Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory

Sheds light on the motivations that lay behind the adoption of pottery, the challenges that had to be overcome.

The book is for archaeologists interested in the adaptations and social lives of people in the prehistoric Circumpolar North. It is also targeted at archaeologists and historians interested in the history of technologies, specifically pottery cooking technologies, and the motivations and obstacles that lay behind their adoption into new regions.Throughout prehistory the Circumpolar World was inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Pottery-making would have been extremely difficult in these cold, northern environments, and the craft should never have been able to disperse into this region. However, archaeologists are now aware that pottery traditions were adopted widely across the Northern World and went on to play a key role in subsistence and social life. This book sheds light on the human motivations that lay behind the adoption of pottery, the challenges that had to be overcome in order to produce it, and the solutions that emerged. Including essays by an international team of scholars, the volume offers a compelling portrait of the role that pottery cooking technologies played in northern lifeways, both in the prehistoric past and in more recent ethnographic times.