This course will use ceramics to study the material culture of the medieval Middle East and the central Islamic lands. As such, they will be running narrative, to which other materials will be referred, or in turn used to refer to other materials. The same motifs found on ceramics may be found in the contemporaneous buildings, textiles or woodwork; the same forms are found in metalwork and glass; illustrations on ceramics will survive better than manuscript paintings, and there are more illustrations of, for instance, medieval swords to be found on pottery than there are actual swords. The course will rely heavily on the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, and provide a thorough grounding on the technical production and typological variability of the various types of materials attested within their archaeological and cultural context. This course offers an excellent opportunity to study this important period of ceramic production, the period of occupation which covers most early sites in the Middle East. It provides essential understanding of the ceramic corpus for anyone seriously considering archaeological research in the Middle East and Mediterranean.