Wheel Fashioned Ceramic Production during the Third Millennium BCE in the Southern Levant : a Perspective from Tel Yarmuth

International audienceIn the Southern Levant, although the wheel coiling technique (shaping coiled roughouts on the wheel) appears by the second half of the fifth millennium, it does not become predominant before the second half of the second millennium bce. In other words, it took 3000 years for a technique presenting techno-economic benefits (rapidity of the fashioning, regularity of the end product), but also a high learning cost (difficulty in learning the skills involved), to be widely adopted. between the fifth and the second millennia bce, this technique disappeared (and reappeared) twice, once after the collapse of the chalcolithic societies, in the middle of the fourth millennium bce, and once after the collapse of the first urban societies, at the end of the second millennium bce. In a previous study, I suggested that the disappearance of the wheel coiling technique by the end of the Late chalcolithic period could be explained in terms of the context of production and transmission of the craft (Roux 2003, 2008): the technique was restricted to the manufacture of ceremonial vessels, and, as suggested by our data, was probably in the hands of only a few craftsmen attached to a politico-religious elite. Once the politico-religious elite and its demands disappeared, the transmission of the craft stopped. During the first half of the third millennium bce (early bronze [hereafter eb] II and III), the potter’s wheel is back and supposedly extensively used, the rise of urbanization supposedly promoting techniques to speed up craft production. However by the eb IV period, just as at the end of the chalcolithic period, the wheel coiling technique again fell into oblivion. This raises the question of the context of production of wheel made ceramics during the eb III period, and specifically, to what extent was the wheel coiling technique in the hands of a limited number of craftsmen with a specific status like that of the chalcolithic potters using the wheel. In order to explore these issues, analysis was undertaken of the EB III ceramic assemblage of Tell Yarmuth, a fortified urban centre located in southwestern Canaan, in the central Shephelah, among the major eb III sites of the southern Levant (Miroschedji 2000a, 2000b, 2003, 2006). On this site two tournettes have been discovered in situ (Miroschedji 2000b), attesting the use of rotary instruments to produce ceramics. before presenting and discussing the results of our study, I outline the methodology followed, review technological definitions, and indicate the southern Levantine technological background of the Yarmuth potter’s wheels