A fresh look at Hama in an inter-regional context. New data from phase J materials in the National Museum of Denmark

80 years after their completion, the Danish excavations at Hama (1931–1938) are still crucial for the understanding of the whole Early Bronze Age in Western Syria (ca. 3000–2000 BC), from an archaeological point of view. The National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen legally hosts a collection of around 5000 artefacts dating from Period J, which were left largely unpublished after Ingholt’s and Fugmann’s preliminary studies between the 1930s and the 1950s. Therefore, in 2015 the present authors began to undertake a complete re-examination of the Hama Bronze Age corpus, based on the artefacts and the field documentation stored at the museum, aiming at a comprehensive publication of these records. This article presents the first results of this joint initiative, focusing on a group of 14 vessels and sherds from Phases J6–3 (dated to late Early Bronze IVA and B, ca. 2400–2000 BC) that reveal a thus far unexploited potential of the Hama corpus in Copenhagen for the discussion of inter-regional connections during the Early Bronze Age. In fact, the location of Hama contributed to its importance in communication routes, and the wealth of imported ceramics in Period J attests to its connections to multiple networks.