Carvajal López, Priestman & Georgakopoulou, 2023: New Information on Late Antique to Early Islamic Ceramic Production and Distribution in the Gulf. Petrography of Samples from Siraf, Bushehr, and Fulayj (original) (raw)

Carvajal López, J.C., Priestman, S.M.N. & Georgakopoulou, M. 2023: ‘New information on late antique to early Islamic ceramic production and distribution in the Gulf. Petrography of samples from Siraf, Bushehr, and Fulayj’, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 52: 17-34.

In this paper a new petrographic study of ceramics from the late antique to the early Islamic period in the Gulf is presented. The paper considers samples from Siraf (Iran), excavated by David Whitehouse (from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK), samples from the Iranian coast (recovered by Andrew Williamson, Durham University, UK), and samples from Fulayj, Oman (excavated by a team co-directed by Seth Priestman, Nasser Al-Jahwari, Eve MacDonald, and Derek Kennet). The technique of analysis is petrography, which offers compositional (mineralogy and petrology) and textural information (distribution and arrangement of inclusions). This technique can be used to interpret the technological procedures involved in the manufacturing of ceramics and to characterize products from particular areas, thus helping to clarify trends of distribution of wares across time. The samples of these collections have been classified according to Priestman's Indian Ocean Pottery Classification (IOPC; Priestman 2021), providing an important link between macroscopic and microscopic analyses. The results are also compared with samples previously analysed from Murwab and the Old Doha excavations, providing an overview of the production technology and exchange of ceramics in the early Islamic Gulf over the longue durée.