Craft behaviours during a period of transformations. The introduction and adoption of the potter’s wheel in Central Greece during Early Bronze Age Maria Choleva

https://www.academia.edu/38376530/Craft_behaviours_during_a_period_of_transformations_The_introduction_and_adoption_of_the_potter_s_wheel_in_Central_Greece_during_Early_Bronze_Age?email_work_card=title This paper will focus on the modalities of appearance and on the transmission of the potter’s wheel in central Greek settlements by drawing on two different case studies, Lefkandi on Euboea and Pefkakia in Magnesia. While both settlements experienced the innovation of the potter’s wheel during late EBA II and present continuity in the presence of wheel-made pottery throughout EBA III, they follow two radically different trajectories in terms of integrating the new tool into the local technological systems. The aim of examining the craft practices involved in wheel-made pottery, is to reconstruct and compare the chaînes opératoires linked to the use of the potter’s wheel within local production and to explore the pottery traditions shaped and transformed under the impact of the new technology in the course of late EBA. The identification of various craft behaviours through time will reveal different technological patterns regarding the adoption and transmission of the new way of producing pottery and will disclose differentiated socio-cultural mechanisms underlying the wheel’s innovation. By adopting an anthropological view of techniques as expressions of social behaviours, this paper will bring into view the different reactions of the local communities to the profound socio-cultural changes as they are communicated through pottery production. This will be achieved by shedding light on the ways that potters establish and negotiate their social identities through craft practices within a socio-historical context of transformation and change.