Maritime exchange during the Middle Neolithic: evidence of trade in ceramic figurines at the Pitted Ware Culture site of Tråsättra

Abstract

This paper presents a snapshot of a neolithic maritime exchange network centred on the Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) site of Tråsättra (circa 2630 to 2470 BCE), located northeast of modern-day Stockholm, Sweden. We used a combination of Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Atomic Emission Spectrometry (ICP-MA/ES) and thin section analysis to study and source the clays used to produce 19 potsherds and 39 ceramic figurines from the site. Our results showed that while all potsherds were made with local clays, 10 of the figurines were made with non-local clays sourced from across the Baltic Sea region, including the island of Gotland and the Åland archipelago. Furthermore, most of the non-local figurines were anthropomorphs, while all animal figurines were made with local clays. We suggest that this striking pattern indicates that the PWC people of Tråsättra were participating in a long-distance trading network comparable to the ritual and prestige focused exchange systems found in many anthropologically known maritime societies. Similar results were also received from the analysis of 14 potsherds and 3 figurines from the nearby Early Neolithic (circa 3620 to 3360 BCE) site of Lappdal, suggesting that the exchange of ceramics was a long-standing practice for fisher-forager cultures in the Baltic Sea region. Our cluster analysis of clay composition also indicates that some figurines may have been traded on the local level, pointing to multiple spheres of economic interaction. We argue that these results highlight the considerable economic complexity that was present in this neolithic fisher-forager society.