Funerary rituals on Qurayyah’s painted pottery
Keywords:
Northwest Arabia, final Late Bronze Age, Funerary Rituals, Qurayyah Painted Ware, IconographyAbstract
Recent discoveries of the Joint Archaeological Project of the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture and the University of Vienna in the oasis of Qurayyah, north-west Arabia, offer new insights into the symbolic and ritual world of the final Late Bronze Age.1 Throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, Qurayyah was a settlement extremely rich in assemblages of bichrome painted pottery. The iconographic analysis of the anthropomorphic themes painted in two-colour chromatism on two exceptional kraters from the funerary complex in Area R reveals the possibility of understanding these figurative motifs not as static but as graphic description of rituals and performances, specifically connected to the burial context. The comparison with contemporary ceramic apparel associated with mortuary settings in neighbouring regions suggests that north-west Arabia shared this tradition with the Greater Levant and the eastern Mediterranean.
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