Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10.33

c10.33

To return to the Mesopotamian sequence the *Halaf Culture*, known from Syria and from North Mesopotamia, shows already an early use of copper, stone, and mud-brick buildings (including some remarkable structures that may be a form of temple), and a very fine painted pottery which often uses red and black painted designs on a buff base. The origins of this pottery, and probably the culture, may be in Syria or Kurdistan, but there is an allied type of ware, *Samarra Ware*, which is black-on-buff only, and which has strong affinities with certain wares in Persia. At Hassuna, Samarra Ware is stratified below true *Halaf* pottery, but elsewhere it seems to be in the main contemporary, and the two styles may represent two groups of people, the Halaf folk being indigenous to their northern region (with possible contacts with North Persia), and the Samarra Ware indicating the arrival of allied, but distinct, drafts of population from farther south. The best-known sites are Tell Halaf in Syria (strata below the historic city), Arpachiyah (levels VI to X), and Samarra, where there was a prehistoric cemetery beneath the Abbasid town of the ninth century A.D.