The innovation of the potter's wheel: a comparative perspective between Mesopotamia and the southern Levant. (1st September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Baldi, Johnny; Roux, Valentine
• Is Part Of: Levant. Volume 48:Number 3(2016)
• Page Start: 236
• Page End: 253
• Publication Date: 2016-09-01
• Subjects: potter's wheel -- Late Chalcolithic -- north Mesopotamia -- southern Levant -- innovation -- diffusion -- ceramics; Middle East -- Antiquities -- Periodicals; Middle East -- History -- Periodicals; Middle East -- Civilization -- To 622 -- Periodicals; 939.4
• DOI: 10.1080/00758914.2016.1230379
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0075-8914

Abstract

Abstract : The southern Levant and northern Mesopotamia are two areas in which the potter's wheel seems to have appeared independently. New data enable us to undertake a comparison between both regions. As a result, it appears that in both regions the context of production of the first wheel-made vessels was very similar. Wheel-coiled bowls were made by craft specialists attached to some kind of elite and responding to the demand of this same elite for fine vessels. Thus the potter's wheel was not adopted to improve productivity, but to produce to strong vessels with status value. As a consequence, this technology was not transferred to more utilitarian categories of vessels, and in both regions its development followed the same distinctive saw-tooth evolutionary trajectory.