Bridge-spouted jar ca. 7th century B.C. Iran This pitcher is reconstructed from several pieces. Although the complete profile does not survive, enough remains to determine that it has a flat base, a bulbous body, a spout on one side and a double handle on the other. Three vertical lines decorate the vessels shoulder, and there are three raised knobs on one side of the body. The spot where the handle and the spout meet the rim is decorated with a horned animal head. The pitcher is made of a buff clay on a potters wheel and then burnished, with the handles and spout added.The pitcher was excavated at Tepe Nush-i Jan, an Iron Age hilltop site about 60 km sound of Hamadan in western Iran. Nush-i Jan was occupied in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., and its occupants are generally thought to be the Medes, an Iranian people known from Assyrian, Achaemenid and Biblical sources. Though the textual sources portray them as a powerful empire, archaeological evidence for the Medes has yet to susta