About Ancient Ceramic Traditions of the Population of the Northern Caspian Region

Abstract

Introduction. The territory of the Northern Caspian region plays an important role in the study of the Neolithic of Eastern Europe. The main criterion of this period is clay pottery. One of the difficult issues is the time of the ceramic technology appearance. Methods and materials. The study of the pottery technology of the Neolithic population of the Northern Caspian region is carried out in the framework of the historical and cultural approach to the study of ceramics, according to the method of A. Bobrinsky. The technique is based on binocular microscopy, tracology and experiment in the form of physical modeling. The basis for identifying technological traces on ceramics is the comparative analysis of the vessels under study with the base of standards. It is made by means of physical modeling in field and laboratory conditions. The age of the Neolithic monuments was determined using traditional methods in radiocarbon laboratories in Russia and Ukraine, as well as using AMS at universities in Sweden and Finland. Analysis. Over the past 10 years, more than 68 radiocarbon dates on different materials such as charcoal, bones, organics from ceramics, charred crusts, humus have been obtained. They give the possibility to determine the time of appearance and spread of the earliest pottery in the Northern Caspian region. This is the middle 7th millennium BC. The chronological framework for the development of the Neolithic in the Northern Caspian region is ca. 6600–5500 BC. The paper establishes the main and specific features of ceramic traditions. Results.The technical and technological analysis allows to reveal the genesis, the features of dynamics and further development of pottery in this region. The complex of results obtained allows to attribute the Neolithic sites of the Caspian region to the earliest pottery areal in Eastern Europe.