Beaker
Not on view
This ceramic beaker has a flat base, gently sloping sides and a straight rim. It is made of gray clay and has been burnished. It was excavated at Yarim Tepe in northeastern Iran, six miles south of the modern town of Gonbad-e Kavus. Yarim Tepe was a small settlement, inhabited from the Neolithic to the Parthian period, with many interruptions. This beaker probably dates to the Bronze Age, when this region served as an important link between the emerging cities of Mesopotamia and Afghanistan, one of the few sources of both tin and lapis lazuli in the ancient Near East.