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The Relevance of the Diyala Sequence to South Mesopotamian Sites
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
Extract
The Chicago Oriental Institute excavations in the Diyala region have contributed much to our knowledge of the latter part of the Uruk period (including the Jamdat Nasr phase) as well as to more than six later stages of Mesopotamian history. The ceramic material of these periods has been thoroughly presented in Delougaz's long and valuable publication, Pottery from the Diyala Region. Some early and middle Uruk sherds were found, but not in their proper stratigraphical context; the earliest pottery excavated in situ dates from phases ‘c’ and ‘d’ of what Delougaz calls the ‘Protoliterate Period’, and these are equivalent to the late Uruk or Jamdat Nasr phase, which extends, in the E-anna sequence, from the end of Warka IV to the beginning of Warka II. This material comes from three sites: Tell Asmar, Tell Agrab, and Khafajah. At the two former sites deep soundings driven to virgin soil produced sherds of Protoliterate ‘d’, but the stratigraphical value of these soundings is limited, as the floor-levels could not be distinguished and the sequence had therefore to be determined by depth. Protoliterate ‘d’ material also came from in and under the earliest Abu Temple at Tell Asmar. Khafajah, however, produced much well-stratified material, especially from the Sin Temple; this was founded on debris of Protoliterate ‘c’ during the same phase, and continuously repaired and rebuilt at least until ED III b.
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- Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1967
References
1 OIP 63; pp. 27 ffGoogle Scholar. This lists the areas in which ‘Protoliterate’ material was found. Cf. also OIP 58, p. 8, n. 10Google Scholar.
2 OIP 63; p. 126Google Scholar.
3 Mackay: 1931; pl. LXXIX, nos. 2 and 3 resemble OIP 63, pl. 18 c and d, and belong to the first variety, and Mackay's pl. LXXVI, nos. 1 and 3, are typical of the second variety as shown by OIP LXIII, pls. 33–36.
4 JNES 2, pl. XXVI; these pots, which were found in one group, all belong to the second variety, as shown by OIP 63, pls. 33–36.
5 UVB 4, pl. 20Cp and pl. 21d; the hourglass ornament in the former is typical of the later variety, and so are the vertical sigazags on the latter.
6 e.g. UVB 4, pl. 21 a, b, and c.
7 Thus UVB 4, pl. 21 d, may well have belonged to a squat jar with pronounced shoulders like those on OIP 63, pl. 35.
8 UVB 14, pls. 41 and 48–50.
9 Heinrich, E., Kleinfunde aus den archaischen Tempelschichten in Uruk, 1936, pls. 2, 3, and 38Google Scholar.
10 OIP 63, p. 43Google Scholar.
11 An alabaster vase in the shape of a bird was found in the white Temple at Warka; cf. UVB 3, pl. 18a.
12 Telloh 1, pl. III, no. 5481; Mackay: 1931, pl. LXXVI, fig. 3.
13 Iraq 28, p. 50Google Scholar; Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, 1965, p. 209Google Scholar, mentions a few sherds from Nippur which might be scarlet ware.
14 OIP 63, p. 38Google Scholar.
15 Ibid., p. 39.
16 Ibid., p. 128.
17 Ibid., pp. 56 and 138.
18 Ibid., p. 56 f.
19 Ibid., p. 138, referring to UVB 4, pl. 20 Al′and Bd.′
20 UE, p. 27.
21 UVB 4, pls. 18 C-20 C, passim.
22 UVB 4, pl. 18 Cn, represents a possible example of this type in E-anna VIII, and this has been included on chart II; it is however extremely doubtful.
23 Unpublished; personal communication.
24 UE 1, p. 186 and pl. LVGoogle Scholar; UE 4, p. 150 f. and pl. 56Google Scholar.
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31 Ibid., p. 42 and pl. 23, 1.
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33 OIP 63, p. 135 fGoogle Scholar.
34 Delougaz's references are to pl. 10a–e of Woolley's The Development of Sumerian Art, but most of these pieces are also illustrated on pl. 25 of UE 4: a is U.19980, b is U.19981, c is JNG/328 type 38, and d resembles e which is U.19985.
35 UE 4, p. 28Google Scholar.
36 Cf. n. 33 above.
37 Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, 1965, p. 209Google Scholar; stone vases of this shape were found in Telloh ‘D’ and ‘E’, near the bottom of the sounding, but the stratification is unreliable (Telloh 1, pls. 4, nos. 2 and 3, and X, nos. 5203 and 5294).
38 Two types, nos. 162 and 167, among the Jamdat Nasr pottery on pls. 56–64 of UE 4, were found, as the text on p. 154Google Scholar makes clear, in Early Dynastic levels and should be dated to this period; but the remainder, though some of them continue into ED I, are attributable without difficulty to the end of the Jamdat Nasr phase.
39 OIP 63, pls. 36e and 98n.
40 Ibid., pl. 146.
41 Ibid., p. 135 f.