The Archaeo-mineralogy of The Bronze Age Pottery shreds from Kul Tepe of Ajabshir, Eastern Lake Urmia Basin, Iran

In the Bronze Age Archaeology of Northwestern Iran (plateau), the advent of various types of handmade gray-black ceramics shows the arrival of the so-called Kura-Araxian culture. The Urmia Ware, dating to the Late Bronze Age, on the other hand, represents the revival of the buff painted pottery tradition, following the decline of the Early Bronze Kura-Araxian culture. The present work attempted to examine the matrixes of samples of sherds in the Early Bronze gray-black pottery of Kura-Araxes, and a further samples of sherds in the Late Bronze buff-painted pottery of Urmian Ware, all collected during the surface surveys of Kul Tepe, Ajabshir County, through the petrographic technique and observing thin-sections by polarizing microscope, as well as XRD and FT-IR analysis. The main objective was to study the similarities in the structure of the Early Bronze (Kura-Araxian) and Late Bronze (Urmian Ware) ceramics. The primary focus was on examining the possibility of local production of these ceramics through the analysis of the prepared thin-sections and ascertaining their technology, structure and composition, as well as gathering data on such fields as compositions and resources of raw material. Since Kul Tepe contains both Early Bronze and Late Bronze deposits, it offers a good opportunity for studying Archaeometrically the problem of discontinuity in technological pottery traditions, and the fact that whether the Urmian Ware tradition represented a local or an imported phenomenon. Results of the polarization microscopy, as well as the XRD and FT-IR analyses and their comparison to the available regional petrographic indices, showed that the clay used in both samples was procured from a single source, and the Early Bronze Age sherds and the Late Bronze Age painted sherds were then both manufactured locally.