Late Trade Wares on Arabian Shores: 18thc to 20th century imported fine ware ceramics from excavated sites on the southern Persian (Arabian) Gulf coast. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Otte & Priestman, 2022: European Trade Ceramics on the Arabian Peninsula 1800-1960
Otte, J.P.W. & Priestman, S.M.N. 2022: ‘European trade ceramics on the Arabian Peninsula 1800-1960’, Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy, 33: 248–293. https://doi.org/10.1111/aae.12217
European trade ceramics found across Arabia date from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries and were made at factories mostly located within northwest Europe. After c. 1930, imitations of European ceramics are increasingly represented from factories in Japan and later China. Combining the information from archaeological excavations on the Arab coast of the Gulf and ceramics from museum and private collections, information from the archives of the British India Office and the Maastricht pottery order books for Arabia, a relatively detailed overview of this market for trade ceramics can be reconstructed. Three key points may be highlighted: First, the complex routes via which European ceramics arrived within Arabia, second, the significance of the link between producers and consumers on opposite sides of the globe, exemplified by specific designs and types of vessels manufactured for the Arabian market, and third, new layers of meaning that were given to such objects as they were incorporated into the homes, social fabric and the lives of people in Arabia.
Sourcing Indian Ceramics in Arabia: Actual Imports and Local Imitations
Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Vol 45, 2015
Excavations in south and southeast Arabia are progressively revealing the participation of the region in the network of international trade and exchange across the Indian Ocean in the Late Pre-Islamic period (c.3rd century BC - c.3rd century AD). The position of the Oman Peninsula within this Indian Ocean network is highlighted in part by the Indian pottery repertoire at sites like Mleiha, Ed-Dur, Suhar and Khor Rori. This paper examines the evidence from specific Indian vessel forms and fabric based on archaeological data, visual (microscopic) examination and results from petrographic analysis of pottery samples. The main objective of this paper is to identify distinguishing features between ‘actual imports’ and ‘local imitations’ of Indian ceramics in Arabia based on data from morphological and fabric analysis. This includes first, a discussion on imported wares in Arabia relating to source or production areas in India. Second, evidence is presented for ceramics most likely produced in Arabia by adopting similar techniques as attested in the Indian subcontinent, but using local clays. Alternatively, imports or pottery styles from Egypt or Arabia that were introduced into the subcontinent are discussed, suggesting a hypothethical transfer of technology linked to the movement of people between India and Arabia.
Egitto e vicino oriente
Over the last few years the Chinese porcelain found in ports and urban centres involved in inter-Asian trade along the Indian Ocean routes, together with material from the wrecks of merchant ships and collections, has offered ample evidence for the study of the cultural, economic and social relations between the various entities involved in this network of commercial and diplomatic exchanges. This is particularly true for the period preceding the advent of the European powers along these routes and their subsequent predominance as from the 16th century. It is a period that is increasingly being studied to re-evaluate the globalization processes in the ancient world. Here, Chinese porcelain represents material evidence that we can, without the least exaggeration, define as incomparable. In fact, the origins of and trade in raw materials and technologies, the hybridization of decorative motives and forms, and the wide-ranging diffusion and re-elaboration of practices and meanings associated with Chinese porcelain and stoneware, attest to intercultural dynamics and a global or, better, glocal utilization of these materials. In the broader context of relations between China and the Arabian Peninsula, few sites offer such remarkable leads for analysis of the connections between the production, reception, and use of Chinese porcelain during the Islamic period. This article focuses mainly on the period between 1279 and 1435, which saw the trade between China and Arabia, together with the consumption and impact of Chinese porcelain on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, at its most flourishing.
Ceramics of the Qatar National Museum
This report presents a selection of traditional earthenwares in the collection of the Qatar National Museum, as used in Qatar and the wider Gulf region during the 19th and 20th centuries AD. Also presented are numerous complete examples of imported European and Far Eastern decorated ceramics (mainly porcelains and Refined White Earthenwares), which give an insight into elite tastes and trading patterns during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Arabian archaeology and epigraphy, 2005
Recently obtained ceramic compositional data from the late Iron Age sites of Tepe Yahya in Iran and Sharm in the United Arab Emirates is presented in this paper. Analysis of this data suggests that a distinctive ceramic, Burnished Maroon Slipped Ware (BMSW), was produced somewhere in southern Iran and exported across the Gulf to eastern Arabia. That this trade was not limited to any defined historical period, such as that represented by the Achaemenid Empire, is suggested by a series of new AMS C14 dates from Tepe Yahya. The paper concludes with speculative comments on the possible elite nature of BMSW in societies on either side of the Straits of Hormuz.
An interplay of imports and local traditions? The pottery assemblage from Dosariyah, Saudi Arabia
C. Kainert and P. Drechsler, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 44, 213‒226, 2014
This paper presents the first results of the pottery analysis from Dosariyah, a Middle Neolithic site located close to the shore of the Central Gulf in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, which dates to the late sixth and early fifth millennium BC. With almost 15,000 single pieces of pottery, the assemblage recovered from the site represents the largest amount of ceramic material of this period that is known from the whole Arabian Peninsula. Its examination will provide data concerning the relationship between, and diachronic changes in, the two main types of pottery, ΚUbaid Ware and Coarse Ware, during the time of habitation. Both wares appear from the beginning of occupation onwards but their characteristics vary in numerous aspects, a fact that points towards an independent and indigenous ceramic tradition of the Coarse Ware. At the same time the occurrence of three Coarse Ware pieces bearing an incised decoration with a geometrical pattern and two Coarse Ware rim fragments apparently imitating a specific ΚUbaid vessel shape led to questioning the actual value of the vessels as well as the consistency of availability of imported pots from distant regions, such as southern Mesopotamia.