Pottery becomes a Neolithic mainstay across western Eurasia
- Date
- c. 7000 – 5000 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Near East and southeastern Europe
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Fired clay vessels were first made tens of thousands of years earlier by Ice Age foragers in East Asia, but during the Neolithic, pottery became a widespread, everyday technology bound up with settled farming life.
In the Near East, the long 'Pre-Pottery Neolithic' gave way around 7000 BCE to a 'Pottery Neolithic' in which durable ceramic containers spread rapidly through Anatolia, the Levant and Mesopotamia and on into southeastern Europe. Pots transformed daily life: they allowed liquids and grains to be stored against famine, enabled new ways of cooking such as boiling and stewing, supported fermentation and dairying, and served as portable, decorated markers of identity and exchange. Because ceramic styles change quickly and survive well in the ground, pottery also became archaeology's master tool for defining cultures and dating sites. The mastery of controlled high-temperature firing in kilns, moreover, built up pyrotechnological knowledge that fed directly into later experiments in smelting metal.
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Related science, technology & invention events
- Domestication of maize from teosinte in Mesoamericac. 7000 BCE (c. 9,000 years ago)
- Independent agriculture at Kuk Swamp, New Guinea highlandsc. 7000–5000 BCE (c. 9000–7000 years ago)
- Earliest milk processing: the dawn of dairyingc. 6500–6000 BCE
- Domestication of rice in the Yangtze River basinc. 8000–6000 BCE
- Domestication of foxtail and broomcorn millet on the Yellow Riverc. 8000–6000 BCE
- First canal irrigation at Choga Mami and the Samarra culturec. 6000 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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