurum, Sultanate of Oman. PSAS 17: 1987: 731; Salvatori S. Death and ritual in a population of coastal food foragers in Oman. In: Afanasev E, Cleuziou S, Lukacs JR & Tosi M, eds. `: The prehistory of Asia and Oceania. Forl ABACO Edizioni, 1996: 205222. Copeland L & Bergne P. Flint artifacts from the Buraimi area, Eastern Arabia, and their relations with the Near Eastern post-Palaeolithic. PSAS 6: 1976: 4061. Uerpmann M. Some remarks on Late Stone Age industries from the coastal area of northern Oman. In: Costa PM & Tosi M, eds. Oman Studies: Papers on the archaeology and history of Oman. Rome: Serie Orientale Roma, 63: 1989: 169 177. E.g. Popescu ES. The Neolithic settlement sites on the islands of Dalma and Marawah, U.A.E. In: Potts D, Al Naboodah H & Hellyer P, eds. Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Archaeology of the U.A.E. London: Trident, 2003: 4654; Beech, M. The development of shing in the U.A.E.: A zooarchaeological perspective. In: Potts, Al Naboodah & Hellyer, eds. Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates: 290308, with bibliography. E.g. Uerpmann M, Uerpmann H-P & Jasim SA. Stone Age nomadism in SE ArabiaPalaeo-economic considerations on the Neolithic site of Al-Buhais 18 in the Emirate of Sharjah, UAE. PSAS 30: 2000: 229234; Kiesewetter H. The Neolithic population at Jebel Buhais 18: Remarks on funerary practices, palaeodemography and palaeopathology. In: Potts, Al Naboodah & Hellyer, eds. Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates: 3643. Uerpmann, Uerpmann & Jasim, Stone Age nomadism; cf. Uerpmann M & Uerpmann H-P. Faunal remains of al-Buhais 18, an aceramic Neolithic site in the Emirate of Sharjah (SE-Arabia): Excavations 19951998. In: Mashkour M, Choyke AM, Buitenhuis H & Poplin F, eds. Archaeozoology of the Near East IVB. Groningen: ARC-Publicatie, 32: 2000: 4049. Apud Kapel H. Atlas of the Stone Age cultures of Qatar. Aarhus: JASP, 6: 1967: 18. There is Palaeolithic occupation much further south in Oman, but to date there is no evidence of population continuity between the Palaeolithic/

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

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Pleistocene population and the midHolocene occupants of the region. For the Palaeolithic in southern Oman see e.g. Biagi P. An early Palaeolithic site near Saiwan (Sultanate of Oman). AAE 5: 1994: 8188. For a recent summary of the state of knowledge on southern Mesopotamian Ubaid, see Oates J. Ubaid Mesopotamia revisited. In: von Folsach K, Thrane H & Thuesen I, eds. From handaxe to Khan: Essays presented to Peder Mortensen on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Aarhus: Aarhus Univ. Press, 2004: 87104, with extensive bibliography. Uerpmann M & Uerpmann H-P. Ubaid pottery in the eastern Gulfnew evidence from Umm al-Qaiwain (U.A.E.). AAE 7: 1996: 125139, with earlier bibliography. Although Roaf M & Galbraith J. Pottery and p-values: Seafaring merchants of Ur? re-examined. Antiquity 68: 1994: 77083 concluded by noting that the composition of the sherds analysed originally by Kamilli, McKerrell and Davidson might be compatible with a range of alternative origins, they admitted that most of the Ubaid pottery found on the Gulf sites could have been imported from southern Mesopotamia. For addi ry tional, more recent analyses, see Me S & Schneider G. Mesopotamian pottery wares in Eastern Arabia from the fth to the second millennium BC: A contribution of archaeometry to the economic history. PSAS 26: 1996: 7996. Masry, Prehistory in northeastern Arabia: 123, pale-reddish standard straw-tempered coarse type, normally with a blackened core occurring on very irregularly shaped vessels. This kind represents the bulk of this ware, approximately 80%. In fact, Masry also distinguished a second coarse ware, light to dark brownish, straw and chaff tempered type with a distinct basket mark impression on the at bases of vessels. This makes up the remaining part of the coarse ware. Overall, these coarse wares account for 4550% of the total surface ceramic inventory. Roaf & Galbraith, Seafaring merchants: 4 (preprint pagination). Joan Oates has noted, Coarse chaff-tempered cooking ware is found on all prehistoric sites in Mesopotamia, but the distinctively red Arabian ware would seem to be of local manufacture. See Oates J. Prehistory in northeastern Arabia. Antiquity 50: 1976: 26. If similar wares existed in another neighbouring region, e.g. in the southern Levant or across the Gulf in Iran, then of course this conclusion would not be so inevitable, but such is not the case. Potts DT. The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, i. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990: 6970. The main reason for my misgivings was largely the fact that the excavators were pointing to parallels with burnished grey ware in southeastern Iran (e.g. at Tepe Yahya), but there is none that dates to the fourth millennium. Rather, it is a product solely of the third millennium BC. See Potts DT. Excavations at Tepe Yahya, 19671975: The third millennium. Cambridge: Bulletin of the American School of Prehistoric Research, 45: 2001: 199. For an overview of the material from the tombs at Jabal Hat, see Potts DT. Eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula during the late fourth and early third millennium BC. In: Fink amdat Nas@ r: beiner U & Ro llig W, eds. G Period or regional style? Wiesbaden: TAVO Beiheft B, 62: 1986: 121170, with earlier bibliography. ramiques dOman et lAsie ry S. Les ce Me ologie des e changes a ` moyenne: Une arche ge du Bronze. Paris: E ditions du lA CNRS, 2000: 169189. E.g. Frifelt K. The island of Umm an-Nar, vol. 1. Third millennium graves. Aarhus: JASP, 26/1: 1991: Figs 8689, 125; Frifelt K. The island of Umm an-Nar, vol. 2. The third millennium settlement. Aarhus: JASP, 26/2: 1995: Figs 164188. ramiques dOman: Fig. 105. ry, Les ce Me As it happens, the graves on Umm anNar were not only the rst archaeological ndspots of the Umm an-Nar culture/period to be discovered and explored, they also appear to have been the earliest, chronologically speaking. For a tentative internal chronology of the Umm an-Nar period tombs excavated to date, see Benton JN. Excavations at Al Sufouh: A third millennium site in the Emirate of Dubai. Turnhout: Abiel, 1: 1996: 8889. E.g. at Tal-i Iblis and Tepe Yahya. See Caldwell JR, ed. Investigations at Tal-iIblis. Springeld: Illinois State Museum Preliminary Reports, 9: 1967: 111ff; Beale TW. Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 19671975: The early periods. Cambridge: Bulletin of the American School of Prehistoric Research, 38: 1986: 39ff. The Tell Abraq vessel is discussed in extenso in Potts DT. Tepe Yahya, Tell Abraq and the chronology of the Bampur sequence. IrAnt 38: 2003: 111. For example, Frifelt, Third millennium ry, graves: Figs 59, 63, 67, 93, 96, 97; Me ramiques dOman: Figs 49.5, 50.2, Les ce 52.7 (all tomb A at Hili North) and 55.1 (tomb M at Hili). To the ceramic evidence we can also add later third-millennium soft-stone which moved in both directions. See e.g. Potts DT. A soft-stone genre from southeastern Iran: Zig-zag bowls from Magan to Margiana. In: Potts T, Roaf M & Stein D, eds. Ancient Near Eastern culture through objects: Festschrift for P.R.S. Moorey. Oxford: Grifth rie re cente and Institute, 2003: 7791. Se tardive soft-stone vessels with single or double dotted-circle decoration, a hallmark of the Umm an-Nar and early Wadi Suq periods (late third/early second millennia BC) in the Oman peninsula, has also been found on sites in southeastern Iran, such as Tepe Yahya (Lamberg-Karlovsky CC. Urban interaction on the Iranian Plateau: Excavations at Tepe Yahya, 19671973. Proceedings of the British Academy 59: 1973: Fig. 5F) and Shahdad (Hakemi A. Shahdad: Archaeological excavations of a Bronze Age center in Iran. Rome: IsMEO, 1997: 617, Fm. 2 and 695, Ra. 4).

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