Spouted vessel

This vessel has a globular body and a ring base. The remains of a spout and a handle are present on the body; the rim is not preserved at all. The vessel is made of buff clay on potter’s wheel, with the handle and spout added later. It is decorated with a vine pattern in red paint. The vessel was excavated at Tepe Nush-i Jan, an Iron Age hilltop site about 60 km sound of Hamadan in western Iran. Nush-i Jan is generally associated with the Medes, an Iranian people known from Assyrian, Achaemenid and Biblical sources. However, the site was evidently reoccupied in the Parthian period, probably between the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D., to period to which this vessel dates.


This vessel most likely served as a pitcher for pouring a liquid containing dregs, such as wine, since the round body and long spout would prevent the dregs from ending up in the cup. The vine pattern decoration certainly suggests a connection with. Long-spouted pitchers have a long history in Iran, going back to the late 2nd millennium B.C. This shape in particular closely resembles pitchers excavated from the Iron Age cemetery at Tepe Sialk, near Kashan. This vessel thus illustrates the continuity of Iron Age ceramic traditions down into the Parthian era.