Showcase ZERO. From 0 to 140 Revolutions per Minute: The Potter's Wheel Arrives on the Iberian Peninsula

Technological analysis of pottery from Las Cogotas (Ávila) has offered new interpretations of how and why people began to throw pottery pieces on wheels, gradually abandoning hand-built vessels.

Macro and microscopic examination of the surface of these vessels has detected markings that indicate the use of various mechanical means of generating the kinetic energy required to make them. It also reveals that instruments other than the kick wheel were used for modelling ceramic vessels, such as the tournette or low hand-turned wheel.

New research suggests that the potter’s wheel was introduced for social as well as economic reasons. The increasing stratification of society, begun in the sixth century BC, may have been the primary cause of this change in the method of producing ceramic vessels.

Protohistory and Colonisations Department and Juan Jesús Padilla Fernández (PhD in History and Archaeology, UCM)