Distribution and Diversity of Islamic Ceramic Types at Archaeological Sites of Khusf County

As a less known region with respect to Islamic pottery, Khusf County was surveyed in 2014 to record itshistorical relics. The intervening years have seen the publication of a lot of archaeological information on thedocumented relics, but the corpus of Islamic pottery from the region remains virtually unpublished. Its richdiversity in motif and decoration types and attribution to several different Islamic centuries as well as the fact thatthere were few published studies from South Khorasan province in general regarding regional Islamic ceramicswarranted an independent study. Thus, the present study has the potential to not only shed light on the archeologyof Khusf but also contribute to the studies of the related Islamic pottery from the province. With these in mind,the major questions addressed here concern the chronology of the pottery corpus in question and the centersfrom which comparanda could be drawn. This paper embarks on a comparative analysis of the Islamic potteryassemblages from Khusf County to establish a comparative chronology. The data for this descriptive-comparativestudy comes from both field and library researches. The findings suggest that the Islamic pottery from the countyspans at least the 10th to the 19th century AD. In types of motifs and decoration, the pottery finds parallels over abroad swathe of eastern and southern Iran, and for the most part represents potential imports from such regions orcenters as Nishapur, Mashhad, and Kerman.