Ancient Pottery From Arabia Functioned Like a Brand 3,200 Years Ago, Study Finds

Long before modern corporations, craftspeople in the oasis of Qurayyah in Northwestern Arabia produced a distinctive two-color painted pottery that functioned in many ways like a modern brand, according to a study led by Marta Luciani of the University of Vienna and published in PLOS One. The pottery, once known as Midianite Pottery, was actually produced at Qurayyah, the researchers found, challenging earlier ideas about where it originated.

The team, which included researchers from MIT, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, the Austrian Archaeological Institute, TU Wien and the University of Sydney, analyzed several dozen Bronze Age ceramic vessels using stratified material examination, vessel-shaping technology and petrographic analysis of ceramic thin sections, cross-checked with chemical fingerprinting through neutron activation analysis. To decide whether the pottery could reasonably be called a brand, the researchers used criteria including visual identity, material consistency, technological continuity, centralized production, export circulation, local imitation, intentional commercial scope and cultural reputation.

The first Qurayyah Painted Ware was produced about 3,600 years ago, according to co-author Doralice Klainscek, a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna. About 3,200 years ago, potters were producing a flourishing repertoire of painted animals and human rituals that was exported hundreds of kilometers north to sites in the Southern Levant, including Tell el-Kheleifeh and the Timna sanctuary of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, and south into North Arabia.

Production of the pottery continued at Qurayyah for another thousand years, into the final Iron Age. Luciani said the findings show that oasis-dwelling communities in the Bronze Age, despite scarce resources such as clay, water and fuel, were resourceful enough to create their own ceramic repertoire to both keep at home and export abroad.