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Chronology and find Then type - num. list? 5972-3 handles- 2 P. CXXXII
in their true historico-geographical context
[?atIn order to place the finds at Bamboula, it is necessary to discuss the occurrence of stamped pithoi in the Aegean area. The custom of rolling cylinder seals over the surface of large storage jars while the clay was still damp appears to have enjoyed the greatest vogue in the Early Bronze Age, \Individual [circled: seal] impressions were made on storage jars as early as the Tell-Halaf period [insertion note: ca. 4100 BC]^ and pithoi have been reported from [circled: 10yblos], Hama, [circled: Tarsus] and to the south, Megiddo and Jericho, and the Tell-ed-Dschamîd. Virtually all of these have stylistic connections with Jemdet Nasr period of Susa, which suggests the antiquity of the practice. At Byblos and Hama occur the densest concentrations. Thanks to the efforts of C. Schaeffer in interpreting the publications of Montet and Dunand, it is possible to gain some orientation on the excavations at Byblos. The impressed sherds 4512, 5019, 5072, 5073, and 5384 belong to Niveau III, the Early Bronze Age. No. 3282 belongs to Niveau II, the Middle Bronze Age. This might be a stray. However, the existence of 3081 bis adds to the evidence for at least sporadic continuation of the custom into the Middle Bronze Age. (It was found in "Démolition des Murs de la levée I à la levée X", which is not exactly dateable but appears by context to belong more to the Middle than to the Late Bronze Age). At Hama numerous examples were found, of which at least twenty are mentioned in the preliminary report. These are assigned to levels G [illegible] - IV (= J, apparently) which are given the date of the twenty second to the twenty first century B.C. (Rapport IV, XIV-XV) At Tarsus pottery impressions begin with simple stamps in EB II and continue in EB III and the beginning of MB with impressions of both stamps and cylinders, the being more numerous ( altogether least one, and possibly] P97 Fig. 66). others, were thought to have been made with a wooden cylinder. Three fragments, not considered to be from the same vessel were found at Jericho in levels 1-3, the Pre-Israelite period, which the excavator thinks cannot have lasted beyond 1500 BC at the latest (Sellin + Watzinger, [insertion note: date] 1913, 108), X A similar sherd was found at Tell-ed-Dschamîd unfortunately not stratified (Z. d. deut. Palästinas, XL 1919, 170, Fig 5) The dominant characteristic of all these representations is a very flat, unmodelled surface. The Tarsus seals ^on the other hand have stylistic affiliations with glyptic styles of the Jemdet Nasr period at Susa, according to the excavator, whereas the figure-style representations, both continuous and panelled, are affiliated with stamps and tablets from Syria, Cappadocia and Nuzi. The same apparently holds true of the representations
9. A. J. Tobler, Excavations at Tepe Gawra, II Pl. 88 b and p. date Philadelphia 1950
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain