A large shoulder fragment from a KA jar or pot--a classic black on "red" EB vessel with a zoomorphic bird figure rendered in highly burnished relief. The sherd in fact consists of two joining fragments with a gypsum fill where the break between them is wide. The embossed/relief decoration resembles several examples from EB II Gegharot that feature bird figures (stork?) with curly, spiral tails. Perhaps most interesting about the fragment is how its upper break reveals that it was originally joined to the neck portion of the vessel with a bitumen adhesive technique. A scalloped texture was applied to the break via grinding or drilling--this gave the bitumen a rough surface for proper adhering. Dense encrustations of the dark and shiny bitumen material are still present on many of the scallops. The exterior surface is polished to a high burnish and dense horizontal burnishing lines are visible. The exterior surface is also highly crazed or crackalured. The interior surface hosts horizontal rotational striations. While the primary fabric inclusions consist of fine sand, coarse sand grains are also present in significant number (30-40%). These coarse sand grains perforate the interior vessel surface intensely, but not the exterior, which is much smoother. Pyrite particles are visible perforating both the interior and exterior vessels surfaces. Breaks are rough. There is no significant visible corrosion.
From Interior to Exterior