Not only painted. A re-examination of the pottery assemblage from the site of Hajji Muhammad. A techno-morphological approach

The Early Chalcolithic period (end of the seventh–mid-sixth millennium BCE) witnessed the appearance of the so-called “Early Ubaid” pottery assemblage in Southern Mesopotamia. Several studies have recognized different pottery phases (Ubaid 0–2) mainly on the basis of painted decorative styles; each phase labelled with the name of the site in which the “style” was discovered first (respectively “Oueili”, “Eridu”, and “Hajji Muhammad”). However, a broader discussion about “style” has revealed that this concept is related not only to painted designs, but also to technical choices made by potters. In this paper, the autoptic analysis of a selection of sherds from the site of Qal’at Hajji Muhammad (the typesite of Ubaid 2 phase), conducted at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, has resulted in: on the one hand, debating the uses of the term “Hajji Muhammad” in the archaeological literature; on the other hand, detecting the manufacturing processes through which the analyzed vessels have been realized to broaden the definition of “style” to include technological aspects. Preliminary results highlight distinctive technological traits of the analyzed repertoire. Ubaid pottery assemblages can be analyzed with this approach, using a technological point of view based on pottery production to detect similarities or differences site by site and region by region within the “Ubaid horizon.”