Distribution and Diversity of Islamic Ceramic Types at Archaeological Sites of Khusf County.

Sedighian, Hossein

As a less known region with respect to Islamic pottery, Khusf County was surveyed in 2014 to record its historical relics. The intervening years have seen the publication of a lot of archaeological information on the documented relics, but the corpus of Islamic pottery from the region remains virtually unpublished. Its rich diversity in motif and decoration types and attribution to several different Islamic centuries as well as the fact that there were few published studies from South Khorasan province in general regarding regional Islamic ceramics warranted an independent study. Thus, the present study has the potential to not only shed light on the archeology of Khusf but also contribute to the studies of the related Islamic pottery from the province. With these in mind, the major questions addressed here concern the chronology of the pottery corpus in question and the centers from which comparanda could be drawn. This paper embarks on a comparative analysis of the Islamic pottery assemblages from Khusf County to establish a comparative chronology. The data for this descriptive-comparative study comes from both field and library researches. The findings suggest that the Islamic pottery from the county spans at least the 10th to the 19th century AD. In types of motifs and decoration, the pottery finds parallels over a broad swathe of eastern and southern Iran, and for the most part represents potential imports from such regions or centers as Nishapur, Mashhad, and Kerman.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL excavations; ISLAMIC pottery; CERAMICS; POTTERY; ANTIQUITIES; NINETEENTH century; CULTURAL materialism; ISLAMIC studies; LIBRARY research; SELJUK art

Iranian Journal of Archaeological Studies, 2023, Vol 13, Issue 1, p37

2251-743X

Academic Journal

10.22111/IJAS.2023.46439.1278