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netcan | 7 months ago

>But as to your question wouldn't they need to have pots?

"Pottery" tends to assume ceramics. In Neolithic and later sites that had pottery, ceramic remains typically represent 99% of the total artifacts.

Bronze age tel sites are littered with ceramic pebbles. Every pot eventually becomes a bunch of shards and pebbles that last forever.

That said... a material culture that only uses ceramics occasionally wouldn't leave such signs.

Also.. you could call a wood or hide bucket "pottery," I think.

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AlotOfReading|7 months ago

No archaeologist would call hide or wood pottery and ceramics don't turn into pebbles. Occasional ceramic use can be very visible archaeologically if the pottery preserves. It's an inert material in the absence of water, after all. In the presence of water though, it turns into dust rather than pebbles.

netcan|7 months ago

>ceramics don't turn into pebbles.

Much of the middle east, Greece, etc have many large sites with weathered pottery shards in the shape of pebbles, because pottery shards are flat-ish. Millions of ceramic rocks.

In the presence of water... you will find the round, flat ones with a perfect "pebbles shape."

This is extremely common where I live. I have an aquarium full of them.

The "thing about pottery" is that many cultures made (and broke) a lot of it.

Its very obvious in the stratography when a pottery making culture moves in. There will be shards in every handful of earth.

Occasional pottery use, like figurines or beads.. are not like that. They're only really found "in situ," graves or something.