Four handled storage jar with rope-pattern design

Turquoise glazed earthenware storage jars of this type are an ancient form in the Gulf region. Technical studies have now established that this jar type was produced at and around Basra, the early medieval port city serving Baghdad. Undoubtedly they were not confined to Basra. Their purpose was storage of valued commodities in transit, not as commodities in their own right. Thus they circulated widely, and have been recorded archaeologically from numerous sites in the Gulf, coastal East Africa, the west coast of India, Sri Lanka, as well as littoral zones throughout Southeast Asia and southern China. Such ceramics are richly encoded objects that allow us to study and understand the global interconnectivity of the late first millennium in ways that is not otherwise possible.