Making Sense of the Earliest Ceramics in North-Eastern Europe

Henny Piezonka. Jager, Fischer, Topfer. Wildbeutergruppen mit fruher Keramik in Nordosteuropa im 6. und 5. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Archaologie in Eurasien, Band 30.) Habelt-Verlag, Bonn, 2015. 437pp. ISBN9783774939325 The work by Henny Piezonka, the title of which might be translated as Hunters, Fishers and Pots. Food Procuring Groups with Early Pottery in North-Eastern Europe in the 6th and 5th Millennium BC, is a major event in the context of the current research on the spread of ceramic technology across Eurasia. Bringing together a very rich body of material, much of it previously published only in Russian, the work offers a great boost to German-reading prehistorians dealing with this region; there are summaries in Russian and English, in addition to which the Anglophone research community may refer to the concise account given in Piezonka (2012). The study region covers the territory east and north of the Baltic Sea, namely present-day Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with north-western Russia, northern Belarus, northeastern Poland and the far northerly regions of Sweden and Norway. To place the region in a broader context, brief but very useful treatments of early ceramic cultures in neighbouring regions of eastern and northern Europe are also provided. As indicated in the title, the work deals mainly with the 6th and 5th millennia BC, which saw the advent of pottery in this territory. Following an introductory treatment of the region's natural setting, we have a description of the material from 17 selected sites in Finland, Estonia, Russia and Lithuania that the author herself has examined, focussing on pottery, but also covering lithics and other finds. The data from the ceramic assemblages (535 vessels in total) are subject to a comprehensive statistical analysis. In the next chapter the theme is considered at a more general level. A brief discussion of the Mesolithic (i.e. aceramic) cultures in the region is followed by a general treatment of pottery and other material of the various early ceramic cultures in the region, based on published accounts and some unpublished work, along with the author's findings from her own examination of material, as described in the previous chapter. For a wider context, the author also gives concise treatments of the earlier and contemporaneous cultures of the neighbouring regions, closing with brief summaries that characterize hunter-gatherer pottery in other parts of the world--the Jomon ceramics of Japan and the Laurel Tradition in the Woodland pottery of North America. Reassessment of previous studies, supplemented with the findings of her own work, leads the author to distinguish three strands of development of early pottery in north-eastern Europe, crosslinked by mutual influences: 1) a tradition of Sparsely Decorated Ceramics, spreading westwards from the middle Volga area in the late 7th millennium BC and providing the basis for the Volga-Oka Complex, Narva Ware and the Chernobor Culture; 2) a Southern Tradition, originating from the Dnieper-Donets Complex, that includes the Dubiciai Ware of the Pripet-Nemunas region, and also influenced the further development of Narva Ware, the Rudnja and Valdai groups, in addition to which it spread westwards along the south coast of the Baltic (Ertebolle and related groups); 3) a Comb Ceramic tradition, probably originating in the Volga-Kama region, whence it spread northwards and westwards in the first half of the 6th millennium BC. And how does this depart from previous schemes? In the author's own words (p. 253, reviewer's translation): "Whereas older scenarios saw the Dnieper-Donets Complex as the more or less exclusive point of origin for pottery development, from which various strands of development spread out into the East Baltic as well as north-western Russia and Fennoscandia, now the significance of the Middle Volga and Volga-Kama region can be underlined as a starting point of early ceramic traditions. …