Early Neolithic pottery from Central Asia to Denmark

Abstract

This paper focuses on the analysis of the Early Neolithic cultures pottery on the vast territory from the Aral Sea region in the east to Denmark in the west. The most stable typological and technological features of ancient pottery are singled out: profiled upper part of the vessels, pointed bottom, poor ornamentation, pit or dash patterns under the rim, the compositions are represented by intersecting lines like an oblique lattice. The vessels are made of silty clay mixed with chamotte. The fragments of the surfaces are smoothed with a soft object. This set of features can be traced for the pottery of cultures in the Aral Sea region, forest-steppe part of the Volga region (Povolzhye), Don and Dnepr regions, up to Jutland. The radiocarbon dates for the Early Neolithic culture of the area of interest demonstrate their rather ancient age in the eastern part of the area (6200 ВС) and rather smooth transition to younger (5900 ВС) in the western zone. There is a combined chronointerval for the monuments of Elshanka and Erteblle cultures. The reason for the eastern trend in the appearance of the earliest pottery to the west of the Aral Sea region could be climatic disturbances (aridization), while household components became the instrument for the early pottery appearance in the west.