ABSTRACT
Surface Indications' a very fine series of painted pottery fragments, specimens of eggshell ware with decoration in lustrous red and black paint on an apricot slip, with an elaborate variety of designs unsurpassed in technique by any other school of painted pottery in Mesopotamia. The description of Max Mallowan's surface finds, cryptically called 'Surface Indications' in reference to fine painted pottery, appeared in a brochure created in 1932 by Mallowan to raise funds for his excavation of the site of Arpachiyah. The work of Helene Wallaert-Petre on Cameroonian potters aptly demonstrates the juncture between production and social reproduction. Most Halaf sites are found in the arc-shaped region of northern Mesopotamia that extends from the foothills of the Jebel Hamrin in east central Iraq to the Amuq plain in western Syria and the limits of Cilicia in south-eastern Turkey.
