RESOURCESthe only excavation of a village site spanning the late Sasanian and
early Islamic periods. It was done in order to establish a diagnostic
ceramic sequence to date sherds collected from the surface over a larger
region. One of the main contributions by Adams has been to develop
techniques of inference from surface materials for regional surveys.
His survey of the Diyala plains was published in Land Behind Baghdad
(Chicago, 1965); surveys of lower central Iraq were published by
Adams and H. Nissen in The Uruk Countryside: The Natural Setting
of Urban Societies (Chicago and London, 1972), and by Adams in
Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on
the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates (Chicago and London, 1981).
See also M. Gibson, The City and Area of Kish (Miami, 1972), and
H. Nissen, "Siidbabylonien in parthischer und sasanidischer Zeit,"
Baghdader Mitteilungen 6 (1973): 79-86. To their credit, Adams and
his colleagues included everything from the prehistoric to the Ottoman
periods, so their results proved very useful for this study. In the process
of developing diagnostic tools, they have defined the difference be-
tween "Sasanian" and "Islamic" pottery and differences in the size
and weight of bricks and in the composition of mortar. However,
there is no way of showing that these changes occurred abruptly at
the moment of conquest, although they tend to be interpreted that
way. In particular, where or when the distinctive blue or blue-green
glazed "Islamic" poetry originated or how it spread is still unknown.
One must remember that such pottery was arbitrarily dubbed "Is-
lamic" by modern scholars and that this designation has influenced
the dating of the sites where it was found. Worse still, in recent cases
even reputable scholars have assumed that the presence of such pottery
on a site meant that the former inhabitants had been Muslims.
The best presentation to date of typologies of "Sasanian" and "Is-
lamic" pottery by shape, composition and decoration for lower central
Iraq is that by Adams in "Tel Abii Sarifa." The gradual shift that he
indicates from very diverse, high-quality locally made wares to stand-
ardized, wheel-made, imported wares during this period has important
implications for economic history. Earlier publications of pottery in-
clude D. Harden, in "Excavations at Kish and Barguthiat 1933," pp.
124-30, and R. Ettinghausen, "Parthian and Sasanian Pottery," in
Pope's Survey, 11: 646-80. F. Day's "Mesopotamian Pottery: Parthian,
Sassanian, and Early Islamic" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1940)
remains unpublished but is still cited. More recently R. Venco Ricciardi
has published "Pottery from Choche," Mesopotamia 2 (1967): 93-