Trace-element analyses of Uruk ceramics: Establishing a database to track interregional exchange

In collaboration with an international team of researchers and major museums in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, the Oregon State University Archaeometry Lab conducted neutron activation analysis on ca. 2000 samples of ceramic vessels and clays from ancient Mesopotamia, the adjacent plains of southwestern Iran, and the Iranian highlands. Papers in this special issue focus on a subset of these projects: those directly involved in the question of the Uruk expansion. This paper introduces the larger data set and documents protocols and procedures by which the chemical data were generated in order to make the data generally available for use by other researchers. In addition, this paper attempts to sketch out a framework for understanding geochemical variability and the scale of variation across the region, in order to illustrate the primary dimensions of variation affecting ceramic composition, as well as the potential and the challenges for ceramic provenance determination in the region.