Source-sink dynamics drove punctuated adoption of early pottery in Arctic Europe under diverging socioecological conditions

• Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews
• Main Authors: Jørgensen, Erlend Kirkeng, Arntzen, Johan Eilertsen, Skandfer, Marianne, Llewellin, Madison, Isaksson, Sven, Jordan, Peter
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Arctic maritime Europe; Asbestos tempered ware; Early northern comb ware; Early pottery; Human ecodynamics; Hunter-gatherers; Organic residue analysis; Source-sink dynamics; Arctic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/06943be2-89b3-45e4-967e-a7eccb53e283; https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/06943be2-89b3-45e4-967e-a7eccb53e283; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107825; https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/923160442/1-s2.0-S0277379122004565-main.pdf; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142714893&partnerID=8YFLogxK

What drives the adoption of pottery amongst prehistoric foragers in high-latitude environments? Following the long-running interests of archaeology in explaining the origin and dispersal of new technologies, recent years have seen growing efforts to understand what drove the emergence and expansion of early hunter-gatherer pottery use across northern Eurasia. However, many regional dimensions to this continental-scale phenomenon remain poorly understood. Initial pottery adoption has often been explained as a generic cultural response to warming climates and the growing diversity of food resources, yet resolving challenges of food security during seasonal shortfalls or general climatic downturns may have provided alternative motivations. It is also becoming clear that many regions experienced more complex patterns of pottery adoption and that many resist simplistic monocausal interpretations. In this paper we deploy a Human Ecodynamics framework to examine what drove the punctuated adoption of two early pottery traditions into Arctic Maritime Europe, which were separated by a multi-millennial ceramic hiatus – Early Northern Comb Ware (ENCW) and Asbestos Tempered Ware (ATW). Our multi-proxy approach involves the revision of pottery chronologies to clarify the timing and ecological context for each dispersal, combined with analysis of technological and functional dimensions of the ceramic traditions to understand the contrasting social organization of these technologies. Our results confirm that ENCW expanded at a time of increased locational investment and ecological abundance in the region, while ATW spread in a series of smaller and more intermittent waves in the context of a major ecological downturn and alongside a return to a high-mobility lifestyle. Finally, we use the concept of “source-sink dynamics” to suggest that both dispersals were driven by the same underlying process. This involved major climatic fluctuations triggering small-scale population transfers from lake and riverine settings of western ...