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Halaf pottery |
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Halaf pottery like this is amongst the finest of the ancient world, hand-made and well-fired, and painted with imaginative designs in one or two colours. Each site made some of its own pottery but imported the rest from nearby centres and even from sites further afield. The finest polychrome Halaf vessels came from the potter's workshop at Arpachiyah. This site and that at Tepe Gawra have produced typical eastern Halaf ware, while a rather different western Halaf version is known from such Syrian sites as Carchemish (a Syrian city on the Upper Euphrates which became important under the later Mitanni and Assyrian periods) and Halaf itself. The pottery had a fine painted monochrome or polychrome finish in black, brown, or red, on a buff background which was burnished. Other vessels were coarser and were undecorated with hand-smoothed surfaces. These classes of pottery were typical of the pre-Halaf period but they continued to be made by the Halaf culture. Such Halaf shards are indistinguishable from Neolithic examples.
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