La céramique aux lignes peintes. Étude d'un fossile directeur de l'âge du Bronze ancien au Levant sud

Résumé En

The Ceramics with Painted Lines: Study on a « Fossile Directeur » of the Early Bronze Age in the Southern LevantSince the work of G. E. Wright in the 30’s, the “Line-Group Painted Pottery” has always played a major chronological and interpretative role for the Early Bronze Age (EB) in the Southern Levant, particularly for the EB I. It was even recognized as the “southern counterpart” of the Grey Burnished Ware (Wright 1937, p. 45.).The present paper intends firstly to provide a new simplified way of defining the Line-Group Painted Pottery, in order to clarify its distribution and the consistency of this group as a chronological clue, and secondly to give a recent overview of our data.It seems that many scholars identified the “Line-Group Painted Pottery” with inapropriate indices, as it was the case for the “Line-group painted style” (Amiran 1970, p. 49.)for instance. Others did not focus on a reliable definition and a proper internal subdivision. By differentiating it with the painted pottery on chalk (the “Pajama” style and related wares), and with the “Trickle painting” group, the “Grain wash” decoration, the “Abydos painted ware” and the “Dribbled-Painted Ware”, we wish to distinguish the “ceramics with painted lines” A and B.The former was previously called the Basket Style Group (BSG) by E. Braun (Braun 1996, pp. 216-21.), who made an interesting study of it in his PhD thesis. However his internal subdivision seems to us to be too complex, dividing without reason a uniform group. Our definition separates the ceramics with complex painted motives (B), usually in frames, from the simple ones (A). This distinction also relies on the length of time and the specialization of the workers needed to produce these vessels. Furthermore this B group (138 EB I vessels), which disappears in the EB II, presents a very homogenous distribution in the central regions of the Southern Levant. The A group (203 EB I recipients), which still goes on in the EB II-III, has a more global dispersion.The study of the ceramics with painted lines A on a wide time range gives us a good picture of the gradual disappearance of the ceramics with painted lines during the Early Bronze Age. However, despite the ceramic production normalization touching the EB II-III, we must not disregard that the painted lines pottery still persists in the south, and in some localized places in the north of the Southern Levant till the EB III, like Khirbet ez-Zeraqon for instance.According to us, and to the study of other ceramic traditions with the same reflection (Cf. Charloux 2006), it shows, in some ways, the profound attachment for local population to their non-urban ancestral ways of life. The globalizing urban “identity” of the EB II-III populations is apparently insufficient to let them overlook their traditions, which could be related to an incomplete integration into the urban society. It could further explain the collapse of the urban society at the end of the EB III, by their incapacity to resolve any sort of crisis (epidemic, socio-economic, climate, etc.).