Introduction

Although globalization emerged as a way of describing the conditions and processes shaping the world in the late twentieth century, over the last fifteen years there has been a marked increase in its application to the study of the premodern world. Though rarely operating at anything like a global scale, the concept of globalization is gaining currency in archaeological contexts, as a framework for exploring large-scale interactive processes attested in the archaeological record and a means of dissolving some of the boundaries between the ancient and modern worlds. Though it has been applied most successfully in the study of classical antiquity, its use has also been extended into earlier periods. However, with more limited material evidence and lower chronological resolution, it is important to consider what we mean by globalization in prehistory and at what stage it ceases to be a useful way to describe the patterns of the past.

This chapter examines some of these issues within a general discussion of early ceramic vessel technology in northern Eurasia. It considers how changing archaeological attitudes, absolute dating and the modern globalization of knowledge have enabled us to break away from conventional assumptions about technological development, allowing us to recognize a clear association between early ceramics and hunter-gatherers in many parts of the world. Various chronological patterns in the distribution of early ceramics will be presented alongside the alternative models of invention and dispersal that have been used to explain them. Drawing more explicitly on the archaeological evidence, some of these patterns will be examined in more detail. This discussion will allow us to question assumed relationships between ceramics and sedentarization, recognize variety in the modes of transmission and explore various lines of evidence which seem to indicate longue durée interconnectivity among Eurasian hunter-gatherer communities at various scales. Ultimately, this chapter sets out to ask whether it is meaningful to speak of globalization in this context; whether globalization presents a viable alternative to well-worn debates about migration, diffusion and independent development, or just a meretricious application of contemporary conditions onto the problems of prehistory.

Throughout this review, pottery is used to describe portable ceramic containers or vessels as distinct from ceramic figurines, hearth structures and other uses of fired or baked clay. All dates presented are given as calendar years bc, calibrated using OxCal 4.2 and the IntCal13 curve, rounded to the nearest 100 years (Bronk Ramsey Reference Bronk Ramsey2009; Reimer et al. Reference Reimer, Bard, Bayliss, Beck, Blackwell, Bronk Ramsey, Grootes, Guilderson, Haflidason, Hajdas, Hattž, Heaton, Hoffmann, Hogg, Hughen, Kaiser, Kromer, Manning, Niu, Reimer, Richards, Scott, Southon, Staff, Turney and Plicht2013).

Globalization and Great Divides

As a way of describing both the process and the results of increasing connective fluidity between different regions, the emergence of global economic structures, the simultaneous homogenization and hybridization of cultures worldwide, and a range of other phenomena, globalization has seen an exponential increase in usage since its first appearance in the literature (Gopinath Reference Gopinath2008) (Fig. 1.1). Emerging from business studies in the early 1970s, its value as framework for socio-historical research was quickly recognized and its use extended into the past. With typical Eurocentric self-interest, the main streams of discussion remained focused on the rise of Western political economies and ‘modernity’, from the sixteenth century onwards, and the socio-political transformations arising from global geopolitical upheavals, the rapid development of communication and new transport technologies, during the twentieth century (Mignolo Reference Mignolo, Jameson and Miyoshi1998; Pieterse Reference Pieterse2003). However, there has been a growing call to explore these transformations in a wider context, especially from the historical disciplines and social sciences (including archaeology), where many of the themes and characteristics of modern globalization have found resonance in the study of the past.

1.1

Ngram showing the usage of ‘globalization’, or equivalent terms, in the global literature (English, French, Spanish, Russian).

Derived from data in Michael et al. (2011).

Combined with existing theoretical frameworks and approaches to the study of cross-cultural contact, connectivity and world-systems, the discussion of globalization in the pre-modern, proto- and pre-historic world has become an increasingly important theme over the last fifteen years (e.g. Geraghty Reference Geraghty2007; Hingley Reference Hingley2005; Jennings Reference Jennings2010; Jones et al. Reference Jones, Hunt, Lightfoot, Lister, Liu and Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute2011; Kohl Reference Kohl2008; Sherratt Reference Sherratt, Dever and Gitin2003). Researchers have drawn attention to an insidious separation of ancient and modern in traditional approaches to the past – so unobtrusive and entrenched in our minds that it is easily overlooked, even when we feel we hold it firmly in our gaze (Jennings Reference Jennings2010, 4–5). Advocates of the wider study of globalization or, more recently, globalizations, tend to agree that removing this divide has considerable advantages, but there is little consensus about how this should be achieved.

One approach highlights the fact that many of the institutions, ideas and behaviours traditionally associated with modernity, including globalization, are part of long-term processes stretching back into prehistory (Pieterse Reference Pieterse2012). It specifically emphasizes the importance of interaction as an almost universal condition in human society, explicitly undermining the idea of Europe as a ‘unique or privileged site of dynamism and progress’ (Bentley Reference Bentley, Gills and Thompson2006, 29). Yet, many studies undertaken within this rubric continue to use socio-evolutionary language to the opposite effect, maintaining the locus of ‘real’ globalization within modernity and reserving for earlier historical and prehistoric periods only the archaic, incipient or prototypical forms of ‘globalization-lite’ (Jennings Reference Jennings2010, 142, original emphasis).

Other approaches adopt more restricted definitions of globalization, based on widely accepted models from modernity, which are then considered against the evidence of the archaeological past. These have allowed the existence of a more narrowly defined globalization in antiquity to be recognized and have increasingly emphasized the plurality of this process and its variable character; similar conclusions have also been put forward by several proponents of the former approach (Hingley Reference Hingley2005; Jennings Reference Jennings2010). In both cases, perhaps because of the rich evidence of interaction and comparatively tight chronological resolution that they offer, the main focus has fixed upon the imperial powers of classical antiquity and the activities of early cities and states. The interest in extending the study of globalization further into prehistory, beyond the emergence of an agricultural way of life, seems to vanish, and where it is maintained, it generally ceases to be a way of refocusing current debate at anything other than a ‘planetary’ scale (e.g. Spier Reference Spier2010). As a result, globalization has shifted its point of origin, yet continues to mark one of the great divides in human prehistory, if not between modern and ancient, then between forager and farmer. In this respect, globalization and pottery appear to have something in common.

A Potted History: Ceramic Vessels, Hunter-gatherers and Archaeological Discourse

The almost universal presence of ceramic vessels in human societies worldwide has had a profound impact on expectations of their significance for our understanding of the past. Ceramic, the first truly artificial material, seems to create a direct material connection between past and present that has rarely been overlooked. Its origins were a focus of interest long before the emergence of archaeology as a discipline, though many early thinkers seemed incapable of imagining a meaningful world without it (Plato Reference Plato2008, 56). Out of this long history of conjectural inquiry, the relationship between technological development and socio-economic change was given an increasingly important place in the comparative ethnologies of the Enlightenment (Voget Reference Voget1968).

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, these general discussions crystallized into explicit, progressive schemes for prehistory in which pottery was used as marker of a change (Pluciennik Reference Pluciennik2005). For Lewis Henry Morgan (Reference Morgan1877), pottery defined a somewhat arbitrary boundary between Savagery and Barbarism, for Sir John Lubbock (Reference Lubbock and Lubbock1890) it marked the beginning of the Neolithic Age connected, from the outset, with domestication and the origin of an agricultural way of life. Influenced more strongly by the latter, European archaeology espoused this agricultural connection and began to weave a narrative around it, supported by evidence from an increasing number of excavations in Europe and the Near East.

That agriculture in the Near East was subsequently shown to be an earlier development only enhanced pottery’s prestige as ‘the first of the new domestic arts … of obvious convenience to the housewife, but equally obviously an encumbrance to the nomad’ (Kenyon Reference Kenyon1956, 185). Outside the areas where they were thought to be invented, ceramic vessels, cultivated crops and animal husbandry became inextricable, bound into a single package and discussed in terms of inevitable transmission and revolutionary change (Childe Reference Childe1936, 40). Emerging evidence of pottery in northwest Europe and Scandinavia, apparently among non-agricultural communities, was effectively dismissed by all but the most thoughtful archaeologists. Such examples were treated simply as representation of contact across an expanding agricultural frontier, the passive adoption of one part of a package, which would inevitably be followed by its other elements and the light of a new agricultural age (Pluciennik Reference Pluciennik2005). It is easy to see why many seeking globalization in the past have been tempted to identify this process of agricultural ‘Neolithization’ as its ‘first wave’ (Diamond Reference Diamond2003).

Archaeologists working within the Soviet Union and other communist states were theoretically more open to pre-agricultural pottery. Following L. H. Morgan’s earlier scheme, Engels’s (Reference Engels1884) vision of prehistoric development, enshrined as official doctrine by the state, saw pottery and agriculture as part of the same process, but predicted that the former would be the earlier development (Jordan and Zvelebil Reference Jordan, Zvelebil, Jordan and Zvelebil2009, 48). Consequently, pottery rather than agriculture became (and still remains) the defining feature of the Neolithic Age across northern and eastern Eurasia. Encounters with surviving ‘manifestations of … “full blown” Neolithic [societies]’ (Michael Reference Michael1958, 25) during the centuries of Imperial expansion, suggested to many that this Neolithic without farming was a relatively recent phenomenon. In deference to the powerful developmental narrative emerging from Europe and the Near East, it was seen as derivative and dated accordingly (Michael Reference Michael1958; Sulimirski Reference Sulimirski1970). The implication was clear: hunter-gatherers could make and use pottery, but only once it had been invented by more progressive agriculturalists.

Only with the emergence of absolute radiometric dating techniques in the mid-twentieth century did it become possible for archaeologists to break free of these established relative chronologies and recognize a variety of unacknowledged patterns in world prehistory. Initially, the separation between the onset of agriculture and the emergence of pottery was reinforced in Western Asia; the former was pushed back into the early Holocene, the latter fixed in the eighth and seventh millennia bc (Kenyon Reference Kenyon1956). However, early programmes of absolute dating at the other end of the continent, in the Japanese archipelago, revealed something far more surprising: the appearance of pottery in late Pleistocene layers associated the material culture of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers (Serizawa Reference Serizawa1979). Even today, with our increased awareness of low-level production strategies among hunter-gatherers, these dates are thousands of years earlier than the earliest evidence of plant or animal husbandry in Japan (Crawford Reference Crawford2011).

Although dates from sites like Fukui Cave (Serizawa Reference Serizawa1979) were initially contested, they were soon supported by radiocarbon measurements from sites across Japan and successfully reinforced by the application of a range of independent dating techniques (Habu Reference Habu2004). However, in the absence of comparable material from the Asian mainland, the relevance of these finds to the wider prehistory of Eurasia remained ‘very difficult to study’ (Chard Reference Chard1974: 111). With the opening of the Iron Curtain and the mounting pace of archaeological research over the last twenty years, this task has become easier, and it is increasingly clear that the situation in Japan is far from unique. Similar and even older dates have now been published from a variety of sites on the East Asian mainland. Even if we put the currently contested¹ series of dates from the site of Xianrendong (cf. Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2013 and Wu et al. Reference Wu, Zhang, Goldberg, Cohen, Pan, Arpin and Bar-Yosef2012), we can now push the beginning of our long relationship with pottery back to at least 14,600 bc, and probably very much earlier (Boaretto et al. Reference Boaretto, Wu, Yuan, Bar-Yosef, Chu, Pan and Gu2009).

Coarse Chronology for the Old World

Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene pottery assemblages have now been reported in many parts of temperate and subtropical East Asia (Fig. 1.2). In southern China, at sites in the Yangtze basin, such as Xianrendong (19,300–17,100 bc) and Yuchanyan (16,300–14,600 bc); in northern China in Nanzhuangtou near Lake Baiyangdian (10,800–8,700 bc) and Donghulin near modern Beijing (10,800–8,700 bc); across Japan at Odai Yamamoto, Kubodera-Miniami, Taisho III and many other sites between 15,200 and 11,900 bc (Yamahara Reference Yamahara2006); in the Russian Far East, along the Amur River, at sites such as Khummi, Gasya and Gromatukha, between 14,900 and 10,200 bc; and in the Transbaikal, between 12,300 and 10,200 bc, at sites such as Ust’-Karenga and Studenoe (Boaretto et al. Reference Boaretto, Wu, Yuan, Bar-Yosef, Chu, Pan and Gu2009; Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007; McKenzie Reference McKenzie, Jordan and Zvelebil2009; Razgildeeva et al. Reference Razgildeeva, Kunikita, Yanshina and Medvedev2013; Zhao and Wu Reference Zhao and Wu2000; Yang et al. Reference Yang, Wan, Perry, Lu, Wang, Zhao, Li, Xie, Lu, Cui, Wang, Li and Ge2012). This phenomenon has sometimes been labelled the ‘East Asian model of Neolithization’ (Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2003, 1; Reference Kuzmin2013), though it is increasingly clear that the distribution of pottery in the absence of agriculture was neither restricted to the Far East, nor to Asia, nor even to the Old World (Figs 1.3 and 1.4).

1.2

Hunter-gatherer pottery in eastern Eurasia: (a) Taimyr Net-Impressed Pottery (Pyasina), (b) Kornachakskaya Culture (Ust’-Vasikha II), (c) Rubtsovskoj Pottery Culture (Gusyatnik II), (d) Eleneva Cave, (e) Cisbaikal Early Neolithic (Ust’-Khaita and Net-Impressed I Pottery), (f) S. Transbaikal (Studenoye), (g) N. Transbaikal (Ust’-Karenga), (h) Yakutia Early Neolithic (Sityakh), (i) Bel’kachi I, (j) Upper Amur (Gromatukha), (k) Osipovskaya Culture (Gasya and Khummi), (l) Hokkaido Incipient Jomon (Taisho III), (m) Incipient Jomon (Odai Yamamoto) and (n) Incipient Jomon (Kubodera Miniami), (o) N. China (Nanzhuangtou), (p) S. China (Xianrendong), and (q) S. China (Yuchanyuan).

1.3

Distribution of pottery among hunter-gatherer communities around the world before 1,500 bc; a low resolution survey of the radiocarbon data (bc) – unshaded areas indicate either (a) earliest evidence of pottery after 1,500 bc, (b) earliest pottery associated with domesticates, or (c) no data currently available.

1.4

Hunter-gatherer pottery in western Eurasia: (a) Ertebølle Pottery, (b) Neman Pottery (Lysaya Gora), (c) Narva Culture, (d) Saraisniemi Pottery, (e) Sperrings Pottery, (f) Early Northern Comb Ware (Nerpich’ya Guba), (g) Early Bug-Dniester Culture (Sokol’tsy), (h) Early Dniepr-Donets Culture (Bondarikha II), (i) Sursk Culture (Stril’chya Skelya), (j) Middle Don Culture (Savintskoe), (k) Upper Volga Culture (Torgovishche), (l) Elshanka Pottery (Ivanovka), (m) Vis I, (n) Kama Neolithic (Khutorskaya), (o) Koshkinskaya Pottery, (p) Sumpanya Pottery (Sumpan’ya IV).

At the western edge of Siberia, early dates for pottery-bearing layers from several sites have now been published, such as Sumpan’ya IV (12,200–8,200 bc; Fig. 1.4(p)), Andreevskoe Ozero XVIII (8,500–8,300 bc) and Amnya I (8,600–7,200 bc) (Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007; Kosintsev et al. Reference Kosintsev, Bobkovskaya, Bespozvanniy and Yakolev2004). However, these dates are no longer cited by Kuzmin (Reference Kuzmin2014) and the majority of local scholars, including the original excavators, suggest that they should be discounted in favour of later dates from the same layers (6,000–5,400 bc), which are more consistent with the wider periodization of the region (Kovalëva et al. Reference Kovalëva, Ustinova, Khlobystin and Stoyanov1984; Usacheva Reference Usacheva, Tsibul’skij, Bagashev and Valeeva2001). West of the Urals, in the middle Volga region, this pattern is repeated at sites like Chekalino IV (8,400–4,800 bc; Fig. 1.4(l)) and Lebyazhinka (7,900–5,486 bc) where the earliest dates for pottery are also considered to be problematic (Budja Reference Budja and Dizdar2011). Generally accepted dates for these sites fall between 7,100 and 6,300 bc, though the issue is still a matter of some debate (cf. Budja Reference Budja and Dizdar2011; Gibbs and Jordan Reference Gibbs and Jordan2013; Zakh et al. Reference Zakh, Zimina and Ryabogina2011).

Elsewhere, in northern Africa, secure evidence for ceramics among hunter-gatherers before 9,400 bc cannot be so easily challenged, though there are many, individually problematic sites in this area as well (Close Reference Close, Barnett and Hoopes1995; Huysecom et al. Reference Huysecom, Rasse, Lespez, Neumann, Fahmy, Ballouche, Ozainne, Maggetti, Tribolo and Soriano2009; Sereno et al. Reference Sereno, Garcea, Jousse, Jousse, Saliège, Maga, Ide, Knudson, Mercuri, Stafford, Kaye, Giraudi, N’siala, Cocca, Moots, Moots and Stivers2008). Strangely, many researchers focused on Eurasia and the Near East continue to ignore this evidence (e.g. Dolukhanov et al. Reference Dolukhanov, Shukurov, Gronenborn, Sokoloff, Timofeev and Zaitseva2005; Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2013).

Though finds of early pottery among hunter-gatherers of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene remain ‘few and far between’ (after Close Reference Close, Barnett and Hoopes1995) and are still widely contested, during the middle Holocene they become increasingly common. By the time pottery vessels began to appear widely among agriculturalists in the Near East, between 7,500 and 6,500 bc, their place was already firmly established in many hunter-gatherer communities. Over the subsequent millennium, ceramic vessels began to be produced at sites across northern Fennoscandia and along the Baltic coast, while in Africa they had begun to appear both in shell middens along the Atlantic coast and at Late Stone Age sites in central Africa (Dale and Ashley Reference Dale and Ashley2010; Yamasaki et al. Reference Yamasaki, Hamada and Hamada1972). By the time the first pottery-using agriculturalists appeared in northwest Europe, pottery was already in use in southern Scandinavia and along the western edge of the Baltic, while at the other end of Eurasia, the distribution of pottery had begun to extend northwards into the Arctic (Hallgren Reference Hallgren and Knutsson2002; Kriiska Reference Kriiska2001; Lübke and Terberger Reference Lübke and Terberger2002; Skandfer Reference Skandfer2005; Reference Skandfer, Jordan and Zvelebil2009). The first appearance of pottery-using communities in northeastern Asia, from around 4,400 bc appears to be directly connected to the first evidence of pottery in northwestern America (around 2,500–1,000 bc) (Hoffecker Reference Hoffecker2005; Stimmell and Stromberg Reference Stimmell, Stromberg and Kingery1986). The wider and later uses of pottery among the hunter-gatherer communities of the New World is a fascinating and increasingly well researched topic (e.g. Anderson et al. Reference Anderson, Boulanger and Glascock2011; Beck Reference Beck2009; Eerkens Reference Eerkens2004; Eerkens et al. Reference Eerkens, Neff and Glascock2002; Reid Reference Reid and Bronitsky1989; Sassaman Reference Sassaman1993; Thompson et al. Reference Thompson, Stoner and Rowe2008). Unfortunately, given the constraints of space, it lies beyond the scope of this article.

Although this overview is useful in defining the extent of the remarkable phenomenon of hunter-gatherer pottery highlighted in this chapter, it is not unproblematic. The density of archaeological research is highly variable between regions, early ceramic sites are comparatively rare, and few have been securely dated (Timofeev et al. Reference Timofeev, Zajtseva, Dolukhanov and Shurokov2004). Even where apparently reliable series of dates have been obtained, at sites like Ust’-Karenga (see Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007; Hommel et al. Reference Hommel, Schwenniger, Ineshin and Vetrov2017), they are often rejected by the local archaeological community, leading to seemingly inescapable chronological wrangling, which stifles wider debate (Konstantinov Reference Konstantinov2009; Medvedev, pers. comm.). Conversely, in other areas, dates which are clearly problematic (old measurements on problematic materials, potentially anomalous singletons and dates from ‘multi-component’ layers) are widely maintained, becoming part of the archaeological orthodoxy simply by virtue of repetition, or because they happen to fit with pre-existing ideas.

While, taken at face value, the distribution described (Fig. 1.3) seems to look both global and perhaps globalizing, the character of archaeological research is probably contributing to its structure. A sweeping review such as this cannot represent the complexity of the chronological patterns, or the competing theoretical models which have been applied to explain it. Clearly more detail is needed.

Detailing Distribution

Traditionally, as has already been mentioned, the emergence of early ceramic vessels was approached simultaneously as an adjunct to and marker of change, part of the inevitable transmission of an agricultural way of life. As a result, it has often been presented as diffusion, whether demic, cultural or a combination of the two (Budja Reference Budja2013; Cavalli-Sforza et al. Reference Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza1994). In many respects this approach, which emerged out of a focus on Europe and the Near East, is entirely understandable and remains a plausible explanation for the evidence in these areas (Fort Reference Fort2012). However, in spite of our growing awareness of innovation in hunter-gatherer societies, the legacy of these early interests remains clear in the literature.

The tendency to connect the early pottery among hunter-gatherers to the spread of agriculture or pastoralism remains strong in many areas, whether discussed explicitly as an outcome of long-distance communications or expanding agricultural frontiers, or described more vaguely as ‘Levantine influenced’ (Chairkina and Kosinskaya Reference Chairkina, Kosinskaya, Jordan and Zvelebil2009; Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2013). In some cases, where there is direct evidence of association between early pottery and limited consumption of domesticated animals this may be justified, but the wider application of these ideas seems more difficult to justify. The heritage of wider, more explicitly diffusionist ‘explanations’ is also apparent in studies which use the data to discuss the idea of east–west dispersals at a grand scale, or employ mathematical models where cultural descent appears to be the baseline explanation for patterns in the chronological data (Dolukhanov et al. Reference Dolukhanov, Shukurov, Gronenborn, Sokoloff, Timofeev and Zaitseva2005; Gibbs and Jordan Reference Gibbs and Jordan2013; Silva et al. Reference Silva, Steele, Gibbs and Jordan2014).

Reacting against such perspectives as ‘fundamentally wrong’ some researchers have argued that these simple models misrepresent both the chronological data and the archaeological evidence, and must be abandoned in favour of multi-regional interpretations based on independent origins (Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2014, 4). Though this firm position somewhat misrepresents the aims of many modelling programmes, which seek to use simple models to highlight precisely the same point (Silva et al. Reference Silva, Steele, Gibbs and Jordan2014; Jordan et al. Reference Jordan, Gibbs, Hommel, Silva and Steele2013), its criticisms are in many respects justified. Within the general east–west chronological trend, there are several major fault lines, boundaries, gaps and divisions in the distribution of ceramic vessels, which it is important to explore.

The first of these boundaries lies across central China, between the Yangtze and the Yellow River basins, corresponding with a well established division in Upper Palaeolithic stone technology: between microblade assemblages to the north, and cobble-tool or core and flake industries to the south (Qu et al. Reference Qu, Bar Yosef, Wang and Wu2013). Pottery dated from around 16,500 bc is found in association with the latter, both in the Yangtze basin and, somewhat later, in the Lingnan region further south (Boaretto et al. Reference Boaretto, Wu, Yuan, Bar-Yosef, Chu, Pan and Gu2009). The earliest securely dated finds of pottery to the north of the Yellow River, here associated with microblade industries, date several thousand years later, around 10,500–9,000 bc, and seem to be associated with the earliest evidence for the exploitation of millet, acorns and other seeds (Yang et al. Reference Yang, Wan, Perry, Lu, Wang, Zhao, Li, Xie, Lu, Cui, Wang, Li and Ge2012; Zhao and Wu Reference Zhao and Wu2000). The lack of early sites in northern China and Korea (where the earliest pottery is either contemporary with northern China or considerably later) creates an interesting conundrum for the diffusionist, since it effectively separates the major foci for early ceramic production in China from Japan, where pottery first appears after 15,200 bc in association with microblade industries (Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2006).

A further cultural-technological boundary has been proposed between Japan and the Amur basin, where the emergence of pottery apparently appears almost simultaneously (Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2006). However, new dates for the Incipient Jomon in Hokkaido between 13,100 and 11,900 bc and the existence of a land bridge between Hokkaido and the continental mainland (via Sakhalin) until around 8,000 bc seem to present a strong possibility of earlier contact, if not direct transmission (Kawamura Reference Kawamura1998, 255). In spite of their proximity, another boundary, between the Amur basin and the Transbaikal, has also been suggested on the basis of a lack of similarity in pottery style and vessel form (Kuzmin and Orlova Reference Kuzmin and Orlova2000; Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2014, 3). However, these claims are not as well supported in the archaeological evidence as has previously been maintained (cf. Kajiwara and Kononenko Reference Kajiwara and Kononenko1999; Kuzmin and Orlova Reference Kuzmin and Orlova2000; Shevkomud and Yanshina Reference Shevkomud and Yanshina2012).

As a result, the second major boundary defined here falls a little further west, bisecting the Transbaikal region. This line separates a number of late Pleistocene sites with pottery in association with microblades to its east, identified in spite of a relatively low density of archaeological activity, from the well-studied Cisbaikal region and coastal Baikal where pottery dates fall well within the Holocene. The earliest, from Layer 7 at Gorelij Les (8,800–7,100 bc), provides a terminus ante quem for what is apparently a secure ceramic context (Layer 7a); however, these dates are considered problematic and rejected by many (McKenzie Reference McKenzie, Jordan and Zvelebil2009; Weber Reference Weber1995); more widely accepted dates for pottery in the region fall between 7,000 and 5,300 bc (McKenzie Reference McKenzie, Jordan and Zvelebil2009).

Depending on how conservatively we treat contested data, the earliest evidence from the Cisbaikal either post-dates or overlaps with early pottery dates from western Siberia and the middle Volga region and the Near East, several thousand kilometres to the west (Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007; Vybornov Reference Vybornov2011), creating a further division within the general east–west trend, which the lack of securely dated sites in the Siberian plain does not help us to resolve.

Predating these latter examples somewhat and creating a further boundary in the data are the early hunter-gatherer pottery traditions of northern and sub-Saharan Africa, whose relationship with traditions in Eurasia remains unclear (though see Winiger Reference Winiger1998 and Gronenborn Reference Gronenborn, Hartz, Lüth and Terberger2011). However, the database remains sparse and, given the current political situation in many key regions, it seems unlikely to be expanded in the near future.

Finally, though also beyond this discussion, is the new evidence suggesting pre-agricultural pottery in the middle Ganges at Lahuradewa (9,300–8,300 bc) and the long delay between the emergence of ceramic vessels in southern China and other parts of Southeast Asia, made particularly puzzling by the apparent lack of major geographic barriers between the two regions (Fuller Reference Fuller2006; Higham and Higham Reference Higham and Higham2009; Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2010; Tewari et al. Reference Tewari, Srivastava, Saraswat, Singh and Singh2008).

Evaluating Alternatives

How do we interpret these patterns? Clearly the emerging chronological data present a complex picture, which many existing discussions of the problem do not adequately represent (Gibbs and Jordan Reference Gibbs and Jordan2013; Hommel Reference Hommel, Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2013; Jordan and Zvelebil Reference Jordan, Zvelebil, Jordan and Zvelebil2009). Yet, if simple models of dispersal appear unconvincing, does a multi-regional approach fare any better? As it is currently presented, I would argue that it does not.

Kuzmin (Reference Kuzmin2014, 1) notes that ceramic vessel technology ‘could have emerged in different … [regions] at various times’ because of the widespread availability of raw materials and necessary techniques. In support of this idea he reminds us that ‘people were familiar with firing clay since at least 26,000 yr ago’ (Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2014, 4). These are certainly important points but overlook the fact that there is almost no evidence to connect such precocious examples of claycraft with the emergence of pottery and the patterns described above. The baked clay hearths at Klisoura Cave, the fired figurines and fragments at Dolni Vestonice, Tamar Hat, Vela Spila, Kostënki or Majna, the clay sculptures at La Tuc d’Audoubert and Montespan, and even an early clay or ceramic dish found at the Kapova Cave (Shulgan Tash) point to widespread and varied uses of clay in the Late Pleistocene (Hommel Reference Hommel, Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2013). Yet, almost without exception, these finds occur far outside those regions which can plausibly be defined as independent areas of pottery origins and are divided from the first ceramic vessels in their local regions by many aceramic millennia.

Equally, the apparent lack of ‘genetic relationship’ (sensu Kuzmin Reference Kuzmin2013, 1308) in pottery style between the traditions of adjacent areas seems to be a very unsatisfactory argument for independence, especially given the questionable value of decorative style in delimiting social network boundaries (e.g. Gosselain Reference Gosselain and Stark1998). Against a background of common experience, knowledge of pottery could have spread in a variety of ways, whether as objects, through transient encounters with pottery-using communities, or as an idea in stories told around the fire (Hommel Reference Hommel, Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2013). As such, pottery technology has the potential to move more rapidly along established pathways of communication into a wider range of contexts than would be likely to result from direct cultural transmission or demic diffusion alone. The results of this mosaic dispersal are likely to be reflected as significant local variations and regional variations and, although examples of direct transmission are important, we should expect that in other cases the precise network of communication would prove far more difficult to trace in the archaeological record (Clark and Gosser Reference Clark, Gosser, Barnett and Hoopes1995).

Certainly the attempt is worthwhile, but it requires us to look far more closely at the evidence for support of wider connections.

Detailed integrative studies connecting pottery and lithic traditions at various levels of analysis across this vast area are far beyond the scope of this chapter, but they must be undertaken. Here we must restrict ourselves to a series of brief sketches from the archaeological record, which allow us to highlight some important patterns at an ever-increasing scale, emphasizing the importance, scale and variety of connectivity attested in the early pottery traditions of northern Eurasia. Whether these examples amount to anything that we could reasonably call globalization remains to be seen.

Mobility and Continuity

The first of these sketches illustrates the value of a detailed analysis of the archaeological record. It highlights two reasons why we should continue to look for evidence of interaction at a significant scale in the study of early pottery: (a) that the makers of early pottery were far more mobile than is usually recognized, and (b) that the spread of pottery likely occurred within existing networks established in the Upper Palaeolithic. The focus of this ‘sketch’ is the relationship between the early ceramics traditions of the Russian Far East and, specifically, the site of Ust’-Karenga, located in sandy terrace sediments at the confluence of the Karenga and Vitim Rivers in the northern Transbaikal. Around thirty open, parabolic vessels of various sizes have been recovered from the site in a well-sealed horizon dated to around 11,200 bc (Hommel et al. Reference Hommel, Schwenniger, Ineshin and Vetrov2017; Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007). Well made and comparatively well-fired, these vessels from this site were built using a combination of small coils and wider flattened bands and decorated with toothed-comb impressions to create a variety of geometric patterns (Fig. 1.5).

1.5

Early ceramic vessels from Ust’-Karenga XII, Layer 7.

The possibility of independent development of pottery in the Vitim basin has been repeatedly suggested, on the basis of supposed stylistic differences from earlier traditions in the Russian Far East, where the pottery is predominantly flat-based and organic-tempered² (Kuzmin and Orlova Reference Kuzmin and Orlova2000). Kuzmin (Reference Kuzmin2014) goes further to claim that there are no perceptible connections between the traditions. However, there are several reasons to question this conclusion and to follow Kajiwara and Kononenko (Reference Kajiwara and Kononenko1999, 69) in describing the Amur ‘as a major corridor of commerce in technologies and ideas during the Final Pleistocene’.

Although, superficially, the ceramic traditions of the Amur basin and Transbaikal are far from identical, on closer inspection, several assemblages share similar patterns of surface modification and even distinctive elements of decoration. The use of a variety of tools to consolidate and refine the shape of the vessel walls by scraping or rough wiping – leaving parallel striations across the vessel surfaces, often referred to as ‘technical décor’ – and the widespread use of comb-impressed decoration are particularly significant (Kajiwara and Kononenko Reference Kajiwara and Kononenko1999; Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007; Razgildeeva et al. Reference Razgildeeva, Kunikita, Yanshina and Medvedev2013; Shevkomud and Yanshina Reference Shevkomud and Yanshina2012).

The ‘technical’ striations were typically clearest on the interior walls, running horizontally around the vessel, although in some cases they were also apparent on the exterior, where they were often aligned vertically (Kuzmin and Vetrov Reference Kuzmin and Vetrov2007; Razgildeeva et al. Reference Razgildeeva, Kunikita, Yanshina and Medvedev2013; Shevkomud and Yanshina Reference Shevkomud and Yanshina2012). The marks were made using a variety of tools, perhaps in imitation of the visual texture of organic containers or earlier vessels made in basketry moulds. The use of comb stamps was also varied, but included a distinctive approach to the production of a tight zig-zag decoration referred to as a stepping-comb motif. Although the assemblage from the site of Gromatukha in the Upper Amur basin appears rather mixed, it seems significant that finds included a small number of parabolic vessels, with apparently similar decorative schemes to those at Ust’-Karenga (Shevkomud and Yanshina Reference Shevkomud and Yanshina2012).

Another reason for considering relationships between the Amur and Transbaikal to be likely is their shared lithic technology, based on the production of microblade tools. This technique is held in common with many Late Pleistocene sites across Japan, northern China and eastern Siberia, and outside southern China, there is a strong correlation between the earliest appearance of pottery and these kinds of lithic technologies (Goebel Reference Goebel, Elston and Kuhn2002). Microblade industries are generally considered to be an adaptation to high mobility, where resource-efficient, adaptable, maintainable and lethal hunting technologies would be particularly advantageous, an interpretation which seems at odds with the traditional association between ceramics and sedentism (Bleed Reference Bleed, Elston and Kuhn2002; Goebel Reference Goebel, Elston and Kuhn2002). While in the lower Amur, where early pottery appears in association with shifts towards a ‘more developed’ Neolithic industry, this seems less paradoxical, the adoption of pottery in the Upper Amur and Transbaikal occurs against a background of continuity in lithic traditions which remain essentially Upper Palaeolithic in character (Shevkomud and Yanshina Reference Shevkomud and Yanshina2012; Vetrov Reference Vetrov, Medvedev and Vinogradov1995). At Ust’-Karenga, the idea of mobility was recently supported by a detailed analysis of the pottery itself, which demonstrated the exploitation of a surprisingly wide range of residual or colluvial clay sources, representing ad hoc production in a much wider landscape. Clay resources around the site itself were apparently little exploited and the limited quantity of vessels, their distribution and variety could be most convincingly explained as a palimpsest of temporary occupations by a comparatively mobile community (Hommel et al. Reference Hommel, Schwenniger, Ineshin and Vetrov2017).

This lithic continuity and direct evidence for mobility, combined with both visual similarities and technical differences in ceramic tradition, suggest that the spread of pottery along the Amur and across the Pacific watershed probably occurred along diffuse networks of interaction and exchange, rather than through population dispersal or direct technological transmission. This idea has also been discussed in relation to the emergence of pottery in Europe and western Eurasia, which has been described as a pattern of dispersal reflecting ‘population movements and contact networks … [established] after the Glacial Maximum’ which served as ‘conveyor belts’ for a variety of cultural and technological developments (Gronenborn Reference Gronenborn, Hartz, Lüth and Terberger2011, 74).