A stone vessel is a hollow container, made of stone.
History edit
Stone mortars and pestles have been used by the Kebaran culture (the Levant with Sinai) from 22000 to 18000 BC to crush grains and other plant material. The Kebaran mortars that have been found are sculpted, slightly conical bowls of porous stone.[1]
In the 3rd millennium BCE, chlorite stone artifacts were very popular, and traded widely. These carved dark stone vessels have been found everywhere in ancient Mesopotamia. They rarely exceed 25 cm in height, and may have been filled with precious oils. They often carry human and animal motifs inlaid with semi-precious stones.
"Elaborate stone vessels carved with repeating designs, both geometric and naturalistic, in an easily recognizable “intercultural style”,[2] were made primarily of chlorite; a number were produced at the important site of Tepe Yahya southeast of Kerman (Iran) in the middle and late 3rd millennium b.c.e. Some of these vessels were painted natural color (dark green) and inlaid with pastes and shell, and some have even been found with cuneiform inscriptions referring to rulers and known Sumerian deities. More than 500 vessels and vessel fragments[3] carved in this style have been recovered from sites ranging from Uzbekistan and the Indus Valley (e.g., Mohenjo-daro) in the east to Susa[4] and all the major Sumerian sites in Mesopotamia, including Mari, in the west and to the Persian Gulf, particularly Tarut[5] and the Failaka Islands, in the south."[6]
Stone vessels are among the commonest finds in the elite tombs of Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt.[7]
The Plain of Jars is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. It consists of thousands of stone jars scattered around the upland valleys and the lower foothills of the central plain of the Xiangkhoang Plateau. The jars are arranged in clusters ranging in number from one to several hundred.[8]
Giant jars of Assam - giant mysterious jars have been unearthed across four sites in Assam, India.[9] Hundreds of them are spread across a 300 square kilometer swath of Assam.[10] The jars may have been used for ancient human burial practices.[11]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Mellaart, James (1976), Neolithic of the Near East (Macmillan Publishers)
- ^ Kohl, 1978; idem, 1979; see Plate XLVIII
- ^ for the most complete current listing see Lamberg-Karlovsky
- ^ de Miroschedji
- ^ Zarins 1978
- ^ Chlorite Encyclopædia Iranica
- ^ "Stone vessels in Archaic Egypt". ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-04-27.
- ^ Marwick, Ben; Bouasisengpaseuth, Bounheung (2017). "The History and Practice of Archaeology in Laos". Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology. Springer New York. pp. 89–95. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-6521-2_8. ISBN 978-1-4939-6519-9. Archived from the original on 2019-07-06. Retrieved 2018-06-05.
- ^ "Mysterious giant stone jars found in India | Australian National University". anu.edu.au. Retrieved 2024-04-27.
- ^ "We don't know who made the giant stone jars found in northern India". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2024-04-27.
- ^ "Assam: 'Mysterious' giant stone jars found in India". BBC News. Retrieved 2024-04-27.
Further reading edit
- Stone Vessels in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian Period, (c. 1200-330 BCE), Andrea Squitieri, 2017
- Stone Vessels and Values in the Bronze Age Mediterranean, Andrew Bevan, 2007
- Stone Vessels of the Cyclades in the Early Bronze Age, Pat Getz-Gentle, 1996, Penn State University Press
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