ottomans
reflections of empire archaeological and ethnographic perspectives on the pottery of the ottoman levant
ottoman archaeology in the last decade has progressed from the study of a dark age to the multi faceted investigation of the history and societies of the longest lived muslim empire of the early modern era . missing from this investigation however have been technical studies of ottoman period ceramics studies that identify assemblages define typologies and posit chronologies for specific wares across entire regions . this volume assembles such technical studies for the region of the ottoman levant cyprus israel palestine and jordan . this geographical focus recognizes the cultural historical and economic interconnections that made the levant a distinctive part of the ottoman empire . these studies present previously unpublished corpora of ottoman pottery from largely archaeological and specifically stratified contexts . the individual authors are leading ceramics specialists in their respective areas . rather than merely a collection of unrelated studies however this volume attempts to synthesize current knowledge of ottoman ceramics in a manner that is both technically useful to field archaeologists and theoretically suggestive to scholars of ottoman social history .