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In Southwest Asia, early ceramics are generally associated with sedentary farming communities. This is unlike many other parts of Asia, where ceramics were first manufactured by hunter-gatherers. Radiocarbon evidence indicates that sustained production of ceramic containers (pottery) began at several sites in Anatolia, Upper Mesopotamia and the northern Levant around 7000 BC or slightly later, although there are indications that very small-scale production of pottery sometimes occurred at even earlier dates. In other regions (e.g. the southern Levant, Cyprus) pottery does not become common until centuries later. This paper examines Southwest Asian ceramic production in terms of its timing, technology and use, as well as its social and economic contexts. It also considers the legacy of early archaeological studies of Southwest Asian pottery for our general understanding of the emergence of ceramics. For example, Gordon Childe's concept of a ‘Neolithic package’ promoted a close association between the emergence of farming and pottery, which cannot be supported for many parts of Asia.

The invention of pottery was a fundamental technological advancement with far-reaching economic and cultural consequences. Pottery containers first emerged in East Asia during the Late Pleistocene in a wide range of environmental settings, but became particularly prominent and much more widely dispersed after climatic warming at the start of the Holocene. Some archaeologists argue that this increasing usage was driven by environmental factors, as warmer climates would have generated a wider range of terrestrial plant and animal resources that required processing in pottery. However, this hypothesis has never been directly tested. Here, in one of the largest studies of its kind, we conducted organic residue analysis of >800 pottery vessels selected from 46 Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites located across the Japanese archipelago to identify their contents. Our results demonstrate that pottery had a strong association with the processing of aquatic resources, irrespective of the ecological setting. Contrary to expectations, this association remained stable even after the onset of Holocene warming, including in more southerly areas, where expanding forests provided new opportunities for hunting and gathering. Nevertheless, the results indicate that a broader array of aquatic resources was processed in pottery after the start of the Holocene. We suggest this marks a significant change in the role of pottery of hunter-gatherers, corresponding to an increased volume of production, greater variation in forms and sizes, the rise of intensified fishing, the onset of shellfish exploitation, and reduced residential mobility.

The goal of this contribution is to stimulate a wider reflection on the role of food consumption practices throughout prehistory. We focussed on the Jōmon communities of Hokkaidō Island in Northern Japan since these mobile foragers underwent a process of economic diversification and intensification, eventually leading to higher levels of sedentism across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Moreover, dynamic social settings and expansion of the subsistence base at the start of the Holocene would have provided rich opportunities for novelfood combinations, and potentially, the rise of diverse regional cuisines. We investigated tool kits and resource landscapes, and sampled pottery from a range of sites, phases and regions. We then applied organic residueanalysis to confirm the actual spatiotemporal patterning in cuisine. Although we predicted that ruminants and nuts would have played a major role in local cuisine, especially in inland areas, our results indicate that aquaticresources were central to pottery-based cuisines across the island, and that other food groups had probably been processed in other ways. While organic residue analysis enabled us to reconstruct some major patterns in Jōmoncuisine, we conclude that archaeologists will need to look “beyond the cooking pot” to fully appreciate the full diversity of local foodways.

The Neolithic is a key topic in the study of Old World prehistory but how the Neolithic is defined varies between regions. In East Asia the invention of pottery is often seen as marking the start of the Neolithic. In contrast to this ‘eastern’ perspective, in western parts of Eurasia it is the presence of agriculture that usually defines the onset of a Neolithic way of life. This paper adopts a comparative perspective, examining the origins and development of pottery, agriculture and sedentary life in East Asia and Southwest Asia. We suggest that a comparative perspective indicates that some of the most enduring themes of Neolithic studies need to be reconsidered, namely: (1) the idea of a Neolithic package consisting of a number of associated traits (including, among other things, agriculture, sedentary sites, and pottery) that developed and spread together, (2) the notion of the Neolithic as a revolutionary event marking a sharp break from the preceding Palaeolithic period, and (3) the enduring impact of the Neolithic on later periods.

Copyright © 2016 Antiquity Publications Ltd. Where did pottery first appear in the Old World? Statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that ceramic vessel technology had independent origins in two different hunter-gatherer societies. Regression models were used to estimate average rates of spread and geographic dispersal of the new technology. The models confirm independent origins in East Asia (c. 16000 cal BP) and North Africa (c. 12000 cal BP). The North African tradition may have later influenced the emergence of Near Eastern pottery, which then flowed west into Mediterranean Europe as part of a Western Neolithic, closely associated with the uptake of farming.

The Neolithic in north-east Asia is defined by the presence of ceramic containers, rather than agriculture, among hunter-gatherer communities. The role of pottery in such groups has, however, hitherto been unclear. This article presents the results of organic residue analysis of Neolithic pottery from Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Results indicate that early pottery on Sakhalin was used for the processing of aquatic species, and that its adoption formed part of a wider Neolithic transition involving the reorientation of local lifeways towards the exploitation of marine resources.

The invention of ceramic objects made from fire-hardened clay represents an important and early step in the development of pyrotechnology. This paper examines pottery invention and innovation by hunter-gatherers in East Asia and by farmers in the Near East to examine how prehistoric communities in different socio-economic systems came to rely heavily on fired-clay containers. Drawing on advances in archaeological science, it examines from a comparative perspective early pottery's broader entanglements related to technology and use and argues that early pottery production by farmers in the Near East can be viewed as a process of innovation in a longer tradition of container technology, while the first hunter-gatherer pottery production in East Asia provides a better case for independent invention.

Largely missing from the debate surrounding the use of pottery among arctic and sub-arctic hunter-gatherers are site-based biomolecular studies of vessel contents. This study used lipid-residue analysis to elucidate vessel function at Nunalleq (GDN-248), a late Thule-period coastal village site in the Yup’ik area of Western Alaska. In total, 31 pottery sherds and five soil samples were analyzed using gas chromatography and/or gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. The ubiquitous presence of aquatic biomarkers in all the pottery sherds suggests that pottery function at the site was directly linked to the use of aquatic resources. This indication of relatively specialized use of pottery at Nunalleq is particularly interesting when considered within the context of the site’s broader subsistence strategies, which included use of both aquatic and terrestrial resources. These findings appear to support a more general association between higher-latitude pottery traditions and the use of aquatic resources, though this topic requires further research.

Compared to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), evidence for potentially symbolic imagery is rare in the Late Neolithic of the Southern Levant, consisting primarily of figurines and decorated pottery. While the symbolic roles of fi gurines have occasionally been discussed, studies of decorated pottery have usually focused on developing chronologies or defirning the boundaries of archaeological cultures. In an attempt to better understand pottery symbolism this paper suggests that over the course of the Late Neolithic pottery decoration became more varied but also became simpler. These developments may refl ect an increase of symbolic ambiguity. The decline in fi gurine use over the course of the Late Neolithic similarly suggests a focus on ambiguous symbols during the later part of the period. A tentative suggestion is that this shift may be related to a change in community organization. Some early Late Neolithic sites are relatively large and each one may have comprised a single, spatially contiguous community. In the later part of the period, at least in some areas, community groups may have been dispersed across several small sites. A symbolic system emphasizing ambiguity may have facilitated the occasional interactions that were a part of such dispersed communities., Dans la région du Levant Sud, les témoins potentiels d’une imagerie symbolique sont peu nombreux au Néolithique récent, contrairement au Néolithique précéramique B, et se composent principalement de figurines et de poterie décorée. Si le rôle symbolique des figurines a parfois été abordé par les chercheurs, les études portant sur la poterie décorée ont surtout servi à la mise en place de chronologies et à la définition de cultures archéologiques. Afin de mieux comprendre le rôle symbolique joué par la poterie, le présent article suggère que le décor des céramiques s’est non seulement diversifié, mais également simplifié tout au long du Néolithique récent. Ces développements pourraient être le reflet d’une ambiguïté symbolique croissante. Une diminution de l’utilisation des figurines au cours du Néolithique récent pourrait aussi refléter une nouvelle préférence pour les symboles ambigus à la fi n de cette période. Il est possible qu’une telle transformation soit reliée à un changement dans l’organisation sociale des communautés qui est perceptible à la même époque. Au début du Néolithique récent quelques sites très étendus suggèrent l’occupation d’un espace contigu par des communautés entières, tandis que la fi n du Néolithique récent voit une dispersion des communautés entre plusieurs petits sites, au moins dans certaines régions. Un système symbolique mettant l’accent sur l’ambiguïté a pu faciliter les interactions sociales épisodiques que nécessitait une telle dispersion des communautés., Gibbs Kevin. Late Neolithic Pottery and Ambiguous Symbols in the Southern Levant. In: Paléorient, 2013, vol. 39, n°2. pp. 69-84.

This article examines Siberia’s increasingly important role in the study of the emergence of pottery across northern Eurasia. The world’s earliest pottery comes from Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer sites in East Asia. This material is typically seen as disconnected from later pottery traditions in Europe, which are generally associated with sedentary farmers. However, new evidence suggests that Asian and European pottery traditions may be linked to a Hyperborean stream of hunter-gatherer pottery dispersals that spanned eastern and western Asia, and introduced pottery into the prehistoric societies of northern Europe. As a potential bridge between the eastern and western early pottery traditions, Siberia’s prehistory is therefore set to play an increasingly central role in one of world archaeology’s most important debates.

The earliest pots in the world are from East Asia and date to the Late Pleistocene. However, ceramic vessels were only produced in large numbers during the warmer and more stable climatic conditions of the Holocene. It has long been assumed that the expansion of pottery was linked with increased sedentism and exploitation of new resources that became available with the ameliorated climate, but this hypothesis has never been tested. Through chemical analysis of their contents, we herein investigate the use of pottery across an exceptionally long 9,000-y sequence from the Jomon site of Torihama in western Japan, intermittently occupied from the Late Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene. Molecular and isotopic analyses of lipids from 143 vessels provides clear evidence that pottery across this sequence was predominantly used for cooking marine and freshwater resources, with evidence for diversification in the range of aquatic products processed during the Holocene. Conversely, there is little indication that ruminant animals or plants were processed in pottery, although it is evident from the faunal and macrobotanical remains that these foods were heavily exploited. Supported by other residue analysis data from Japan, our results show that the link between pottery and fishing was established in the Late Paleolithic and lasted well into the Holocene, despite environmental and socio-economic change. Cooking aquatic products in pottery represents an enduring social aspect of East Asian hunter-gatherers, a tradition based on a dependable technology for exploiting a sustainable resource in an uncertain and changing world.

This paper presents direct evidence of subsistence practices and pottery use at a Late Neolithic site at al-Basatin, northern Jordan. Measurable concentrations of C 16:0 and C 18:0 were recovered from 8 of 10 archaeological pottery fragments through use of a microwave-assisted silica gel and aminopropyl solvent protocol developed for the isolation and concentration of free fatty acids in marine sediments. Subsequent isotopic analysis of the surviving C 16:0 and C 18:0 saturated fatty acids revealed ∂ 13 C ratios consistent with those of adipose fats of ruminant and non-ruminant animals pastured on lands adjacent to the Jordan Valley. The high recovery of diagnostic compounds from the al-Basatin material is discussed in context of a wider examination of the initial development and use of pottery in the Fertile Crescent, and the emerging debate concerning the efficacy of stable carbon isotope values in characterizing organic residues embedded in pottery fragments recovered from the earliest ceramic horizons in the Middle East and Europe.