FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY NEOLITHIC RUSSIAN POTTERY TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Ceramics appeared in southern Russia at about the same time as in southern Europe, at ca. 6000 cal BC, but whilst pottery was introduced into southern Europe, together with plant and animal domesticates, from southwest Asia, early Neolithic pottery in eastern Europe was probably developed locally by hunter-gatherers, or derived from other pre-agricultural societies in northern Eurasia. In this paper, four sherds from four different regions of central and southern Russia are analysed using the same methods previously employed in two large-scale research programmes on early Neolithic pottery from the Adriatic and the central Balkans. The four pots were made with different tempering agents and were generally low-fired, but while they may represent different technological traditions to the southern European pottery, the overall technical quality of the hunter-gatherer pottery is no less developed than that of the early farmers.