Anna Smogorzewska

     The paper describes some horseshoe-shaped hearths and props. Two complete andirons are found in an ED III/Akkadian context (p. 143), one of them with three pierced knobs on the inside. Another from the Late Ninevite 5 period was found in a room with evidence of “post-consupmption bone remains and drinking vessels with pointed bases” which “look like debris left behind afetr a social gathering, durign which the hearth and its embers may have been used for toasting or grilling meat. [...] Some bones found in this room belonged to pigs – they included the skeleton of a very young piglet” (p. 147).
     While references to either the Urkesh andirons (Kelly-Buccellati 2004 and Kelly-Buccellati 2005) or the use of piglets in the abi (Kelly-Buccellati 2002 [German]/Kelly-Buccellati 2002 [English]) are missing, the opinion of the excavators of a similar andiron in Beidar is quoted, according to which the andirons would reveal an influence of the Early Transcaucasian culture.
     The author does not accept this view, on the basis that andirons are not unique to these two cultures. – [However, the comparison is valid because of the similarities in the decorative patterns pointed out by Kelly-Buccellati 2003].

[G. Buccellati – September 2010]