Abstract
Recent work in Middle Bronze Age Crete has revealed that most Protopalatial or First Palace period pottery is produced through the use of a combination of coil-building and the wheel, i.e., wheelcoiling. Experimental work conducted on pottery from Minoan sites of Northern and Eastern Crete (e.g., Knossos, Myrtos Pyrgos, Palaikastro) has indeed determined that Minoan potters did not develop the skills required to adopt the wheel-throwing technique. However, my recent technological study of Protopalatial ceramic material from Middle Minoan IIA (19th century BC) deposits from the First Palace at Phaistos, in Southern Crete, has revealed that though pottery was produced by the wheelcoiling techniques, yet other forming techniques were practised too. In this paper I present a preliminary analysis of experimental replicas of MM IIA Phaistian plain handleless conical cups, manufactured on the potter’s wheel using three different forming techniques: wheel-pinching, wheel-coiling, and throwing-off-the-hump. This analysis will proffer answers to several questions on the use of the potter’s wheel in Middle Bronze Age Crete and opens the possibility that at MM IIA Phaistos there co-existed potters who had developed skills to employ different forming techniques on the wheel, including possibly that of throwing-off-the-hump.
Highlights
There is a general agreement among scholars that the potter’s wheel was developed on Crete around 1900 BC (e.g., Evely, 1988; Knappett, 1999; Van de Moortel, 2006; Caloi, 2011), corresponding to the first emergence of palatial societies, but there is no agreement on the manner of use of this device across the island
Some scholars support the idea that the potter’s wheel was used in combination with handbuilding, and especially coil-building, until the Late Bronze Age (Jeffra, 2013; Knappett, 2016); others state that wheelcoiling was not the only forming technique adopted on the island during the Middle Bronze Age, but that it co-existed with other forming techniques, including that of wheelthrowing (Speziale, 1999; MacGillivray, 1998; 2007; Van de Moortel, 2006; Berg, 2009; 2011; Wiener, 2011; Caloi, 2011; 2019; Todaro, 2017)
I sourced raw materials and tools that mirror those used in Minoan times, together with a potter’s wheel reconstructed on the basis of the archaeological evidence provided by Minoan
Summary
There is a general agreement among scholars that the potter’s wheel was developed on Crete around 1900 BC (e.g., Evely, 1988; Knappett, 1999; Van de Moortel, 2006; Caloi, 2011), corresponding to the first emergence of palatial societies, but there is no agreement on the manner of use of this device across the island. Some scholars support the idea that the potter’s wheel was used in combination with handbuilding, and especially coil-building, until the Late Bronze Age (Jeffra, 2013; Knappett, 2016); others state that wheelcoiling was not the only forming technique adopted on the island during the Middle Bronze Age, but that it co-existed with other forming techniques, including that of wheelthrowing (Speziale, 1999; MacGillivray, 1998; 2007; Van de Moortel, 2006; Berg, 2009; 2011; Wiener, 2011; Caloi, 2011; 2019; Todaro, 2017). The results point first to the existence of ceramic traditions that differ across the island and especially between Southern Crete and North/Eastern Crete, and second to the co-existence and co-working of potters employing different devices It appears that at Middle Bronze Age Phaistos, individual potters or potting groups were operating, sharing only some stages of the manufacturing process, i.e., using the same clay sources and recipes of clay pastes, but practising different forming techniques. Alongside a variety of hand-building techniques, some combined with the use of the wheel, it is possible that the wheel-throwing one was used to throw small pots, though this is little or not at all attested elsewhere on the island
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