The First Wheelmade Pottery at Lerna: Wheel-Thrown or Wheel-Fashioned?

by Maria Choleva

Hesperia, Volume 81, Issue 3
Page(s): 343-381
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.81.3.0343
Year: 2012
VIEW ONLINE

ABSTRACT:

The appearance of wheelmade pottery in the Mediterranean during the last phase of the Early Bronze Age is usually interpreted as the direct result of the invention of the fast wheel and of the wheel-throwing technique. This account has recently been called into question, however, by technological analyses of the first wheelmade ceramics in the southern Levant. To understand how the potter’s wheel was introduced into Aegean ceramic traditions, the author examines the manufacturing technology of pottery from Lerna IV. The study demonstrates that the introduction of the potter’s wheel at Lerna did not lead directly to the wheel-thrown technique, but instead was followed, as in the Levant, by an intermediate stage of wheel-fashioning.