Stone Age hunter-gatherer ceramics of North-Eastern Europe: new insights into the dispersal of an essential innovation

This paper explores the emergence and dispersal of the earliest pottery among the hunter-gatherer groups east and north of the Baltic Sea in the 6th and 5th millennium calBC. By combining existing knowledge with the results of detailed statistical analyses of 17 selected early ceramic complexes with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Documenta Praehistorica
Main Author: Henny Piezonka
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: University of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani) 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.39.2
https://doaj.org/article/2f9a29bfa4b344bdbd8acff7705e06bc
Description
Summary:This paper explores the emergence and dispersal of the earliest pottery among the hunter-gatherer groups east and north of the Baltic Sea in the 6th and 5th millennium calBC. By combining existing knowledge with the results of detailed statistical analyses of 17 selected early ceramic complexes with altogether 535 vessel units from Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Russia, chronological, typological and spatial trajectories in the history of early ceramics are reconstructed. On the basis of this information, a scenario for the spread of the pottery technology into the study area is put forward, illuminating the situation not only for the actual research area, but for a wider region from the Baltic to the Urals mountains and from the Barents Sea to the Black and Caspian Seas. As a result, it is suggested that three separate lines of tradition in early pottery development played a role in the genesis of early ceramic groups east and north of the Baltic Sea.