Pottery of Hunter-Gatherer Societies in Northeastern Central Europe from ca. 4800 to ca. 2000 BCE

A contextual reading of the evidence highlights the existence of two ‘histories’ regarding the arrival of pottery in the basins of the middle/lower Elbe, Oder, and Vistula rivers in Central Europe. The first ‘history’ relates to the spread of the agro-pastoral economy since the third quarter of the sixth millennium BCE. This left extended periods during which farming communities were surrounded by and interacting with hunter-gatherer communities. The second ‘history’ involved a gradual uptake of pottery by the latter communities, at different rates, at different times and in different places. In the fifth millennium BCE, these processes took place mainly in coastal areas of the southwestern and southern Baltic but also in some inland regions. There are also finds of pottery in hunter-gatherer contexts in the northeastern part of the area under consideration, dated to the fifth millennium BCE. Their number and territorial extent grow significantly in the fourth and third millennia BCE. A hypothesis can be proposed that the local hunter-gatherers in northeastern Central Europe adopted from the farming populations only the general idea of making clay vessels, but made their own pottery, actively assimilating ceramic styles from hunter-gatherer groups who lived further to the east and northwest. This pottery was a crucial manifestation of cultural resilience, which was the underlying cause behind the formation of a ‘para-Neolithic’ cultural model.