Itinerant potters and the transmission of ceramic technologies and styles during the Proto-Elamite period in Iran

An INAA study of a widely used potters' tool, the ceramic ring scraper, demonstrates that the elemental compositions of these tools are very different from the pottery produced at the sites where the tools are found. These results are interpreted to indicate that Proto-Elamite (3400-2900 BC) potters in Southwestern Iran were moving from site to site through large regions rather than living and working in single sites. The presence of such mobile potters suggests that ceramic technologies and styles were spread throughout the Uruk/Proto-Elamite world, at least in part, by the movements of itinerant craft specialists.