Ancient Lagash, pp. 145-160, 2022/12/27
Proceedings of the Workshop held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna, April 2016
The unpublished ceramic corpus retrieved during six seasons of excavation at the site of al-Hiba is the largest dataset of such material from the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. As part of the al-Hiba Publication Project, this dataset has been organized in a formal typology and subjected to statistical analysis to detect chronological development and spatial distribution on the site. While the corpus fits well within the general Mesopotamian evolution of ceramic production during the 3rd and 2nd millennia, on a more detailed level there is distinct regional variation. Certain ceramic types known elsewhere are absent, while others appear to be local to the region. With the final publication of the al-Hiba ceramic corpus in sight, this paper presents a few preliminary observations demonstrating a higher degree of regionalization in southern Mesopotamian ceramics than previously assumed.
Keywords: al-Hiba, Lagash, 3rd millennium BC, ceramics, typology, regionalization
