Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.16

c13.16

The nearest parallels to this pottery come from the cemetery of Khurab near Bampur, 150 miles to the west over the Persian frontier, the date of which appears to approximate to that of Kulli and Harappā. At Khurab the vessels were very similar to pots from the Mehi cemetery (belonging to the latest phase on that site, even possibly dating from after its abandonment). As a whole, the Khurab and other cemeteries near Bampur are likely to belong to the centuries around, or probably just after, 2000 B.C. But ultimately, the Shahi-tump and similar wares are descended from the pottery of the Buff-ware group best represented in Susa I and other sites in Fars, and, at greater remove, from that of Samarra. The shape of the vessels, the arrangement of the patterns, and much of the actual decorative repertoire remains relatively unaltered, but the degenerate patterns, the flaccid brush-work and the thin paint betray the fact that Shahi-tump ware is archaistic, not archaic, and enable us to accept with confidence the late date implied by its associated finds. It represents in fact the final expression of a tradition persisting in Southern Persia from perhaps the fifth millennium B.C. until the beginning of the second; to this tradition also belong the little conical alabaster vessels from the cemetery, unchanged in form and substance from their earlier representatives.