The Pots and Potters of Assyria - Doctoral degree for Kim Duistermaat

On March 21, 2007 Kim Duistermaat defended her PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled The Pots and Potters of Assyria – Technology and Organization of Production, Ceramic Sequence, and Vessel Function at Late Bronze Age Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria.  Supervisor: Prof. Peter Akkermans.

The Pots and Potters of Assyria is a comprehensive discussion of all evidence relating to pottery production from the Late Bronze Age site of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria. Technological, morphological, stylistic and archaeological data are integrated into the understanding of pottery production and use. The pottery itself and its chronological sequence, the shaping and firing techniques, raw materials, wasters and unfired pottery are presented. In addition, workshops and their layout, tools, as well as pottery kilns and their construction are discussed. Together with information on standardization, output and demand, as well as information from contemporary texts, these sources are used to reconstruct the organization of pottery production at the site. A chapter on vessel function and use including a list of Middle Assyrian vessel names concludes the study. Introductory chapters discuss field methodology, the historical background and stratigraphical information. Seven appendices present the database used for this study, the shape typology, a detailed study of the pottery kilns, the results of archaeometric research including thin-section analyses, potters’ marks, and cuneiform texts from Sabi Abyad related to pottery. The thesis is lavishly illustrated, including an extensive catalogue, detailed illustrations of workshops, tools, shaping techniques, kilns, thin-section slides and vessels in iconography.

The book will soon be published by the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities in its PALMA series (Publications on Archaeology of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities).

Kim Duistermaat (born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, 1971) studied archaeology at Leiden University. From 1997 until 2006 she lived and worked in  Damascus, Syria, where she set up and managed the Netherlands Institute for Academic Studies . In 2006 she was appointed director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, Egypt. Kim Duistermaat participated in excavations in Syria at Khirbet esh-Shenef, Tell Brak and, in particular, Tell Sabi Abyad. She first joined the team at Tell Sabi Abyad in 1991 and has been involved in the project ever since. From 1994 until 1999 she was responsible for the processing of the Middle Assyrian pottery found during the excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad –  the basis for the current PhD thesis.