The use of early pottery by hunter-gatherers of the Eastern European forest-steppe

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:269

Article

Courel, Blandine¹  Meadows, John²  Carretero, Lara Gonzalez¹  Lucquin, Alexandre³  McLaughlin, Rowan¹  Bondetti, Manon³  Andreev, Konstantin⁴  Skorobogatov, Andrey⁵  Smolyaninov, Roman⁶  Surkov, Aleksey⁷  Vybornov, Aleksandr A.⁴  Dolbunova, Ekaterina^1,8  Heron, Carl P.¹  Craig, Oliver E.³ 

[1] British Museum, Dept Sci Res, London WC1B 3DG, England

[2] Schleswig Holstein State Museums Fdn, Ctr Baltic & Scandinavian Archaeol ZBSA, Schlossinsel 1, D-24837 Schleswig, Germany

[3] Univ York, Dept Archaeol, BioArCh, York YO10 5DD, N Yorkshire, England

[4] Samara State Univ Social Sci & Educ, Samara 443099, Russia

[5] Assoc Terra, Voronezh, Russia

[6] Lipetsk State Pedag Univ, Lipetsk 398020, Russia

[7] Ctr Rescue Archaeol Res, Voronezh, Russia

[8] State Hermitage Museum, 34 Dvortsovaya Embankment, St Petersburg 190000, Russia

关键词: Holocene;    Palaeogeography;    Russia;    Middle Don;    Middle Volga;    Archaeology;    Hunter-gatherers;    Early pottery;    Vessel use;    Lipid analysis;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107143

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The Eastern European steppe and forest-steppe is a key region for understanding the emergence of pottery in Europe. The vast region encompasses the basins of two major waterways, the Don and the Volga rivers, and was occupied by hunter-gatherer-fisher communities attracted to highly productive forest/aquatic ecotones. The precise dates for the inception of pottery production in this region and the function of pottery is unknown, but such information is vital for charting the pan-Eurasian dispersal of pottery technology and whether there were common motivations for its adoption. To investigate, we conducted AMS dating, including a re-evaluation of legacy radiocarbon dates together with organic residue analysis and microscopy. The dating programme was able to clarify the sequence and show that hunter-gatherer pottery production was unlikely in this region before the 6th millennium BC. Regarding use, stable isotope and molecular analysis of 160 pottery samples from 35 sites across the region shows that terrestrial animal carcass fats were preferentially processed in pots at Middle Volga sites whereas aquatic resources dominate the residues in pottery from the Middle and Upper Don basin. This is supported by fragments of fish, legumes and grasses in the available charred deposits adhering to the inside of pottery from the Don basin. Since the sites from both river basins had similar environmental settings and were broadly contemporaneous, it is posited that pottery use was under strong cultural control, recognisable as separate sub-regional culinary traditions. The 'aquatic hypothesis', previously suggested to explain the emergence of Eurasian pottery, cannot be substantiated in this context. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

【 授权许可】

Free