‘The Uruk Phenomenon’: Ceramic Variation and Cultural Connections in the 4th Millennium BCE in the Zagros Foothills

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• Michael Lewis, University of Cambridge.
• Friday 04 June 2021, 13:15-14:00
• Online via zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Laura Courto.

https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwtduGqrjMrH9GGMdDCoq5KW41YIplLr1Ot

Extensive excavation and survey of Late Chalcolithic (c.4500-3100BCE) archaeological sites of northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, Syria, south-eastern Turkey and western Iran) have highlighted a pan-Mesopotamian web of shared cultural practices, architecture, administrative technology and pottery. These excavations allowed for several important syntheses, most famously from a World Systems perspective to account for these cultural connections.

The Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRG) has been off limits to archaeological research until the last decade. Since then, new archaeological investigations have begun to take a bottom-up, detail-oriented approach to investigate the Uruk Phenomenon. This presentation is based on data collected from several sites as part of my PhD. Through a multidisciplinary approach utilising macroscopic inspection, ceramic petrography, geochemical analysis, and FTIR , I will discuss ceramic manufacture and production before, during and after the Uruk Phenomenon and use these results to discuss issues regarding the nature of the Uruk transmission into the KRG as well as raising issues of individual and group identity.

It is hoped by the end of the presentation to begin to place the sites and their communities within the wider context of the social transformations of the Late Chalcolithic and how they were affected by the Uruk Phenomenon.

This talk is part of the Pitt-Rivers Archaeological Science Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• Online via zoom
• Pitt-Rivers Archaeological Science Seminar Series

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