The Origin of Pottery as a Result of Human Adaptive
and Imitative Activity

Yu. B. Tsetlin

List of issues > «Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series». 2022. Vol 41

The Origin of Pottery as a Result of Human Adaptive and Imitative Activity

Full text (russian)

Author(s)

Yu. B. Tsetlin

Abstract

The study of the origin of pottery production includes a consideration of two important questions: 1) Why pottery production appeared? and 2) How it was? In European and American archaeological literature, we can find various approaches to these issues. This article proves the fact that pottery production appeared in the result of gradual accumulation of concrete human knowledge about the useful features of different natural materials distributed in the environment. The all useful knowledge in pottery making was found only by cut-and-try method. It was a long-time and step by step process, when positive acquirements became a part of local cultural traditions which passed down from generation to generation. Resemblance between stone, wicker, and clay vessels in general proportionality and volume shows that the emergence of pottery was an obligate course of development, when different natural materials were tested. The process had been finished by widespread distribution of clay vessels as universal things by their function. Since the emergence of pottery production was a polycentric process, a concrete ways of pottery technology development were different in various natural and climatic conditions. But in any cases, this process obeyed general laws, which are consisted in gradual knowing about important qualities of silt and then of clay plastic raw materials. The change from silt to clay was manifested itself in special imitation of complex constituent of silt by adding of different organic or mineral tempers in natural clay. The author shows that the development of vessels’ shapes passed from the use of natural containers then to artificial containers made of natural materials, and finally to artificial ones made of new special constructional materials (i.e., pottery pastes). Such clay containers could be fired with various regimes. So, we can do a conclusion, that the origin of pottery production was an obligate historical process of human adaptation to the natural environment, its imitation, and finally to the making a new artificial material which are absent in the world.

About the Authors

Tsetlin Yuri Borisovich, Doctor of Sciences (History), Leading Researcher, Department of Theory and Methods, Institute of Archaeology RAS; 19, Dm. Ulyanov st., Moscow, 117292, Russian Federation, e-mail: yu.tsetlin@mail.ru

For citation

Tsetlin Yu. B. The Origin of Pottery as a Result of Human Adaptive and Imitative Activity. Bulletin of the Irkutsk State University. Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series. 2022, Vol. 41, pp. 103–121. https://doi.org/10.26516/2227-2380.2022.41.113 (in Russ.)

Keywords

archaeology, ethnography, origin of pottery production, shape of vessels, technology, non-clay containers, adaptation.

UDC

902/908

DOI

https://doi.org/10.26516/2227-2380.2022.41.113

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