Pottery from the al-Zubārah suq
Keywords:
Islamic archaeology, late Islamic pottery, eighteenth-century pottery, QatarAbstract
The ceramic assemblage recorded from the archaeological site of al-Zubārah in northern Qatar provided the opportunity to analyse a large, fully sequenced, late Islamic pottery collection. The pottery came from excavation points across the site including occupational quarters with houses and street surfaces; a palatial compound; a market place with shops and rooms with date presses; trenches located around the town’s two defensive walls; and middens. The results of the study revealed a pottery sequence that spanned six occupational phases and showed the differences between the assemblages across the site. This article introduces the ceramics found at al-Zubārah’s market (ZUEP02), and concentrates particularly on the Phase 5 occupation uncovered in a single suq space interpreted as a pottery shop. The study of pottery from al-Zubārah will advance our current understanding of Islamic pottery in Qatar and improve the chronology of the late Islamic pottery in the Gulf region by adding to the still limited number of published, comparable archaeological ceramic assemblages from the boom period of the pearl industry.
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Archaeopress Publishing, Oxford, UK
