Τούμπα Θεσσαλονίκης: τροχήλατη κεραμική της ΥΕΧ και της ΠΕΣ από το κτήριο Β

Georgia Kedrou & Stelios Andreou In P. Adam-Veleni & Κ. Tzanavari (eds) 2017. Το Αρχαιολογικό Έργο στη Μακεδονία και στην Θράκη 26, 2012, Thessaloniki: 429-438.

The present paper presents the wheel-made pottery from Building B at Thessaloniki Toumba. The main morphological and technological features of this pottery are examined according to the phases of the building and the main changes in terms of variability among the vases and their features are followed during the advanced LBA and the beginning of the EIA. Building B, through its well preserved stratigraphy provides the rare opportunity to follow clearly the details of the changes in the wheel-made pottery during this period.

The similarities in terms of shapes, decorative motives and technology between the wheel-made pottery from Building B and that from Building A are pointed out as well as with the wheel-made assemblage found at the mounds of Kastanas and Assiros. The common features that are shared between various buildings and sites are related to the particular patterns of use and the symbolic role of the wheel-made pottery in Central Macedonia. Equally, similarities are also due to the common patterns of production and circulation of this class of pottery in the area. In fact it is suggested that the morphological and technological changes that are observed in the pottery of Building B during the last two centuries of the second millennium BC are due to changes in the organization of production and circulation during this period. It is also proposed that the greater variability that characterised this ware in the earlier LBA, compared to the greater standardization in terms of technology, along with the emphasis on particular morphological features, of the locally made wheel-made pottery during the LBA/EIA transition (at the time of rise of the Early PG style), may be related to the stronger entanglement of mobile potters from the Central and Southern Aegean in the production of Mycenaean style pottery in Central Macedonia in the earlier period. During the very end of the LBA and the beginning of the EIA however, the production of the wheel-made pottery was established locally more permanently, while the scale of production increased as a response to the rise in demand for vases of this style