The transition to farming and the ceramic trajectories in Western Eurasia. From ceramic figurines to vessels

Abstract

In Eurasia the invention of ceramic technology and production of fired-clay vessels has not necessarily been related to the dynamics of the transition to farming. The invention of ceramic technology in Europe was associated with female and animal figurine making in Gravettian technocomplex. The fired-clay vessels occurred first in hunter-gatherer contexts in Eastern Eurasia a millennia before the agriculture. The adoption of pottery making in Levant seems to correlate with the collapse of the ‘ritual economy’, social decentralisation and community fragmentation in the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic. In South-eastern Europe the adoption of pottery making was closely associated with social, symbolic and ritual hunter-gatherers’ practices.