Syria - Tell Fares al Sharqi

In the field of ceramics, each culture has its own register of shapes and decorations. The oldest shards found on the site go back to the Obeid (5th millennium) and are recognizable from their lush painted decorations. The Late Chalcolithic Age 1 that followed, around 4200-4000 was an culture of Obeidian tradition, but the painted decorations became rarer and changed appearance, with loose motifs painted in red. A very particular smoothed red ceramic also emerged around this time. In the 4th millennium, the subsequent phases of LC (2-5), attested to only at the surface, saw the complete disappearance of decorations and the emergence of new shapes. In the second half of the millennium, the local material was combined with material imported from the south, when the Urukians moved to Syria to buy, in the region, the products they needed (Anatolian copper, for instance). Lastly, a new cultural form appeared around 3000, Nineveh 5, which stood out for its very high-quality fine ceramics, often decorated with incisions.

The small objects from day-to-day life show relatively little variation: many blades made of silex and, above all, obsidian, basalt mills, bone hallmarks, whorls (small circular objects made of clay which, when mounted on a small stick, are used for weaving). A number of fine dark green stone objects are to be noted, whether small axes or hammers. The most recent levels (Nineveh 5) have also yielded a number of seals, small clay masses that bore the imprint of a cylindrical seal used to seal various containers.