PETROGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF COLLAR RIM JARS FROM TALL AL-'UMAYRI, JORDAN

Development of technology and life in the ancient Middle East can be studied by looking at the ceramics industry of the region. Samples from the Tall al-‘Umayri region in Jordan were studied to get more insight into the past. These samples, from the Bronze/Iron Age, were made approximately six thousand years ago and represent a snap shot of the ceramics industry at that time. Previous work on samples of the same age from the Tall Hisban and Tell Jezreel areas of Jordan and Israel has been done (London et al., 2008) and the mineralogical composition has been found. In these studies religious artifacts and cooking pots were studied and were found to have had calcite added to the clay. The samples in this study are collar rim jars that were thought to be used for storage; these jars were very large, up to 1 meter in height.

Using standard petrographic microscope point counting techniques, samples of 30 jars were analyzed for their mineralogical composition. This study showed that these samples had quartz, chert, limestone, grog, and organics present, in addition to the clay of the jars. Organics are usually added so that they burn off during the firing process to create more voids in the pots. This in turn makes them lighter. With a 1 meter tall pot, this was likely a necessity. With the increase of voids it would have been necessary to make the pots stronger. This was accomplished by the addition of grog. Grog is broken up bits of clay from miss-fired or broken ceramics that are added to raw clay before the firing process. In the past, minerals such as calcite were ground up and added to cooking pots using a basalt pestle and mortar. The lack of calcite crystals and basalt fragments indicates there was little preparation work done to any of the clay, including the grog that was added. This indicates that the jars were not made to be of the quality that cooking pots and religious artifacts were made to be. More likely they were mass produced for quantity, not quality. These jars were thought to be used for storage, so a large number of them were going to be needed. The results of this study will be compared to previous studies of cookware and religious ceramic materials from this area.