ANAPAN
A New Approach to Pottery of Arabia and its Neighbors.
Understanding Technology and Commercial Networks in the Greater Levant Wider research context: Material properties of pottery have seldom been used for investigating socioeconomic changes. Specifically, past archaeometric studies of Bronze and Iron Age ceramics of Arabia were limited in scope and only rarely discussed manufacturing modes, production places and exchange networks.
Research questions: Through a systematic and comparative analysis of stratified assemblages of the longlastingsequences of the two major oases of NW Arabia, Qurayyah and Tayma, and comparable material from four sites in Jordan (Pella, es-Smakiyyeh, Barqa el-Hetiyeh, Tell Kheleifeh), we will investigate manufacturing modes, production places and exchange networks of Bronze and Iron Age pottery. By using ceramic’s material properties as a proxy for socio-economic change over the longue durée, we will clarify the evolving dynamics of such exchanges and the technological and commercial networks and cultural practices linking Arabia’s desert oases to the Southern Levant
Approach: We adopt a large-scale, multi-proxy, interdisciplinary holistic approach integrating archaeological, technological and archaeometric evidence. Morpho-functional, stylistic, technological analysis of multiple, diachronic assemblages from the Early Bronze to the final Iron Ages will be investigated on a sample-bysample basis through ceramic petrography and Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) of hundreds of specimens and will be combined with surveys of raw materials and micromorphology of manufacturing earthen structures from a chaîne opératoire perspective.
Level of originality: In scale, interdisciplinary mode of investigation and target area such a holistic, extensive, comprehensive science-based study has never been attempted before. Its focus on poorly investigated regions provides not only an unparalleled increase of new raw data for the Greater Levant but is relevant for reappraising past biases on pottery production in the desert and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Methodologically it provides a novel blue-print for scope and structure of future interdisciplinary research. Embedded in the WEAVE international joint program it has the unique potential of creating synergies of scholars (including young, f/m/non-binary and from host countries) and research structures throughout Europe, Western Asia and the world.
Primary researchers involved: Marta Luciani (University of Vienna), WEAVE PI Austrian Unit, Lead Agency; Arnulf Hausleiter (DAI), WEAVE PI German Unit; Pamela Fragnoli (ÖAI/ÖAW); Johannes H. Sterba (TU Wien); Susanna Cereda (University of Innsbruck); Paul Donnelly (University of Sydney); William D. Gilstrap (M.I.T.), Joseph A. Greene (Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East); Ingolf Löffler (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum); Bill Finlayson, Pascal Flohr (University of Oxford); Zeidan Kafafi (Yarmouk University)
