Two-handled jar ca. 7th century B.C. Iran This biconical jar has a flat base, a flaring rim and two loop handles connected to the shoulder and rim. It is made of a red clay using a potters wheel. It 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 sustain this impression. Rather, they seem to have lived in scattered fortified sites in western and central Iran, without any clear capital. Nush-i Jan, one of the best known of these sites, features two temples, a columned hall, and a fort. The jar was found in the columned hall in what has been identified as a ‘squatters level. Archaeologists use the term ‘squatting to refer to the re-oc