Tracing the provenance of the earliest pottery with Sr and Nd isotopes
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The essential components needed for creating a ceramic vessel are clay, water, and temper. Based on ethnographic studies, clay and temper sources are usually located no more than 20-100 minutes of walking distance from the site of creation, but was this the case in Prehistory? Our preliminary results within the NEOPOT project have shown that the first pottery in the northern parts of the Pannonian Basin appeared in the hunter- gatherers' context around 5600 calBC followed by the pottery of the first farmers around 5500 calBC. However, the pottery from both traditions sharply differs in terms of production technology. The origin of the pottery is usually studied through the traditional approach, evaluating the vessel shape, decoration, or manufacturing process. This paper will demonstrate a different approach using stable isotope analysis to trace the provenance of the earliest pottery in Slovakia. Several studies have shown a successful application of 87Sr/86Sr in solving problems of the provenance of various archaeological materials. Our approach is multiproxy, using radiogenic isotopes of strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and neodymium (143Nd/144Nd). The combination of two isotope systems enables us to pinpoint more precisely the origin of the earliest pottery and shed new light on the social networks during the process of Neolithisation. The work is supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic under contract No. GA20-19542S (Tracing the Neolithic transition through the first pottery; NEOPOT project). |
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