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Results for steatite:

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chlorite

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: steatite, soapstone
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soft gray, green, or black silicate mineral used for seals and vessels, also called steatite. Chlorite is a common rock-forming mineral in clastic sediments and in hydrothermally altered igneous rocks; chlorites are widespread and important constituents of such metamorphic rocks as green schists or chlorite schists.

soapstone

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: steatite
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Dark gray or green soft soapy compact variety of talc that is easy to carve.

steatite

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: soapstone
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soft magnesian mineral, white to green massive rock composed mainly of talc. The softness of the stone made it very popular for the carving of artifacts: figurines, vessels, jewelry, decorative stone works, and stamp seals. Its resistance to high temperatures made it particularly suitable for mold-making for metal casting. In the Indus Civilization seals of this material were whitened by heating with lime, a process called 'glazing'.

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Arpachiyah

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Arpachiyah, Tell
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in Iraq near Mosul on the Tigris inhabited in the Halaf and Ubaid periods (mid-6th to early 4th millennium BC). The Halaf settlements yielded a long pottery sequence and circular buildings with some rectangular antechambers on cobbled streets. The function of these buildings is unknown. The site appears to have been a specialized artisan village making the fine polychrome pottery. In addition to the painted polychrome wares, other finds include steatite pendants and small stone discs with incised designs, probably early stamp seals. There was pottery of northern Ubaid style and fine Halaf pottery, and stone amulets and figurines.

Bahrain

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island in the Persian Gulf that has been identified with the ancient land of Dilmun (Telmun) of about 2000 BC, a prosperous trading center linking Sumeria with the Indus Valley. Written records of the archipelago exist in Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman sources. Burial mounds in the north of Bahrain Island suggest a period of Sumerian influence in the 3rd millennium BC. There are densely packed fields of tumuli in Bahrain and at several places on the adjacent mainland. They are associated with densely packed complexes of cist burials. Excavation has shown the island to be an important link in the sea trade between that region and the Indus civilization. Two important sites in the north of the island belong to the 'Dilmun period': a walled town at Qala'at al-Bahrain and a complex temple building at Barbar. Among the finds of this period are circular steatite stamp 'Persian Gulf' seals, related to Indus Valley seals, but probably made locally.

faience

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: faïence, fayence; frit, paste
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A name used for the medieval pottery of Faenza in northern Italy, one of the chief seats of the ceramics industry in the 16th century; it was an early majolica. It is also used for the tin-glazed earthenware made in France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia as distinguished from Faenza majolica, and that made in The Netherlands and England, which is called delft. But most accurately, it is the primitive form of glass developed in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC and then, almost as early, in Egypt; it is sometimes called Egyptian faience. It is a substance composed of a sand and clay mixture baked to a temperature at which the surface begins to fuse to a bluish or greenish glass. It was colored with copper salts to produce a blue-green finish and used especially for beads and figurines, particularly in the second millennium BC. Its main use in the Bronze Age was for beads, seals, figurines, and similar small objects. The glazed material could be comprised of a base of either carved steatite (soapstone) or molded clay with a core of crushed quartz (or quartz and soda-lime) fired so that the surface fuses into a glassy coating. Examples occur also in Bronze Age contexts in Europe, including the Wessex Culture.

ground stone tool

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ground stone, polished tool, ground-stone artifact, groundstone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A class of lithic (stone) artifacts produced by abrasion -- grinding or pecking -- and formed into a tool or vessel. Granite, pumice, and steatite fall into this class. Manos, metates, mortars, and pestles are common ground stone artifacts. Ground stone tools used to crush, pound, grind, or otherwise process materials are also commonly referred to as milling implements"."

Halaf

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Guzana; Halafian; Tell Halaf
CATEGORY: site; culture; artifact
DEFINITION: A large tell site on the Khabur River in northeastern Syria near the Turkish border, which is the type site of an important stage of north Mesopotamian development, roughly 6th millennium BC to the beginning of the 5th (5050-4300 BC). The distinctive pottery, known as Halaf ware, was exceptionally fine, a thin hard ware in a wide range of competent and attractive shapes bearing brilliant carpet-like designs painted in black, red, and white on the buff surface. Simple steatite stamp seals were coming into use, which imply the development of personal property. In the villages, the typical dwelling was a round house with a vaulted dome (tholos), constructed of mud-brick, sometimes on stone foundations. The Halaf culture was succeeded in northern Mesopotamia by the Ubaid culture. It was the seat of an Aramaean kingdom and then a provincial capital of the Neoassyrian empire. In 808 BC, Adad-nirari III of Assyria sacked the city and reduced the surrounding district to a province of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian archives provide valuable details of the administrative affairs of the time. It was the Old Testament 'Gozan' to which the Israelites were deported in 722 after the capture of Samaria.

Harappan civilization

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the great civilizations of antiquity, located in Pakistan and northwest India in the 3rd millennium BC. Nearly 300 settlements of the civilization are known: two large cities (Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa), and a number of smaller towns and villages (Chanhu-Daro, Judeirjo-Daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal). The Harappan civilization was characterized by a high level of architectural, craft, and technical achievement. We know little of the political, social, and economic structure of the civilization because, although it was literate, the script remains undeciphered. Like other early civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Harappan civilization was based on the cultivation of cereal crops (plus rice and cotton), probably with irrigation. Among the most distinctive achievements of this civilization are the architecture and town planning, with the use of true baked brick for building, and cities and towns laid out on a grid-iron street plan, perhaps the earliest examples of town planning in the world. Among crafts, the most outstanding were the seals, mostly made of steatite and decorated with carefully executed incised designs. The Harappan civilization came to an end early in the 2nd millennium, either as a result of environmental factors (excessive flooding) or as a result of invasions by Aryan intruders. It is divided into three phases -- Early, Mature (Urban), and Late (Post-Urban) and emerged from Punjab and Baluchistan regions.

Iblis, Tal-i

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric mound of Kirman, Iran, occupied off and on in the 5th through 1st millennia BC. The earliest occupation, dating to the early 5th millennium BC (Tal-i Iblis O), is characterized by coarse-tempered red burnished ware made into a variety of simple forms. In the next phase, dated to the late 5th millennium BC (Tal-i Iblis I), small quantities of painted ware, in maroon or black on a buff ground, appear in a settlement of mud-brick houses, each consisting of a central area of storerooms, surrounded by living rooms with red plaster floors. This layer also produced abundant evidence of copper-working and smelting. The finds suggest that the communities of Iran were at least as developed as those of Mesopotamia, if not more so, in the practice of metallurgy. The exploitation of copper and steatite and trade in these commodities to the civilizations of southern Mesopotamia and Susiana in the 4th and early 3rd millennia BC allowed Tal-i Iblis to grow to urban or proto-urban status. Clay tablets inscribed in the Proto-Elamite script demonstrate the connections that linked Iran to western countries by the early 3rd millennium BC.

Indus civilization

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization, Harrapan civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent, identified in 1921-1992 by its two capitals -- Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro -- both in modern Pakistan. It was also the most extensive of the three earliest civilizations, the other two being Mesopotamia and Egypt. It was one of the greatest civilizations of antiquity, but its origins are obscure. By around 2300 BC, the Indus civilization was fully developed and in trading contact with Sargonid Sumer. Radiocarbon dates from several sites support an origin c 2600 BC, and suggest that by 2000 BC the civilization was in marked decline. The Indus River seems to have played a significant part, as many sites show deposits left by frequent catastrophic floods. Exploitation of the vegetation, particularly for the baking of enormous quantities of brick, caused the decline of the countryside. The final collapse seems to have been due to hostile attack. A few inhumation cemeteries have been found associated with the gridiron-plan cities and there were elaborate drainage systems, also. The site of Mohenjo-Daro had a great bath, assembly hall, and other monumental buildings. There was widespread use of an undeciphered hieroglyphic script and standard weights and measures. The economy was based on mixed agriculture and humped cattle were the most important domestic animals. The pottery was mass-produced and plain. Artistically the finest products were square steatite seals, carved with local or mythical animals and brief inscriptions. The civilization's effect on the later culture and religion of India seems to have been considerable.

Intercultural Style

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Intercultural style carved chlorite
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of decoration of stone vessels, normally made of chlorite, found in Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Persian Gulf in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. Vessels and other objects made of chlorite, steatite, serpentine, and other soft stones, shared a rich iconography. A production center was discovered at Tepe Yahya.

Mehi

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site of the Kulli culture in southern Baluchistan (Pakistan) with a settlement and cremation cemetery. Grave goods include copper tools, beads, and terra-cotta figurines of females, bulls, and birds. The tell also yielded Indus civilization material such as carved stone vases. A number of steatite bowls imported from Tepe Yahya around 2800 BC have been found.

Nal

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cultural group named after the site of Sohr Damb (Red Mound), near the village of Nal in central Baluchistan, Pakistan. It is related to the Kulli culture further south and is dated to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Both settlements are associated with water-control systems which allowed exploitation of alluvial plains for agriculture. The Chalcolithic population used copper for many tools and weapons, as well as ground stone. They made beads from agate and perhaps also lapis lazuli. The fine buff pottery, some wheelmade, is decorated with geometric patterns in black paint; red, blue, green, and yellow pigments were often applied after firing. Some traits in the pottery, a glazed steatite seal and many faience beads point to contact with the Indus Civilization. Many burials were excavated on the type site, belonging to a period later than the settlement. The rite employed was fractional burial, the graves containing fragmentary skeletons together with quantities of distinctive pottery.

Shahdad

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of settlements on an oasis in the Kirman province, Iran, dated from the late 4th millennium BC. A series of floods in prehistoric times destroyed most buildings, but left brick-lined tombs and many artifacts suggesting that Shahdad was an important manufacturing and trading center in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, contemporary with the Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia. There were a number of almost life-size unbaked clay statues found lying in the graves, face to face with the corpses, presumed to be actual portraits of the dead people. Bronze, copper, and silver was locally worked and made into tools, decorated vessels, ornaments, and cylinder seals. Other finds include vessels of steatite and alabaster, and beads of agate, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. A very early form of writing appears on pottery, sometimes incised, sometimes impressed with seals; some 700 different pictographic symbols have been identified, occurring singly or in groups of up to five symbols. The evidence documents the emergence of stratified societies during the 3rd millennium BC.

Venus figurine

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Venus' figurine
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small female statuettes of the Upper Palaeolithic, found from southwest France to European Russia -- statuettes, sculptured in the round, of naked and often obese women. The figures, sometimes with exaggerated abdomen, breasts, and buttocks, were made of clay, stone, antler, bone, limestone, steatite, or mammoth ivory, and have been found on Eastern Gravettian and Upper Périgordian sites from the Pyrenees to eastern Russia. The heads are featureless and the legs and arms are little emphasized. They mainly date from the period 30,000 to 15,000 years ago; a later series is different in character, more slender and hollow stomached, and are contemporary with the Magdalenian.

Yahya, Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site in the Soghun valley of Kirman province, Iran, with a long cultural sequence of seven periods from c mid-5th millennium BC to early 1st millennium AD. The most important phase was Yahya IV, beginning c 3000 BC. It was at that time an active trading center, with a cache of tablets inscribed in proto-Elamite, the script of Elam. Jemdet Nasr painted wares and beveled rim bowls have been found. A local source of steatite (chlorite) was worked into distinctive bowls which were traded to Sumer, the Indus civilization, and the Persian Gulf. The site was on an important trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, possibly via Shahr-i-Sokhta and the Persian Gulf via Bampur. Tepe Yahya was also in contact with the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley and indeed was strategically placed on the overland route between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. In the later 3rd millennium BC, the importance of Tepe Yahya declined.