Bamiyan sgraffito: The example of production at the Khwajâ Sabz Push site

This article presents the ceramic production waste from the Khwajâ Sabz Push mausoleum site in the Bâmiyân Valley, excavated in 2016 as part of the French-Afghan Archaeological Mission in Bâmiyân (MAFAB). Nearly 3700 ceramic fragments, coming from an embankment mixing production and household waste, were studied, yielding an estimation of 1450 objects. Sgraffito ceramics dominate the assemblage at 34%, alongside significant proportions of kiln furniture (25%) and coarse modelled ceramics (20%). The article focuses primarily on the technical analysis of two sgraffito groups: the green and brown painted sgraffito, with simpler incised decorations, and the monochrome sgraffito, featuring more elaborate decoration, sometimes champlevé. The study of kiln furniture — bars, tripods and bowl-shaped spacers — allows a partial reconstruction of the kiln loading. Evidence of production failures, glaze drops and overfiring confirms that most of the sgraffito material derives from workshop wast. A significant finding is the demonstration of simultaneous production of both sgraffito types alongside coarse modelled ceramics within the same workshop, supported by shared use of firing equipment and traces of glaze transfer between the two productions. The moulded siliceous ceramics, by contrast, appear in the assemblage only as consumption material, produced elsewhere using entirely different techniques. Dating remains imprecise in the absence of stratigraphic indicators; only comparison with regional parallels suggests that production took place between the 12th and 13th centuries.