Project description
Potting history: decoding Neolithic socio-economic dynamics
Pottery is a fundamental aspect of archaeology, yet traditional studies often overlook the human stories behind its creation. During the pivotal Neolithic-Eneolithic transition in Moravia, society underwent significant changes. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the POTTING project aims to understand these shifts by analysing over a thousand years of history at the Brno Modřice-CTP site in Moravia. By combining advanced micro-computed tomography imaging with lipid residue analysis, the project will reconstruct the entire ‘life cycle’ of pottery – from raw material collection to cooking and food consumption. This interdisciplinary project aims to reveal ancient domestic practices and economic activities. Ultimately, POTTING’s goal is to provide a transformative framework for understanding how prehistoric socio-economic traditions evolved during a key period of European prehistory.
Objective
Pottery is one of the paramount materials found in archaeological excavations in Central Europe, and as such it has been used to track regional chronologies, stylistic trends, and distribution patterns. Recent developments in archaeological pottery analysis, however, focus on broader interpretations of the socio-anthropological dynamics behind pottery production by championing an approach based on the chaîne opératoire concept, i.e. the sequence of technical steps in pottery-making, shaped by learning and transmission. Building on this concept, the POTTING project will provide a novel framework to understand continuity, transformation, and change in prehistoric socio-economic practices at the pivotal Neolithic-Eneolithic transition in Moravia, by remarkably taking into account not only production technology, but also pottery use. Thanks to the long occupation over a time span of more than 1000 years at the Moravian site of Brno Modřice-CTP, the project will unlock socio-economic practices across multiple cultural horizons at a single site, offering unparalleled control over environmental and geographic variables. The analytical framework combining ceramic petrography and micro-CT coupled with the multi-scalar analysis of manufacturing traces, completed by lipid residue analysis to investigate the actual use of pottery, will unveil domestic practices and related economic activities, including raw material prospection, pottery-making, storage, cooking and food consumption practices. Leveraging the expertise in Central European prehistoric material culture offered by the host institution (Masaryk University), and the recent advances in imaging and biomolecular approaches on archaeological pottery brought together by the consultants from partner institutions, the fellowship will equip the researcher with cutting-edge, interdisciplinary analytical expertise to advance current knowledge on socio-economic dynamics at a time of major change in European prehistory.
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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601 77 Brno
Czechia
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