Ellery Frahm 2014

“Buying local or ancient outsourcing? Locating production of prismatic obsidian blades in Bronze-Age Northern Mesopotamia,”
Journal of Archaeological Science 41, pp. 605-621.

Obsidian artefacts are indeed one of the most important elements in retracing ancient ores and commercial trades. This paper takes into account the prismatic obsidian blades from Urkesh, investigating the different patterns of exchange and the technical production of such items.

After an introduction on the topic of obsidian studies during last five decades (paragraph 1), defining the chronological horizon of this study (i.e. EBA, ca. 3300-1200 BC, a phase of increasing in urbanism and societal complexity), the focus moves to Tell Mozan, and particularly to the connection between Urkesh’s obsidian prismatic blades [for which see Chabot and Eid in Bianchi and Wissing 2009, pp. 803-820] and the so-called obsidian ‘Canaanean blades’, and identifying the most important ore for Urkesh’s obsidian (with the Bingöol deposits and the Göllu Daǧ mountain, both in Anatolia, ca. 77% of the samples [mostly coming from areas A, the Palace Area B, the Temple Area and J, the area of the Plaza]); paragraph 2 describes the difference in production and diffusion of ‘Canaanean’ and ‘non-Canaanean’ blades.

Paragraph 3 exposes the so-called ‘specialized blade export’ (SBE) hypothesis, while paragraph 4 groups the most important sources places or workshops of obsidian (specifying that “the SBE narrative […] assumes the social organization of workshops and special distributions of their products at urban centres” [p. 610]): Hacınebi, Titriş Höyuk, Hassek Höyuk and Tell Brak.

Paragraph 5 compares Tell Mozan’s obsidian artefacts (presenting chemical analyses) with obsidians coming from other sites: a group of 97 samples (ca. 12% of the total assemblage) have been dispatched abroad Syria to be analysed, spanning the late EBAIII to LBAII; these artefacts have been compared with other 200 sampling loci in Anatolia and the Caucasus, outlining the connections between the original place of the raw material and its final urban destination.

Among the two different types of obsidian (the calcalkaline and the peralkaline types), the former coming from both Bingöol deposits (Bingöol A and B), the latter originated both in the Bingöol province and in Nemrut Daǧ area [a discussion about the mechanism leading to the formation of obsidian is presented in sub-paragraph 5.4]: it resulted that at Tell Mozan both the groups are attested, hinting to a wide spreading of commercial trades with Eastern-central Anatolia (possibly, the ‘Urkeshians’ imported the row cores and the shaped them on site).

Comparisons are established (in sub-paragraphs 5.5-5.8) with other sites, such as Cafer Höyuk, Hassek Höyuk, Tell ’Atij, Tell Gudeda and Tell Brak. Paragraph 5.9 presents the results of obsidian data from Northern Mesopotamian area, underlining how “Tell Mozan has the most diverse obsidian assemblage, which exhibits the greatest overall similarity to nearby Tell Brak” (p. 616).

Paragraphs 6 and 7 trace the conclusions, interpreting ores and workshops and retracing the path that obsidian traversed from Anatolia to Northern Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age.

[About this topic, cf. mostly Frahm and Feinberg 2013a and Frahm and Feinberg 2013b].