Today's rapid technological and social changes have clear parallels in prehistory. The project ‘Mapping Intentionality’ aims to investigate how a new technology (pottery) was transferred into new territories during European Neolithisation.
Pottery was an essential component of the new and settled, agriculture-based Neolithic lifestyle in the Balkan region (7th-6th mill BC) that is in contrast with the earlier, hunter-gatherer pre-pottery way of living.
The new pottery technology gradually spread from its Anatolian source into Europe. However, while the chronology and physical forms of the earliest ceramic wares from Bulgaria – amongst the key hotspots located at the crossroads between Asia and Europe – are known, the social processes by which pottery transfer occurred have not been studied in detail.
When ceramic technology is considered, the non-uniform raw material geology of the Balkan Neolithisation routeways (clay, mineral temper, pigments), and variable plant tempers relating to subsistence practices, means that pottery adoption must have involved a degree of adaptation (intentional change) as it progressed. By identifying innovation across various target sites, MINERVA effectively maps social responses to the challenges of adapting a new technology, providing a window into the wider Neolithisation process for this gateway region.
The MINERVA project not only reveals hidden aspects of prehistoric social learning, transfer of knowledge and training of craft skills. It actually encodes dynamics of communication of past societies, adaptation to new conditions, and especially the interaction between past communities in locally-specific contexts and changing environments, thus helping us to better understand major processes within European pre- and protohistoric societies.
