Chapter 1 The significance of Research on the Emergence of Pottery in West Asia -- Chapter 2 The Earliest Pottery of West Asia: Questions Concerning Causes and Consequences -- Chapter 3 The Initial Pottery Neolithic at Tell Sabi Abyad, Northern Syria -- Chapter 4 AkarÒ«ay Tepe and Tell Halula in the Context of the Earlies Production of Ceramics in West Asia -- Chapter 5 The Oldest Neolithic Pottery from Tell Seker al-Aheimar, Upper Khabur, Northeastern Syria -- Chapter 6 The Earliest Pottery of Salat Camii Yani -- Chapter 7 The Emergence of Pottery in the Northern Levant: A Recent View from Tell el-Kerkh -- Chapter 8 The Early Pottery from Shir, Northern Levant -- Chapter 9 Yumuktepe Early Ceramic Productions: Dark versus Light Coloured Wares and the Construction of Social Identity -- Chapter 10 Merging Clay and Fire: Earliest Evidence from the Zagros Mountains -- Chapter 11 The Emergence of Pottery in Northeast Iran: The Case Study of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq -- Chapter 12 Absolute Dating and the Early Pottery of South-west Asia -- Chapter 13 The Beginning of Pottery Technology in Japan: The Dating and Function of Incipient Jomon Pottery -- Chapter 14 Synthesis: The Emergence of Pottery in West Asia.
Summary:
Over the past fifty years or so early pottery complexes in the wider region of West Asia have hardly ever been investigated in their own right. Early ceramics have often been unexpected by-products of projects focusing upon much earlier aceramic or later prehistoric periods. In recent years, however, there has been a tremendous increase in research in various parts of West Asia focusing explicitly on this theme. It has generally become accepted that the adoption of pottery in West Asia happened relatively late in the history of ceramics. Several regions are now believed to have developed pottery significantly earlier. Thus, pottery occurs in Eastern Russia, in China and Japan by 16,500 cal. BC and in north Africa it is known in the 10th millennium cal. BC.However, while the East Asian examples in particular do mark chronologically earlier instances, the picture in West Asia is actually rather more complex, in part because of the tyranny of the Aceramic/Ceramic Neolithic chronological divide. For the first time, The Emergence of Pottery in West Asia examines in detail the when, where, how and why of the arrival of the first pottery in the region. A key insight that emerges is that we must not confuse the reasons for pottery adoption with the long-term consequences. Neolithic peoples in West Asia did not adopt pottery because of the many uses and functions it would gain many centuries later and the development of ceramic technology needs to be examined in the context of its original cultural and social milieu.
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