Spouted vessel

This pitcher has a squat, rounded body, a flat base, a high neck and an everted rim. A spout rises straight up from the body of the pitcher, and then juts out perpendicularly. A curlicue at the top of the spout conceals a connection to the rim of the mouth. A rounded handle with a tab for the thumb is attached to the shoulder on the other side. Two sets of raised concentric circles are on the body of the jug, to either side of the spout. The jug is made of grey clay and has been burnished. It was made on a potter’s wheel, with the spout and handle added later.

This pitcher was excavated at Tepe Sialk, near Kashan in central Iran. Sialk was the site of a fortified town, constructed in the early first millennium B.C. Several hundred yards from the town there was a large cemetery, called Necropolis B by the archaeologists who explored it between 1933 and 1937. The graves were pits covered with pitched roofs made of stone or clay, and in addition to the bodies of the dead they contained jewelry, weapons, leather armor, horse trappings and ceramic vessels, including many similar pitchers. Presumably this pitcher was used to pour a liquid containing dregs, such as wine, since the round body and long spout would prevent the dregs from ending up in the cup. Possibly it was used in a funerary banquet or ritual before it was placed in the grave; regardless, its burial in the cemetery shows that drinking wine was an important part of life and death in Iron Age Sialk.