Note on Early Bronze IV grey hard-textured wares in the Levant

The corpus of grey and red vessels with or without whitish painted lines has considerably expanded to date and it has become clear that Early Bronze IV (EB IV) – now considered broadly contemporary in the two regions in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC – was the period when such vessels spread over several areas across the entire Levant. Here I re-evaluate the published evidence of Levantine EB IV grey hard-textured wares, in order to discuss whether these finds represent regional variants the same style with a long chronological duration and a wide spatial distribution, or several wares with different chronologies and spatial patterning, though linked to each other in techno-stylistic terms. I will focus particularly on goblets because it is possible to follow their evolution through EB IV and the fact that they have been found at all the sites considered makes inter-site correlations possible. From the reassessment of the available evidence proposed, it seems likely, that the White-on-Black Ware and the Black Wheel-made Ware are two techno-stylistically related ware productions that characterise two different EB IV phases but that developed from one another. From the spatial and chronological patterning of the available data, it seems that the Upper Orontes Valley was the only place, to date, where the grey hard-textured wares with white decorations developed continuously all through the EB IV period. Thus, around the mid-third millennium BC, the Upper and Middle Orontes Valley may have been the area where the EB IV Levantine tradition of grey or red very well fired, hard-textured wares often, though not exclusively, decorated with whitish painted motifs, started and was elaborated. It may have been the place where the EB IVA White-on-Black Ware was produced and from where it was exported and from where the EB IVB tradition of the Black Wheel-made Ware developed and spread during EB IVB.