What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The Innovation, Dispersal and Use of Ceramics in North-west Eurasia is a project hosted by British Museum (BM), the University of York (UoY) and the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA), Schleswig, Germany. The project has investigated the origins, adoption and use of pottery vessels by hunter-gatherers across a landmass from the Urals to the Baltic. This is the first time that a systematic analytical approach has been applied to the use of pottery containers by hunter-gatherer-foragers. The project aimed to revolutionise our understanding of this area of hunter-gatherer technology, in terms of use, dispersal and chronology.
After decades of research, the decoupling of agriculture and the production of pottery vessels in many areas of the world has resulted in a new wave of thinking to understand when and why hunter-gatherers made and used pottery containers and how the technology dispersed over vast regions. Identifying the origin and determining the use of pottery vessels in pre-agricultural societies continues to challenge archaeologists and these questions are now key issues in Eurasian archaeology. There is little understanding of the environmental and cultural contexts that led to the emergence of pottery or the timing and dynamics of its dispersal, nor its legacy following the introduction of food production. Addressing these significant lacunae in Eurasian prehistory motivated this project. The team has explored these phenomena, generating significant new data on the origins and function of forager pottery.
Why is it important?
The project has succeeded in bringing a new narrative to the Neolithisation debate of Northern Europe by highlighting the role of hunter-gatherers in facilitating the transmission of pottery technology from North-Eastern Europe to the Baltic during the mid-Holocene. Fundamentally, we have shown that this was a cultural rather than a demographic process and one that was not contingent on the environmental or landscape setting. While pottery has been the focus of this project, the mode and tempo of cultural transmission is also relevant to other hunter-gatherer innovations. Our project highlights the role of hunter-gatherers in shaping the trajectory of subsequent cultural and technological developments in Northern Europe including to food producing Neolithic societies and beyond. We also show that the early farming groups who expanded into Northern Europe most likely replacing hunter-gatherers and bringing their own pottery technology, nevertheless continued to use ceramic vessels in much the same way. We have also gathered intriguing evidence of hunter-gatherers acquiring farmed foods, such as cheese or butter, before the arrival of agriculture.
What are the overall objectives?
The project had four main objectives.
Objective 1: When, and under what circumstances, did pottery vessels emerge in NE Europe? Were pottery vessels independently invented in NE Europe or did the knowledge derive from elsewhere?
Objective 2: How, and when, did early pottery spread from its first occurrence and what factors stimulated or hindered its dispersal?
Objective 3: To what degree did pottery transform prehistoric economy and societies?
Objective 4: How did pottery use change through space and time, especially following the introduction of farming, and as pottery was introduced into new regions with markedly different ecological and environmental regimes?
