Early Pottery Technologies among Foragers in Global Perspective : Cultural Transformations through Material Practice

This book presents up-to-date perspectives on pre-farming innovations through material practices, resource intensification, and emerging technologies, particularly pottery manufacture. It includes original studies on the earliest pottery productions among foragers from different parts of the world based on first-hand excavations and laboratory analyses. Its broad geographic scope includes Northern and Central Europe, Eastern Asia (different regions in China), Northern, Western, and Southern Africa, and southeastern North America, comprising parts of the world previously ignored (different regions in Africa) and extending beyond the Old World, i.e., North America. It also takes into account the differing chronologies of the emergence of pottery before food production, which are not limited to the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, but extend as late as the middle Holocene (e.g., in Southern Africa).

This volume offers a fresh and still unexplored, global intercultural and interactive discussion on the emergence of pottery. By mapping the latest findings and variety of methodological approaches, it intends to capture both variability and common denominators of the cultural processes between the end of the Pleistocene and the early/mid-Holocene in which the production and use of pottery played a significant role among hunter-gatherers. This book is a fundamental contribution to the understanding of the role of material practices in cultural transformations in late prehistory worldwide and to the debate on how local narratives mirror different social identities, meanings, and/or functions depending on the specific economic context, settlement system, and cultural landscape. It emphasizes how transformative technologies can potentially create radical changes in the way human populations live and interact with each other. Ultimately, this volume contains valuable reflections and expectations for the future of worldwide pottery research among foragers.

Giulia D'Ercole is a senior researcher and lecturer (Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany). She has a PhD degree in Prehistory from the University La Sapienza of Rome, Italy and is specialized in African archaeology. Her research interests focus on the study of Nubian and Sudanese cultures and their ceramic traditions from later prehistory until historical times. She is an expert of laboratory methodologies for the characterization, technology of production, and provenance of ceramic materials. She has been working in North Africa since 2006 taking part in numerous international fieldwork projects in both Egypt (Farafra, Elephantine) and Sudan (Sai Island, Amara West, Attab and Ferka region, Jebel Sabaloka). She is interested in the concepts of cultural identity and encounters, as well as in the dynamics of social learning and cultural transmission expressed through material culture among prehistoric societies. She has been a post-doctoral researcher for the ERC Starting Grant Project “Across ancient borders and cultures: An Egyptian microcosm in Sudan during the 2nd millennium BC” (2013-2016) and for the ERC Consolidator Grant Project  “Cultural diversity in the Middle Nile Valley. Reconstructing biographies in the periphery of urban centres in northern Sudan during the Bronze Age” (2020-2024).

Elena A.A. Garcea is a Full Professor in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cassino and Southern Latium, Italy. She has undertaken fieldwork and coordinated archaeological research in Sudan since 1986, conducted research projects in Libya from 1990 to 2010, and was field director of the Gobero Archaeological Project in Niger in 2005 and 2006. She is the author and editor of nine books and over 260 journal articles and book chapters on African prehistoric archaeology.

Lenka Varadzinová is senior researcher at the Czech Institute of Egyptology (Faculty of Arts, Charles University). She focuses on prehistory of Northeast Africa and more specifically on human-environment interactions, resilience, and adaptations in late Pleistocene and early Holocene Sudan, with attention turned equally to human societies and human individuals with their singular biographies. She is the director of the interdisciplinary research project concerned with prehistoric occupation in Jebel Sabaloka at the Sixth Nile Cataract in central Sudan (since 2009) and participates in the Shaqadud Project focused on late prehistoric adaptations in non-aquatic environments of the Eastern Sahel (since 2020). Since 2006, she has engaged in several surveys in Egypt, Libya, and the Sudan focused on study of rock art in the context of landscape and archaeology.

Ladislav Varadzin is senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. He is specialized in prehistory of Northeast Africa and the medieval period in Central Europe. He has directed more than 40 archaeological excavations in the Czech Republic and in Africa. Currently he is the director of the archaeological explorations of prehistoric occupations in Jebel Shaqadud (Eastern Sudan) and of the residence of medieval rulers at Vyšehrad (Czech Republic). He takes part in the investigations of prehistoric occupations in Jebel Sabaloka at the Sixth Nile Cataract (Sudan)