Known as the most interactive period of trade and interregional interaction, socio-political regions in the Bronze Age were highly involved in the Near Eastern economy. Dilmun was in charge to control the commodities and transshipment between Gulf political entities such as Mesopotamia as well as Eastern Arabia and far-distance ones such as the Indus Valley. This paper seeks to launch the first scientific provenance study on a regional scale for 2nd millennium Dilmun pottery in the Persian-Arabian Gulf, particularly Kuwait and Bahrain. Going beyond typological technique, our aim is to reconstruct a chemical database of Bronze Age ceramics and fingerprint the production centers in the Persian-Arabian Gulf using trace elements Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, and Nb obtained with a non-destructive portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Multiple spots on artifact surfaces were tested to inspect the quantitative precision of the technique and the homogeneity of ceramics analyzed non-destructively.

Interregional interaction and Dilmun power in the Bronze Age: A provenance study of ceramics from Bronze Age sites in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Indus Valley using non-destructive pXRF analysis

245th National Meeting (2013)

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