Overview

For comments on the organization of assemblages in the field see the section on procedures in the Ceramic Digital book.

While a number of ED III ceramics were excavated in J5, the J5 corpus is important for a different reason, namely the fact that we had stratified in J5 ceramics from the Mittani period but even more importantly ceramics from the Middle Assyrian period, a period from which previously we had encountered very few ceramic samples.

Mittani ceramics had been excavated in other areas of JP but in J5 the special importance stemmed from the fact that the monumental stairway to the temple was no longer used but a new much reduced stairway was constructed to the west in J5. It is very unusual in Syro-Mesopotamia to find a change in access to a major temple and in this case it meant that a high stairway that had been used for centuries was for a number of reasons abandoned and a new, much shorter, entryway was constructed farther to the west.

The Mittani ceramics from J5 are similar to those from other areas of JP meaning that in the jars category hole mouth jars are popular, as are carinated and deep bowls. Drinking vessels are now usually footed goblets in J5; there were relatively few painted sherds discovered in J5 although in other excavation units in JP there were a relatively large number of Mittani painted sherds excavated.

A corpus of stratified Middle Assyrian ceramics was excavated for the first time in J5. It was principally from these assemblages that I created the Middle Assyrian Horizons catalog. The assemblages that were the foundation of my catalog primarily can be viewed in b1, b7, b8, b13.

We can see from the comparison of the extensive Mittani catalog to the limited Middle Assyrian catalog that there were overlaps in shape types although there were some new shapes in the Middle Assyrian period. Few vessels were decorated in this period. The wares in the Middle Assyrian period followed the usual earlier pattern of having been predominantly CH and RC but in this period CH ware had more sand added so that the vessels are generally heavier. In assemblage b11 we see the Middle Assyrian gray ware.

The list of assemblages is as follows: