The earliest pottery of the eastern part of Asia: Similarities and differences

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Abstract

There are many reasons why the earliest pottery of East Asia is so interesting for researchers. One of them is that it is a unique source for reconstruction of cultural diversity within Late Pleistocene. According to Russian archaeologists, for such reconstruction it is necessary to find out how pots were made (clay paste composition, way of shaping, surface treatment, firing and decorating) and how pots looked. Based on this perspective it is possible to divide the earliest ceramic assemblages of East Asia into three groups. First of them include the Incipient Jomon ones, their differentia is plain (without rough surface treatment) pottery ornamented by hands (pinch, nail impression, clay application) and a comparatively high level of unification. Second group comprises Osipovka assemblages compactly located within the Low Amur river basin. They are quite polymorphous but have common distinctive traits such as grog temper, comb design of different pattern and combing surface treatment. The third group is the most extended and diverse. Its key feature is only cord surface treatment in a very special manner of rolling of a cord wrapped stick. Astoundingly, the assemblages with this trait occupy the territory from southernmost China to Transbaikalia (Studenoe-1, Ust-Karenga), and Middle Amur river basin (Gromatukha). So, it is possible to say they have Inner-Asia spatial distribution. Thus, we can see three different areas of spatial distribution of earliest ceramic assemblages within the eastern part of Asia. Tracking their Holocene fate, we can find confirmation of such conclusion and suppose that Sakhalin, North Hokkaido and Russia Maritime form the forth – non-ceramic – area in Late Pleistocene.

Introduction

The earliest ceramics of East Asia have been a major object of archaeological research of the past twenty years. There are many reasons why it is so interesting for researchers, but the most important one is that these findings have greatly modified our previous belief about the Neolithic and the Paleolithic-Neolithic transition (Barnett and Hoppes, 1995, Jordan and Zvelebil, 2009, Gibbs and Jourdan, 2013, Gibbs and Jourdan, 2016). So most of the main topics of current publications have been and remain the matters of chronology and the relation between pottery development and the environmental conditions, development of lithic industries and the general process of cultural transformation (Kajiwara and Kononenko, 1999, Keally et al., 2003, Wu and Zhao, 2003, Cohen, 2003, Cohen, 2013, Cohen et al., 2016, Kuzmin and Shewkomud, 2003, Pearson, 2005, Pearson, 2006, Kuzmin, 2006, Kuzmin, 2010, Kuzmin, 2015, Elston et al., 2011, Nakazawa et al., 2011, Dikshit and Hazarika, 2012, Shelach, 2012, Liu and Chen, 2012, Sato et al., 2015, Tsydenova and Piezonka, 2015, Buvit et al., 2016, etc.).

But there are other interesting aspects of this subject as well. One of them is that the earliest ceramics are possible a unique source for the study of cultural diversity within the Late Pleistocene age. But, this subject draws little scientific attention and as a result the earliest pottery per se is almost absent in English-language publications: we know virtually nothing about its morphology, technology, context, etc. To be sure, these data can be obtained from national publications, though not always, but the access to them is very limited due to the linguistic and political barriers.

There is also another side of this problem. We do not even know how suitable the earliest ceramics are to solve many tasks that are typical to ceramic studies of later epochs or whether they have any specificity as a source. Moreover, many key aspects of the origin of pottery cannot be comprehended without these data, for instance, whether this process was poly- or unicentric, what regions were primary centers of this process, how and why pottery was invented and so on. Only well documented ceramic collections can be used as an evidence base in such studies.

This paper presents the results of the author's long-term research aimed at the reconstruction of different aspects of earliest pottery-making development in the Sea of Japan basin and on adjacent territories (Yanshina, 2008, Yanshina, 2011, Yanshina, 2014, Yanshina and Lapshina, 2008, Yanshina and Garkovik, 2009, Shewkomud and Yanshina, 2010b, Yanshina et al., 2012, Shewkomud and Yanshina, 2012, Yanshina, 2014, Razgildeeva et al., 2013, Yanshina and Kuzmin, 2010). Within the framework of the project, pottery collections from all regions of East Asia were compared tentatively, and results came out to be interesting. For example, it appears that by the end of Pleistocene several distinct pottery-making traditions had been already formed there, and each of them had its own more or less compact distribution area. But the most interesting fact is that these areas preserved their own peculiarity in later epochs as well. Some of the observations, which confirm these conclusions, will be given further.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

In the first place, the comparative analysis of the early ceramic assemblages of East Asia definitely requires to synchronize the processes of their development in different regions. But this is a big problem. I know of only one attempt to solve it (Jordan and Zvelebil, 2009). The authors offer to separate a process of ceramic development in East Asia into four stages (see Fig. 1B). Their model is based mainly on the following two grounds: spatial dispersal of pottery and a measure of how deep

The Lower Amur River Basin

The most famous sites of Osipovka culture are Gasya (Okladnikov and Medvedev, 1983, Medvedev, 1995), Khummy (Lapshina, 1995, Lapshina, 1998, Lapshina, 1999) and Goncharka (Shewkomud, 1996, Shewkomud, 1997). Materials from these sites were the first to be introduced to archaeological science and that's why they are more represented in English-language publications (Derevyanko and Medvedev, 1995, Derevyanko and Medvedev, 2006, Zhushchikhovskaya, 1997, Zhushchikhovskaya, 2001, Zhushchikhovskaya,

Conclusion

Thus, we have come to several conclusions.

  • 1.

    There are good grounds to suppose that three distinct ceramic traditions were formed in East Asia in the terminal Pleistocene age: the Lower Amur (or Osipovka), the Incipient Jōmon and the Transbaikalia – the Middle Amur. They are clearly different in the set of stylistic and technological characteristics and have their own more or less compact occupation area. The case of earliest ceramics of South China is less clear. Judging by some specific

Acknowledgement

Author gratefully acknowledges my colleagues and friends for their assistance in this study. First of all, I would like to thank I.Y. Shewkomud, Onuki Shizuo, V.M. Vetrov, M.V. Konstantinov, I. Y. Razgildeeva, A.V. Garkovik, A.P. Derevyanko, S.P. Nesterov, A.V. Tabarev, A.A. Vasilevsky, S.V. Grishchenko, O.A. Shubina, Masahiro Fukuda, Isao Usuki and many other who helped me to observe the primary materials from different sites of Russia and Japan. My colleagues I.V. Vasilieva, N.P. Salugina,

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