Alabaster vessels: manufacture, function and distribution (4th to 2nd millennia BC)

As with objects of lapis lazuli and carnelian, stone vessels must be understood in economic, political and symbolic terms, and thus play an important role in interpreting, for example, social status and exchange systems. These luxury products appear in elite contexts, at sites dating to the period from the end of the Neolithic to the Iron Age, in Egypt, the Levant, Syria, Mesopotamia, Iran, the Persian Gulf, eastern Arabia, Central Asia, and South Asia. This discussion will concentrate on the Near Eastern alabaster cylindrical vessels, covering some issues of manufacture, function, and distribution from the 4th through the 2nd millennia