Ovoid jar ca. 3000-2250 B.C. Iran This ceramic jug has a spherical body that tapers to a small, flat base, a short neck and an everted rim. It is made of gray clay and has been burnished. It was excavated at Yarim Tepe in northeastern Iran, six miles south of the modern town of Gonbad-e Kavus. Yarim Tepe was a small settlement, inhabited from the Neolithic to the Parthian period, with many interruptions. This jug probably dates to the Bronze Age, when this region served as an important link between the emerging cities of Mesopotamia and Afghanistan, one of the few sources of both tin and lapis lazuli in the ancient Near East.. Ovoid jar 325596