The origin of ancient pottery production

Abstract

The origin of pottery production involves two interconnected processes: the emergenceof vessel shapes and pottery technology. To clarify the nature of the first process weneed to identify prototypes for the shapes of clay vessels and to determine the functionsof the first clay vessels. The study of pottery technology involves the earliest plastic raw materials, composition of pottery pastes and vessels’ firing regimes. The researchis based on archaeological ceramics from the Near East and Anatolia of 9-8 millennia ago and from the Japan and the Far East of Russia 13-11 millennia ago. A range ofethnographic data was also used. The origin of pottery production (including shapes and technology of vessels) was a result of two main factors - adaptive processes of the tribes to local natural and economical situation and human natural ability to imitation.That is why the origin of pottery production was a polycentric process. It had appeareda lot of times in various regions of the Earth as long as its all-round distribution closedthe beginnings of the process