NEAF Grant-in-Aid Report
Bronze Age Pottery from Tell Abraq, United Arab Emirates
Diane Barker
Near Eastern Archaeology Department, Sydney University Australia
The prehistoric site of Tell Abraq, which
is located on the border of the emirates
of Sharjah and Umm al-Qaiwain in the
United Arab Emirates, is typical in only
one respect. The areas excavated to date
have produced a significant amount of
the most ubiquitous artefact known to
archaeologists: pottery.
The ceramics from Tell Abraq dating from
ca. 2,300 to 1,300/1,250 B.C. form a major
component of my doctoral thesis on the
Bronze Age at Tell Abraq. The site, with
its continuous archaeological sequence
spanning over 2,000 years, is thought
to be an ancient settlement of the region
known in Mesopotamian textual sources
TA 6000 showing a possible proto-cuneiform inscription “NINDA” or
as Magan. The nature of the settlement
“GAR” meaning “bread” or “(grain) ration”.
remains together with the artefacts from the
site suggest that Tell Abraq was a significant settlement of Magan during the Bronze Age and indeed, up until
the end of the Iron Age.
In 2007, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a NEAF Grant-in-Aid to participate in the new excavations
at Tell Abraq. The site had not been excavated for nine years and the fresh excavations presented me with a
valuable opportunity to gather further important data for my project. I conducted my research as part of the
joint Bryn Mawr College/University of Tübingen Archaeological Project in the Emirate of Sharjah, directed
by Associate Professor Peter Magee and co-directed by Professors Margarethe and Hans-Peter Uerpmann.
The work was carried out under the auspices of Sharjah’s Directorate of Antiquities on the western (Sharjah)
side of the mound. The 2007 season was invaluable in that it allowed me to acquaint myself more fully with
what is one of the most important – and archaeologically complex! – sites in the Arabian Peninsula.
Towards the end of 2007, the team was preparing to return to the site for further excavations and I was awarded
a 2008 NEAF Grant-in-Aid for fieldwork expenses associated with the ongoing excavations. Unfortunately,
for various logistical reasons, the fieldwork was unable to proceed and the 2008 season was rather quickly
transformed into a study season in Sharjah Archaeological Museum where my aim was to analyse the 1998
settlement pottery. This was an essential task that I was hoping to somehow fit in between long days in the
field. As it turned out, I was able to devote a considerable period of time – close to a full month – to examining
the Bronze Age pottery.
The Bronze Age pottery in Sharjah Archaeological Museum is extremely valuable from an archaeological
perspective because of the unfortunate loss of many of the artefacts from the excavations carried out in Umm
al-Qaiwain between 1989 and 1994. Although I will have to be content with examining only the pottery
profiles for the first five seasons, the 1998 pottery presents a different situation altogether. This corpus remains
the only large, complete, stratigraphically reliable and accessible collection of Bronze Age pottery from the
site. It is therefore crucial to my research aim of tracing the internal development of the Bronze Age ceramic
sequence.
As soon as I arrived for work in the Museum, I was given an inventory listing the location of every bag
and box of Tell Abraq pottery in the storeroom. I was ready to get to work. When I did start to explore the
storeroom, however, my heart sank. There were numerous boxes holding thousands upon thousands of sherds
of both diagnostic and non-diagnostic pottery from the site – all from a single season! I knew from the start of
my research trip that this was going to be a much bigger job than I had previously anticipated.
I started by limiting the scope of what I wanted to achieve in the short term. I had about one month to get
through as much as I possibly could. That meant focusing on the diagnostic sherds for the time being. Some
of those sherds had been registered already, while most of them were still awaiting registration.
Although most of the non-diagnostic sherds had been separated from the diagnostic sherds, I decided to sort
through them again, and in doing so, re-organise them according to locus numbers to make future study easier.
This process certainly paid off with a very interesting find in one of the non-diagnostic bags part-way through
the season.
During the course of sorting through all of the individual bags of non-diagnostic sherds, I happened upon a bag
of pottery from locus 1031. This locus was dug in an effort to define the limits of the late Umm an-Nar period
tomb (ca. 2,100 B.C.) located on the western flank of the tell and which spans the cusp of the late third/early
second millennium deposits at the site. As I was sorting through the pottery, I picked up a fairly non-descript
pinkish/buff sherd made from a fine but dense, non-local fabric. As I did so, some dirt fell out of an incised
design on the exterior of the sherd, revealing a bowl-shaped motif with a horizontal line about a third of the
way down from the top (figure 1).
Not being at all familiar with ancient scripts or symbols, I sought the opinion of Peter Magee whose immediate
reaction was that the motif might represent the Sumerian symbol for “ration”. A short time later, Dan Potts
confirmed by email from Iran that the inscription does indeed bear a striking resemblance to the ancient protocuneiform symbol NINDA (or GAR) meaning “bread” or “(grain) ration” (see Friberg, 1999: 121). It has been
suggested that this shape is derived from the ubiquitous “bevel-rimmed bowls” of the late fourth millennium
B.C., a leitfossil of the Late Uruk period in Mesopotamia. It is believed that bevel-rimmed bowls carried dry
goods such as grain, perhaps used as payment for goods or services, in the form of labourers’ daily rations
(Nissen, 1988: 83-85, fig. 33; Englund, 2004: 147, n.27). In the case of the Tell Abraq example, it is possible
that the incised motif was used to describe the contents of the original vessel.
Whether the sherd does in fact represent a genuine example of proto-cuneiform script is still a moot point,
although there are several possible explanations for the presence of this unusual sherd in locus 1031.
Proto-cuneiform was used during the late Uruk period, ca. 3,300 – 3,000 B.C. (Nissen, 1988: 5 (fig. 1), 14,
83-85). However, the Umm an-Nar tomb was built approximately 1,000 years later. From a chronological
perspective, the presence of a late fourth millennium B.C. sherd in a late third millennium B.C. context would
ordinarily suggest some form of contamination. However, it might also represent deliberate (re-) deposition a
considerable period of time after the date of manufacture. But does this theory hold any weight?
To date, there have been no clear prehistoric levels excavated or identified at the site. However, prehistoric
material has been found several kilometres north of Tell Abraq consisting of painted ‘Ubaid pottery and
fine, pressure-flaked flint tools (Boucharlat et al., 1991: 65-71; Potts, 1991: 19-20). Given the possibility of
prehistoric occupation within reasonably close proximity to the site, it is perhaps not inconceivable that a late
fourth millennium vessel found its way to the site and ultimately, into the tomb.
Furthermore, the burial of “heirlooms” dating to an earlier period is not unknown in the Arabian Peninsula.
For instance, the second millennium tomb at Sharm in Fujairah on the east coast of the U.A.E. contained two
“série ancienne” (or “intercultural style”) soft stones vessels dating to the third millennium B.C. (Ziolkowski,
2001: tables 1-3 & fig. 1-2).
Another possibility for the Tell Abraq sherd is that it was a “copycat” inscription, perhaps reflecting the much
later use of an earlier script, the reason for which we can only guess.
The final possibility is that the inscription does not have any meaning, at least not in terms of the prehistoric
proto-cuneiform repertoire.
Whatever the explanation, the sherd (later registered as TA 6000) remains the only possible example of proto-
cuneiform script found in the Arabian Peninsula. Its unusual fabric, which is very different from the types of
local fabrics used during the late third and early second millennia B.C., is probably indicative of an import.
If the sherd was originally buried in the tomb, it would certainly reflect the general pattern of artefacts found
in that context – imported luxury items from as far afield as modern-day Iraq, east-central and south-eastern
Iran, western Pakistan, northern Afghanistan and southern Uzbekistan (Potts, 2000: 123-131). As simple as
the design is, its presence at the site has potentially broad ramifications for the interpretation of the site’s role
in international trade and contact, a theme I intend to explore in my thesis.
I was fortunate enough during my trip to have the input of colleagues working in the U.A.E. or otherwise passing
through the country including Dr Cameron Petrie (Cambridge), Dr Emma Thompson (Sharjah Archaeological
Museum), Christian Velde (National Museum of Ras al-Khaimah) and Beatrice de Cardi (at 93 years of age,
she was recently credited as being the oldest practising archaeologist in the world!) (Brown, 2008). Each of
those colleagues, along with Dan Potts and Peter Magee, provided invaluable comments.
It would be remiss of me to foster the impression that I worked 10 hour days drowning in a sea of pottery –
although that was certainly part of it. I was also fortunate to have the company of other researchers in the
Museum during my stay in Sharjah including Briana Feston, a student conservator from New York University,
Marta Sobur, a budding malacologist and PhD candidate from Harvard, as well as several undergraduate
students from Bryn Mawr College. We were joined from time to time by Eta Tengberg, an archaeobotanist from
the University of Paris and Emily Hammer, another PhD candidate from Harvard. My northern hemisphere
colleagues were a constant source of interesting conversation, although they did not delight in Australia’s early
victories against India in the test cricket as much as the Pakistani taxi drivers who drove me to and from the
museum on a daily basis!
BOUCHARLAT, R., HAERINCK, E., PHILLIPS, C. S. & POTTS, D. T. (1991) Note on an Ubaid-pottery site
in the Emirate of Umm al-Qaiwain. Arabian Archaeology And Epigraphy, 2: 65-71.
BROWN, J. (2008) Making history: The world’s oldest archaeologist. The Independent (online), http://www.
independent.co.uk/news/people/making-history-the-worlds-oldest-archaeologist-804534.html (4 April 2008).
ENGLUND, R. (2004) The state of decipherment of proto-Elamite. IN HOUSTON, S. D. (ed.) The First
Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
FRIBERG, J. (1999) Counting and accounting in the proto-literate Middle East: Examples from two new
volumes of proto-cuneiform texts. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 51: 107-137.
NISSEN, H. J. (1988) The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 B.C., Chicago, Chicago
University Press.
POTTS, D. T. (1991) Further Excavations at Tell Abraq: The 1990 Season, Copenhagen, Munksgaard.
POTTS, D. T. (2000) Ancient Magan: The Secrets of Tell Abraq, London, Trident Press.
ZIOLKOWSKI, M. (2001) The soft stone vessels from Sharm, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. Arabian
Archaeology And Epigraphy, 12: 10-86.
Acknowledgments
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation
for the award of a further Grant-in-Aid to assist me with my ongoing research relating to Tell Abraq, along
with the ongoing assistance of my supervisor, Professor Dan Potts. Associate Professor Peter Magee and
Ms Susie Bilson provided an enormous amount of support and assistance and did much to make my stay in
Sharjah an enjoyable one.
My research would not have been possible without the assistance of various personnel associated with Sharjah
Directorate of Antiquities and Sharjah Archaeological Museum, particularly Dr Sabah Jasim, Ms Ilka Schacht
and Massimiliano Lodi (who kindly photographed TA6000). However, the biggest thank you is reserved for
Dr Emma Thompson who acted as travel planner, chauffer, advisor and all-round organisational genius during
my time in Sharjah