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Syria Archéologie, art et histoire 93 | 2016 Dossier : L’épigraphie grecque et latine au Proche- Orient (Jordanie, Liban, Syrie) EB IVB pottery from Tell Qaramel (western Syria) Dorota Ławecka Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/syria/4566 DOI: 10.4000/syria.4566 ISSN: 2076-8435 Publisher IFPO - Institut français du Proche-Orient Printed version Date of publication: 1 November 2016 Number of pages: 201-234 ISBN: 978-2-35159-723-1 ISSN: 0039-7946 Electronic reference Dorota Ławecka, « EB IVB pottery from Tell Qaramel (western Syria) », Syria [Online], 93 | 2016, Online since 01 November 2018, connection on 20 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ syria/4566 ; DOI : 10.4000/syria.4566 © Presses IFPO 202 D. łAWECKA Syria 93 (2016) INTRODUCTION Tell Qaramel is located in western Syria, ca 25 km to the north of Aleppo, on the western bank of the Queiq River valley (ig. 1). Excavations of a Syrian-Polish archaeological expedition, co-directed by Prof. R. Mazurowski and Dr B. Jamous (superseded by N. Awad, T. Yartah, Y. Al-Dabti and Dr Y. Kanjou), started there in spring of 1999 and were conducted till 2011. 1 Although the site is mostly renowned for its early Neolithic settlement, it also yielded remnants of later occupation, dating up to the Hellenistic period. 2 During the ield seasons of 2000 and 2001, an undisturbed layer of Early Bronze IV date resting directly on Pre-Pottery Neolithic remains was explored in trench K5 (ig. 2). The pottery assemblage presented below comes for the most part from two structures: Locus 12 and Locus 6, the latter just partly explored (ig. 3). 3 Locus 6, situated in the northern part of the trench and partially outside its limit, consisted of a large, oval depression sloping towards the center, with loor made of white gypsum or chalk, surrounded on the east by walls made of stone and on the west, by walls of small pebbles and mud. Both the shape of the structure and its ill (layers of grey, ashy earth with charred grain remains) point to its possible function as a grain silo. It could be accessed by a corridor limited by stone walls abutting the oval structure, leading to an entrance located on the southern side of the silo. Locus 12 in the southern part of the trench was a very regular round pit with a lat bottom, 2.56 m in diameter and 2.4 m deep. A particularly abundant collection of pottery was retrieved from this pit, the purpose of which remains unclear. The pit was illed with alternating layers of gray earth, red mud and black ash; although in secondary context, sherds from locus 12 seem to constitute a homogenous group with pottery from locus 6, both coming from the same occupational level. An overwhelming majority of pottery presented here (15 vessels and 225 sherds) comes from these two structures, with occasional fragments yielded by the same layer in trench K5. THE POTTERY The majority of the vessels is wheel-made (except for most Kitchen Ware vessels and storage jars that seem to have been usually hand-made and only inished on the wheel). The pottery presented here is exclusively mineral-tempered, almost invariably with sand and/or limestone (which is easily accessible in the nearest vicinity of the site), or —in the case of Kitchen Ware sherds— with calcite particles. Simple Ware ine and common vessels are usually well ired, and both thehapes s and the fabrics are largely standardized. An extensive collection of goblets and conical cups was found, some of them intact or fully restorable (pl. 1-3, 8: 15-22, 14: 3-5). They belong to a ceramic assemblage characteristic primarily for western inland Syria in the EB IV period, which used to be called the “Caliciform Ware” 4. Goblets are of various proportions, from rather long and slender (pl. 2: 1-5) to quite pot-bellied in shape (pl. 1: 2). The bottoms are invariably equipped with ring bases (no lat or bell-shaped bases are present among the fully preserved specimens); the rims are usually beaded, sometimes shaped as a lattened bead. They are, as a rule, well ired, wheel-made and corrugated inthe upper half of their 1. Preliminary reports on the ield activities can be found in consecutive volumes of Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (PAM), beginning with vol. XI (2000). The results of 1999–2007 excavation seasons of Protoneolithic and early Pre- Pottery Neolithic layers were summed up in MAZUROWSKI & KANJOU 2012. 2. MAZUROWSKI 2000, p. 286 f. 3. MAZUROWSKI & YARTAH 2002, p. 301. The wall of Locus 6 in best preserved area was irst spotted ca 1.4 m below the surface of the trench; Locus 12 was dug from the level corresponding to the entrance to Locus 6, ca 2.2 m below the surface. 4. Known also as “Hama beakers/goblets”, “Corrugated Ware”, or “Simple Ware” (WELTON & COOPER 2014, p. 325). The term “Caliciform Ware” is presently considered inappropriate and has been dismissed (WELTON & COOPER 2014, p. 325; MAZZONI 2002, p. 75). Syria 93 (2016) EB IVB POTTERY FROM TELL QARAMEL (WESTERN SYRIA) 203 Figure 1. Map of northwestern Syria showing location of the sites mentioned in the text © D. Ławecka. bodies. 5 Their fabric is rather ine, tempered with thin sand and small limestone particles (sometimes quite abundant and visible on the surface). The surface color is usually pale yellow or very pale brown, more rarely reddish yellow, pink or light grey. Contrary to the EB IVB pottery assemblage from Tell Mardikh, which abounds in painted vessels, 6 only the upper parts of a few painted goblets were found, with simple or slightly out-turned rims (pl. 14: 3-5). The paint is black/dark grey or dark red on very pale brown or pale yellow background. The painted patterns are typical for the EB IVB period (with close analogies in early EB IVB material from Tell Mardikh and other sites, cf. Appendix) and consists of horizontal bands of varying width, wavy lines (pl. 14: 3, 4), or horizontal painted bands with very ine combed belt cutting through the painted decoration (pl. 14: 5). Two bell-shaped bases shown in pl. 9: 15, 16 most probably belonged to the painted specimens. The majority of small, thin-walled conical cups are of the corrugated variety (pl. 3: 1-13) with straight or slightly curved sides and simple rims. They were made of iney, clatempered with tiny limestone particles and ine-grained sand. The surface color is usually light, from very pale-light brown to pale yellow, reddish yellow and pink. Usually the bottoms are lat, withces tra of string-cutting visible. The cup shown in pl. 3: 5 is the only example of slightly incised ring base. 7 5. According to WELTON & COOPER 2014, p. 328, it is still unknown if the goblets were irst made by hand-coiling before being shaped on the wheel or wheel-thrown in their entity from a lump of clay. 6. SALA 2012, p. 65-72. 7. Cf. WELTON & COOPER 2014, p. 332, pl. 4: 1, 2. 204 D. łAWECKA Syria 93 (2016) Figure 2. Tell Qaramel, plan of the site showing excavated areas (1999-2007, after MAZUROWSKI 2010, p. 566, ig. 1). Syria 93 (2016) EB IVB POTTERY FROM TELL QARAMEL (WESTERN SYRIA) 205 Figure 3. Tell Qaramel, trench K5. Remains of EB IV structures (after MAZUROWSKI & YARTAH 2002, p. 302, ig. 8). 206 D. łAWECKA Syria 93 (2016) Quite often the color or shade of the lower part of the goblets’ and bowls’ outside surface differs from that of their upper parts, but the difference is usually slight, e.g. yellow vs. buff, yellowish green vs. green, brown vs. darker brown. This seems to have resulted from a particular arrangement of the vessels inside the kiln, where they were stacked upside down, partially one inside another, which produced somewhat different iring conditions for the covered and the uncovered vessel parts.8 The other Simple Ware vessels (bowls, jars, pots) are of good quality and sand- and limestone tempered; only the intensity of the iller, proportion of the components and size ofrticles pa varies. Only few sherds seem to be lacking the limestone temper. The vesselswere made of ine clay, and are generally well ired, hard and wet-smoothed. Overired sherds are rare, but in some instances the limestone (?) grains look as if they had melted and partially evaporated. A sizeable collection of medium-sized bowls was found. Their surface is always light colored, from light red and brown to very pale brown and pale yellow. When the shape is complete, those bowls feature ring bases. Two most typical varieties of these bowls are attested: one with a carination and an upright or inverted, beaded rim (pl. 4: 1-12), the other without carination, with rounded body and crescentic, inverted, sometimes grooved or externally modelled rim, occasionally with a cordon below the rim (pl. 5: 1-13, 16). The best general analogy is provided by the pottery from a kiln dump at Tell Kadrich. 9 No typical grooved-rim bowls, predominant in the Tell Mardikh area and probably introduced from the Euphrates area, 10 were attested. However, in the sequence from Hama, these bowls appear late, that is in level J1, which may account for their absence in the Qaramel collection. 11 The jars’ surface is also light-colored, mostly pale yellow or pale/very pale brown, more rarely light red or light reddish brown. They come in two most common varieties: thin-walled jars with everted, beaded (pl.