A Tale of Two Potting Traditions: Technological Assessment of the Light Clay and the Red Gritty Ware Types at Tarsus-Gözlükule (Cilicia-Turkey) at the Beginning of the Third Millennium B.C.

Abstract

The mound of Tarsus-Gozlukule is located in the Cilician Plain in southern Turkey at the crossroads of important trade routes tying the central Anatolian Plateau to the Mediterranean and Syro-Anatolian worlds. This paper presents a technological assessment of two different pottery production processes at Tarsus-Gozlukule during the Early Bronze Age-namely, the Light Clay and the Red Gritty Ware types. The Red Gritty Ware appears abruptly at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, reaches high levels of distribution within the settlement, and remains a distinct production process from the other dominant ware type, the Light Clay Ware, for the duration of the third millennium B.c. Mineralogical, morphological, and chemical analyses from selected Early Bronze Age pottery samples are incorporated into more traditional stylistic analysis to define the technological framework of each production process and to investigate their interaction with the economic and social structures.