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Sheds light on the motivations that lay behind the adoption of pottery, the challenges that had to be overcome.
List of contents
1. Cold winters, hot soups and frozen clay: understanding the emergence of ceramic traditions across the Circumpolar North Kevin Gibbs and Peter Jordan; 2. Why did northern foragers make pottery?: Investigating the role of incipient Jomon ceramics within wider hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies in prehistoric Japan Junzo Uchiyama; 3. Vessels on the Vitim: 'Neolithic' ceramics in eastern Siberia V. M. Vetrov and P. N. Hommel; 4. Maritime nomads of the Baltic Sea: ceramic traditions, collective identities and prehistoric cuisine Sven Isaksson, Kevin Gibbs, and Peter Jordan; 5. The paradox of pottery in the remote Kuril Islands Erik Gjesfjeld; 6. Understanding the function of container technologies in prehistoric SW Alaska Marjolein Admiraal and Rick Knecht; 7. Ethnographic and archaeological perspectives on the use life of Northwest Alaskan pottery Shelby Anderson; 8. An exploration of arctic ceramic and soapstone cookware technologies and food preparation systems Liam Frink and Karen Harry; 9. Ceramic use by middle and late woodland foragers of the Maritime Foragers Michael Deal, Thomas Farrell, Latonia Hartery, Alison Harris and Michael Sanders; 10. Prestige foods and the adoption of pottery by Subarctic foragers Mathew Boyd, Megan Wady, Andrew Lints, Clarence Surette and Scott Hamilton; 11. Use of ceramic technologies by circumpolar hunter-gatherers: current progress and future research prospects Brian Hayden.
About the author
Peter Jordan is Director of the Arctic Centre and holds the Chair in Arctic Studies at the University of Groningen. He is a specialist in Circumpolar hunter-gatherers and has published widely on the technology and lifeways of northern peoples past and present, particularly in Siberia. His recent books include: Ceramics before Farming (2010), Landscape and Culture in Northern Eurasia (2010), Technology as Human Social Tradition (2014) and The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers (2014).Kevin Gibbs is Assistant Researcher at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include early pottery technology and use, hunter-gatherer archaeology, and the Neolithic period. His recent research has been published in Nature, PNAS and Antiquity.
Summary
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.
