EAA 2023: Abstract

The study of vessels’ biographies – namely the series of actions, customs, gestures and procedures taking place throughout their cycle of interactions with humans – is often dominated by a polarisation of the focus on a specific phase of their ‘lifetime’ and the heuristic perspective that follows. By studying the ceramic chaînes opératoires, one looks at the methods, structure and organisation of the past production systems and craftspeople behind them. While analysing shapes, decorations, functions and ways of deposition means investigating the practices of handling and disposal of the pottery users. The spatial contextualisation of the pottery chaînes opératoires, especially within the domestic spaces of living and working, constitutes an approach that makes it possible to interpolate the study of craft production with that of the practices performed with the pots. Through case studies of late prehistoric (5th and 4th millennia BCE) and Early Bronze Age (3th Millennium BCE) contexts from Tell Feres al-Sharqi (in the Syrian Jazeera, Hassake Province) and Logardan (in Iraqi Kurdistan, Sulaymaniyah Governorate), this paper aims to present and discuss the conditions allowing for the application of this approach, as well as its informative potential as a heuristic means. The aim is to show what the mapping of the spatial distribution of operational sequences can reveal about the relationships structurally linking the various phases of a vessel’s biography as a function of the social organisation of the community that produced, used and discarded it.

Ceramic chaînes opératoires, Pottery production, Vessels use, Vessels' Biographies

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Melania Zingarello²

Johnny Samuele Baldi¹