Early Islamic Glazed Ceramics from Bukhara and Tashkent: An Archaeometric Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents the results of the archaeometric analysis of 150 early Islamic style glazed ceramics from Central Asia. The glazed ceramics, introduced to the region in the ninth century CE, served as important cultural markers and demonstrated the intentional affiliation that the residents in Mā Warāʾ an-Nahr developed with the wider Islamic World. While an increase in research in the past 10 years has characterized the production of Islamic glazed ceramics, some of the largest historical cities in Central Asia have yet to have any systematic study of their glazed ceramics, including the Samanid capital Bukhara. Here I present the study of “Samanid”- and “Karakhanid”-style glaze ceramics recovered from the cities of Bukhara, Paykend, Tashkent, and Taraz. Through compositional analysis by neutron activation analysis (NAA) and complementary technological analysis by electron microscopy, I characterize the provenance of finely decorated glazed pottery from these centers to determine the scale of local production and technological developments during the Samanid and Karakhanid period. This research provides key insights into the extant of “Samanid”- and “Karakhanid”-style slipware ceramics in the eastern Islamic World, and addresses questions about the degree of technological similarity between these major production centers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35792.0