Sombrero lids’ and children’s pots. An Early Bronze Age shaft grave from Tell Shiyukh Tahtani

Tell Shiyukh Tahtani is one of the ancient mounds in the upper Syrian Euphrates Valley, which has been recently investigated by a team of the University of Palermo as part of the Tishreen Dam Salvage project1. Apart from various levels of occupation, ranging from the early third millennium B.C. to classical and Islamic times, these excavations have brought to light a fairly large amount of graves (about 90), which, beside providing many interesting finds, allow us to undertake a detailed study of Bronze Age burial practices at the site and in northern Syria as a whole. In dedicating the present paper to Uwe Finkbeiner, who has, as an excavator, made a great contribution to the archaeology of the middle Euphrates region, I will examine the evidence (so far unique) from one of the burials uncovered at Shiyukh Tahtani during summer 2005.