Familiar and not so familiar.

One of the fun puzzles in archaeology is when you find something that you don’t immediately recognize. Most of the artifacts we find are broken, often shattered into tiny pieces, which makes the puzzle even harder to sort out. Through laboratory study we can often determine some of the functions of an artifact, collecting data on the tiny scratches left on stone or metal tools when they were used (called “microwear”) or by comparing ancient artifacts with historic, or even modern, parallels (called “comparanda”). We scour through reports written by our colleagues for similar artifacts, and sometimes we take samples of residues still adhering to the tools that provide more information on their function.

Top side of the celt showing careful working of the stone. The artifact is also weathered suggesting at some point it was exposed on the ground surface.

Here is the working edge.

This is a stone tool, 5 cm long, made of a very fine-grained stone. It has been laboriously shaped by using a harder stone to peck away at the original piece to produce a symmetrical tapered tool with a straight cutting edge on one end. They tend to be widest just behind the cutting edge, tapering in a bit as towards the edge.

Everyone on my team instantly recognized this as a “celt” in archaeological terminology. Celts come in many sizes and with numerous variations in shape. They were produced in prehistory across the ancient Near East and were eventually replaced functionally by copper and bronze tools. For anyone who does heritage woodworking, this is probably a recognizable tool, used much as modern hand chisels are for shaving, cutting, and shaping wood.

This was found at Kharaba Tawus and it was probably made between 6000 and 4500 BC. We know that Kharaba Tawus was occupied at this time because the site has produced a large number of prehistoric sherds of the Halaf and Northern Ubaid ceramic traditions. These well-documented painted pottery types are very distinctive and tell us that long before the Iron Age, this place housed a prehistoric settlement that forms the bottom layers of the low rise we are excavating.

The view shows the broken section of the artifact (the other side is smooth and finished). You can see the red area immediately below the blackened surface.

Less obvious is this limestone object about 12 cm in diameter and 5.5 cm thick, also found at Kharaba Tawus. It is clearly shaped with a short round base and a wide round top which flares out to form a shallow concave surface. The stone is a type we call “Mosul marble”. We are not sure what this object was used for, but the surface has clearly been burned. In fact, a red layer can clearly be seen penetrating the stone about 1.5cm below the burnt surface, which suggests that something might have been repeatedly burnt in the shallow concave dish at the top.

One possibility is that this artifact might have been an incense burner, an object we know was used in religious practices in various cultures across the ancient Near East. The stone is not local, so it was either brought to Kharaba Tawus as a raw material, or perhaps as a finished artifact. Once we are back in our offices we will start the process of looking for comparanda from other excavations to help us provide a date, function, and cultural affiliation for this curious find. If anyone has an idea or a good parallel, feel free to email me.