Chapter 3 - Pottery

Summary

At the beginning of the neolithic, pottery was much less common than in later periods, and some scholars maintain that it could have been reserved for ceremonial or ritual use; in any case, pottery seems to have rarely been used for cooking, even if it could have served for storage or movement of foodstuffs. In the Middle Neolithic (MN) period new shapes, techniques, and decorative motifs appear, but it is only from Late Neolithic (LN) that pottery, including everyday wares, truly takes off, with various kinds of bowl (globular, convex), with rounded or sometimes flat bottoms, and often a ring base. Shapes and manufacturing techniques are the same across Greece. Generally made using the coil technique (coils of clay superimposed), pottery vessels are of excellent quality, considering the period, and all manufacturing techniques are skilfully employed, with the exception of the potter’s wheel (Vitelli 1993, 60; A. Kalogirou, in Laffineur and Betancourt 1997, 11–17).