The technology of learning: Painting practices of early Mesopotamian communities of the 6th millennium, B.C

Inhabitants of Northern Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE commonly produced finely-made pottery that they decorated with elaborate designs. The geometric and representational designs they used to adorn their vessels have drawn attention because of their intricate style, distinctive character and widespread distribution. On the surface, the style of decoration appears homogeneous but little is known about how this Halaf pottery was produced or how that superficial uniformity was achieved. Upon close inspection, the quality and sophistication of painted designs are highly variable among and within Halaf sites, ranging from carefully and skillfully executed designs to sloppily crafted decorations.;I examined the painted decoration and the context of production of Halaf style pottery by comparing the ceramic assemblages from two sites in modern-day Turkey and Syria: Fistikli Hoyuk and Sabi Abyad. I explored the practice of vessel painting as insight into the teaching and learning environments of these two communities. To explore past knowledge and pottery painting in terms of its technological style, I drew on the concept of chaine operatoire (Leroi-Gourhan 1964). Outlining the sequence of brushstrokes used to create designs allowed me to consider the extent to which artists were limited in the context of painting. Drawing on Bourdieu (1977) and Giddens (1984) and their ideas on the acquisition of knowledge, I considered the level of skill and the degrees of careful attention painters brought to their work.;My results indicate that both communities were flexible in their approach to rules concerning the execution of designs, but that consistency within each community was achieved by using similarly sized tools and tacit agreements on the placement designs. The acquisition of skill is independent of the degree of careful attention an artist may apply to their work, but these knowledges are inextricably linked. More broadly my research demonstrates that behind a facade of apparent uniformity in designs, the practices of painting at the two Halaf sites examined differ. The implications of this are that similarities in material culture cannot be assumed to correlate with similarities in practice.