"Steatite" Carvings of the Early Third Millennium B. C.

Author(s): Philip L. Kohl

Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Winter, 1976), pp. 73-75
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/502940
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1976] CHRONOLOGIES IN OLD WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY, 1973-1974 73
found in 1951 in Gordion, which Miss role
D.W.in connecting the East and the West. Zahn
Cox
took for products of a local Galatian mint. idea remained not undisputed, but only research
The fibu-
the lastac-
lae and the coins of our cemetery seem to reflect years has conclusively shown that such an
cordingly certain Galatian peculiarities. interpretation
This does is untenable. First of all the sha
not apply in the same way to the pottery. We vases
of the do are entirely different. It is true on t
other hand
not refer to some Megarian bowls and imitations of that a certain relationship between th
decoration
red Pergamon ware, but to a very frequent class of of the central European and the An
vases which was defined as Galatian bytolian
Robertvases is obvious. But in both cases the p
terns
Zahn as early as 1907 on the basis of old finds were evidently borrowed from Hellenist
from
sourcesthe
Gordion and Bogazk6y. The painting in bands, but without any connection between t
borrowers.
preference for white chalky colors, and the floral In our case the towns on the south coas
motives exhibiting a particular composition of the Pontos may have played a role in this r
char-
acterize this pottery as well as not a few spect.
vasesStronger
in is the dependence on the very lat
so-called
Europe, for instance from the Hradischt in Bo- Phrygian painted pottery, that is to s
hemia, from Manching in Bavaria, and from Bi-on local ware. Decisive is the fact that the distribu-
tion is
brachte in Gaul, all Celtic Oppida of the second and restricted nearly without exception to t
land of
of the first half of the first century B.C. It is there-the Trokmoi and its neighbourhood, b
not to the whole of Galatia. The land of the Trok-
fore easy to understand why Zahn considered this
moi
pottery in Asia Minor as the prototype of thewas the easternmost of the three Celtic tribes,
Late
thus they
Celtic Material in central and western Europe, and lived at the largest distance of all three
from
why in his opinion the Pontic Region andEurope.
the
course of the Danube upward played the mainOF
UNIVERSITY TUBINGEN

"Steatite" Carvings of the Early Third Millen

PHILIP L. KOHL

Carvings of a soft, darkish stone usually of bowls,

among participant sites emerged which would show
dating from an early period of Westernthat certain
Asiatic sites obtained their material from the
art,
have attracted the attention of scholars for more same postulated source area. This latter objective
than half a century. Excavations at Tepe Yahya could indicate preferential trading patterns, possibly
which have produced unquestionable evidence forindicative of historical, even political relationships.
the production of such carved stone objects, together Numerous techniques were employed: neutron
with the appearance of a corpus of such objectsactivation, X-ray fluorescence, petrographic thin sec-
found on the islands of Tarut and Failaka have tioning, Mossbauer spectroscopy, etc. Each comple-
given the impetus for a thesis which takes the evi-
mented the other and provided additional informa-
dence from Tepe Yahya as a point of departuretion but not every technique was pursued for all
but treats the entire material of these carvings
the samples collected. An initial group of samples
particularly from the viewpoint of the consistency
from Tepe Yahya submitted for neutron activation
of the stone in order to determine sources for the
in 1971 showed a surprisingly high content of Fe,
supply of the raw material. significantly higher than what could be expected
While Yahya was both an area where the stone for true steatites. This led to the discovery that the
was quarried and one where it was worked, such Yahya steatites were all chlorites! A sample from
a situation cannot be assumed for other sites; Ur
in-proved to be calcite and some uncarved exam-
stead, material may have been shipped in unfinished
ples from Tarut were phlogopites and serpentinites.
form to the western urban centers, where it was All samples therefore had to be tested by X-ray dif-
then carved. The purpose of my analysis was two-fraction for initial mineral identification. This re-
fold: to establish the minimum number of sourcesulted in the establishment of five groups which I
areas and to determine whether or not patterns
interpret as five distinct source areas:

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74 PHILIP L. KOHL [AJA 80
i. True Steatitesingle
Group-i6 exampl
deposit. It may
Adab, i each from Mari,
assign otherKish, and
chlorite
2. Chlorite A or in
"Sumerian"
this work. chlorit
These g
examples including
tically5 among 6 from
(the separati
examples
among 5 from Nippur, on the
2 among on
3 fro
6 from Tarut, also one example
Sumer on the other i from
3. Chlorite B orandYahya
seem group-20
to make sen e
cluding 5 from nature
Yahya, of7 chlorite,
from Sus th
Mari, 2 from Adab,
formed,and i from
the sizeSha
an
4. Chlorite D orposits,
Mari-Susa
one cangroup-1
only
including 6 fromnot Mari, 6 from
absolute Su
separatio
Yahya, and i fromTheTello.
elaborately carv
5. Chlorite E or tic
Susa-Persian Gulf g
mode of presentat
amples, including 8 from
tributed Susa,
over 3 fr
sever
2 from Bismaya, and 2 from Failak
these reasons the term
refer to the vessels
Before proceeding
sign with my interp
elements chara
these groups a few limitations
Style of these
can be distingu
to be pointed out. sel
First, chlorite from
fragments is a fa
mineral. Correspondence with
Southwest Asiageolog
can b
in southwest Asia has determined
the twelve basicits
motoc
southeastern Turkey
"hut"(Diyabakir regio
motif is illustr
Baluchistan, probably
in thewestern OmanS
Intercultural
sian Makran, and western Arabia.
tribution; More
examples h
though it has not been
the documented
Ferghana Valley
crushed zone, the
the Indus Valley,or
Sanandaj-Sirjan s
which extends through
Persian the Gulf, greater and, par po
The motives
ros mountains of western Iran. are With too
t
of the chlorite-steatite separation whic
cated accidentally. Th
tact, and my
and must be archaeologically meaningfu resear
this contact
represent a classification of chlorites took into the
ent types. This isized trade.
not a precise determ
The chronology of
parable to a fingerprint the carved is
that stone vessels
unique here o

VS

4)9W IN,
AM, -

4r

all

ILL. I. Plaque with Architectural Facade or Hut Design

from Tepe Yahya

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1976] CHRONOLOGIES IN OLD WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY, 1973-1974 75
considered is still a matter of discussion. The evi-
There remains the problem of the reason for im-
dence from Tepe Yahya shows that most butfinished
porting not products to Sumer which had its
all of the Intercultural Style vessels were own
distributed
workshops, and conversely, for exporting such
as follows: Level IVBI: 1-46; IVA: 8;goods
II: i;from
I: i;places like Tepe Yahya, Tall-i Iblis,
Surface or no context: 12. On the basis of the oc-etc., which represent autonomous highland cultures.
currence of all but two of the twelve major motifs Here the myth of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta
in the Intercultural Style in period IVBI, I believe(Kramer 1952) may be relevant. It will be recalled
that the style represents a unit of limited duration.that Enmerkar only forces the Lord of Aratta to
An alternative explanation would assign a long time submit and send the material needed for his tem-
to upper Yahya IVB. Incidentally, that is sup-ple when there is a drought and the Lord of Aratta
ported by C14 evidence: when one takes the fiveneeds grain for his people. The economy of Aratta
relevant upper IVB Level dates, applies the latestwas obviously not self-sufficient: it was specialized
MASCA correction factors and averages the re-and ultimately dependent upon Sumerian goods.
sults, one discovers that upper IVB could have On the other hand, Mesopotamia needed the con-
extended from 2948-2430 B.C. or roughly through- tinuous procurement of materials finished as well
out the entire Early Dynastic period! I believe, as unfinished because its own economy demanded
however, that the radiocarbon span merely under- markets in which it had to dump its goods. What I
scores the difficulty of using C14 dates for the lateam trying to depict is an unequal economic rela-
fourth and early third millennium B.C. when the
tionship between Sumer and Susa on one hand,
fluctuations of radiocarbon years with the absolute and the highland cultures on the other. It is a form
dates from the bristlecone pine sequence are par-
of economic exploitation which, in this case, pre-
ticularly pronounced.
ceded the political conquest of the Akkad Dynasty.
In view of the acknowledged fact that some of
Finally some remarks have to be made about
the vessels discovered in the urban centers of West-
the sudden appearance of the designs of the Inter-
ern Asia arrived there in finished form and in view
cultural Style at Yahya, where chlorite had been
of the inherently unstable character of archaic trade,
worked for millennia without any trace of such
a limited duration of production of Intercultural
designs. In addition to the trade relations men-
Style vessels is proposed. I favor at present a termi-
tioned before, one begins to perceive also an inter-
nal Early Dynastic II date-accepting the nomencla-
ture for the Diyala valley-for the florescence ofcultural ideology. It is not accidental that the first
signs of real social stratification in eastern Iran, the
this style. A tentative historical explanation for the
phenomenon of the wide distribution of the carv- evidence from the cemetery of Shahdad, follows
ings belonging to the Intercultural Style, would closely the production and trade in finished Inter-
associate it with the Elamite hegemony over lower national Style vessels of chlorite. Both the large
Mesopotamia at the end of the Second Early Dynas- urban centers in Mesopotamia and Khuzestan and
tic period ca. 2600 B.C. (W.W. Hallo, The Ancientthe autonomous highland communities underwent
Near East, A History [Atlanta 19711 p. 40). Kingprofound changes as a result of this long-distance
Lugalannemundu of Adab is said to have restoredtrade. The pantheons of Sumer and Elam were
Sumer. If the Intercultural Style is taken to beenriched and the introduction of hierarchically or-
Elamite, the dominance of Susa in three groups of dered deities on the Iranian plateau mirrored the
carved bowls and the peculiar status of Adab with emergence of ranked societies.
its striking yield of true steatites might be chrono-
logically meaningful. WELLESLEY COLLEGE

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