Technology, Paleoenvironment and Exchange

This project explores the environmental and behavioral contexts of the appearance of pottery technologies in early hunting and gathering societies. Early archaeological theories developed during the “Neolithic Revolution” posited a causal relationship between increasing reliance on domesticated plants, sedentary village life, and the production of pottery vessels for food storage and cooking.

However, archaeological and ethnographic research discovered that people did not have to be reliant on domesticated plants to create pottery and indeed, hunters and gatherers with varying degrees of mobility made and used ceramic vessels. Recent research indicates that some of the earliest known pottery in the world was adopted by hunter-gatherers. Despite these exciting discoveries, very little is well known of the dating of the finds and the social and ecological contexts of their appearance.

This project examines the exact timing of the adoption of pottery, the impact of environmental change, and associated technology and behaviors.

The research team plans to examine changes in settlement patterns, mobility, and associated assemblages of artifacts at one such early site. Comparisons of distinct paleoenvironmental changes suggests that sea level rise has the most significant correspondence to the onset of pottery appearance. Nonetheless, a high-resolution geochronology is required to adequately evaluate and understand changes that occurred.

This study will determine if the emergence of pottery corresponds with sea level rise, and decisions to become more sedentary, a transition to a diet rich in plant food, and long-distance exchange to buffer newly emerging risks associated with sea level rise and climate change. To accomplish this, project leaders have assembled an interdisciplinary team of geochronologists and paleooceanographers who will create models of sea levels, specialists in ceramic analysis who, using thin section methods, chemical sourcing, microprobe analysis and other techniques, will define the likely sources of the pottery, experts of stone tools will study change in lithic technology and uses, and specialists in the analysis of environmental DNA and plant remains recovered from excavation to define the ecology of the region and foodways in the two periods.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.