Funerary Rituals on Qurayyah’s Painted Pottery

Recent discoveries of the Joint Archaeological Project of the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture and the University of Vienna in the oasis of Qurayyah, NW Arabia, grant new insights into the symbolic and ritual world of the final Late Bronze Age. Throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, Qurayyah was a settlement extremely rich in assemblages of bichrome painted pottery. The iconographic analysis of the anthropomorphic themes painted in two-color chromatism on two exceptional kraters from the funerary complex in Area R in Qurayyah reveals the possibility of understanding these figurative motifs not as static but as graphic description of rituals and performances, specifically connected to the burial context. The comparison with contemporary ceramic apparel associated with mortuary settings in neighboring regions suggests that NW Arabia shared this tradition with the Greater Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean.