La Black Wheelmade Ware. Originalità e modelli stilistici, tipologici e tecnologici dalla Siria e dal Levante settentrionale in una peculiare produzione dipinta sud-levantina del tardo III millennio a.C.

The existence of a "Syrian connection" in the EB IV (ca. 2300-2000 BC in conventional terms) ceramic repertoires of the Southern Levant has been recognised since the beginning of the research into this period. In particular, some pottery vessels belonging to a well defined class of fine table ware - known as Black Wheelmade Ware - have been regarded as Syrian imports into the Southern Levant, or as southern Levantine imitations of Syrian products. This very peculiar class is reanalysed in this article; it is contextualised in its regional setting, and compared with the ware productions of northern Lebanon and Northern Inland Syria. We propose that this distinctive ceramic tradition originated from a multiplicity of cultural and technological influxes, which we re-elaborated autonomously and originally by the southern Levantine communities, giving birth to two different traditions of Black Wheelmade Ware, a "western" one, centred on the Lebanes Beqa' and Upper Galilee, and an "eastern" one, circumscribed to Southern Syria. Moving from these insights, the fragmentation of those areas into localised ceramic horizons opposed to the fragmentation of those areas into a single one, and their respective relationship with Northern Inland Syria are analysed and discussed.