ABSTRACT
A lot of the pots are rather crude. Those who want to present the Stonehenge people as primitive savages can smile with satisfaction as they point derisively at their pottery. But we must remember that it was the first pottery and that it was made without the aid of a wheel. Since the wheel was only invented and used to a very limited extent in the later part of the neolithic, it is surprising that circular plans were attempted for all pots throughout the period. It is almost as if the forms the potters chose to make required and conditioned the invention of the wheel. Nowadays we take it for granted that cups, bowls and jars will be circular in plan and are intrigued when we occasionally come across different shapes, but the circle is a tradition that began in the neolithic, before the shape could be produced automatically by a wheel rotating the clay between the potter’s hands.
