The onset of wheel-throwing in Middle Asia. A Neolithic 199 innovation?

It is widely acknowledged, that rotating devices started to be in use in the pottery making craft industries of the ancient Near East from at least the middle-late Chalcolithic times; and that in the 3rd millennium BCE coil-forming techniques were aided by the use of basalt wheels, recently identified in securely dated levantine contexts. However, it is controversial when exactly the use of these devices debouched into true wheel-throwing, i.e. in primary forming techniques in which pots are shaped in a single operation from a unique lump of clay. Here, I comment on archaeological information obtained from palaeo-technological studies of two transitional Chalcolithic sites in central-northern Iran, Chesmeh-Ali and Tepe Pardis, c. 5200‑4700 cal. BCE (Fig. 1). Departing from unilineal models of technological evolution, in which a technique is gradually flanked and replaced by a more efficient one, it is argued that many different techniques, including wheel-throwing, were latent in the craft know-how of the early agriculturalists and coexisted since Neolithic times.