The Design of the Potter’s Wheel in Pereyaslavl Ryazansky during the 13 th –16 th Centuries (Based on the Results of the Visual Examination of Technological Traces on Pottery Vessel Bottoms)

Two groups of items that contain information on the design of the potter’s wheel are singled out among archaeological finds. The first group which is the most informative includes wooden parts of these devices. However, at the moment there are no reliable finds of the potter’s wheel parts identified among the archaeological materials discovered in Pereyaslavl Ryazansky. For this reason, the second group of the archaeological finds, namely, sherds of pottery vessels, serves to be the main source dataset for the study. This paper describes a visual examination of the technological traces on the bottoms of clay vessels using the methodology suggested by A. A. Bobrinskiy. Using individual traces, we have singled out three designs of the potter’s wheel which presumably were in use in Pereyaslavl Ryazansky during the 13th–16th centuries: a hand-turned wheel with the axle fixed vertically and a mushroom-shaped disc; a wheel with spokes operated by foot; a wheel with the movable axle operated by foot.