No abstract

Explanations for the use of pots as practical domestic tools permeate the literature of technological adoption and change. While many arguments focus on the economic merits of pots, few have attempted to trace the conditions that promote or deter the adoption of pottery. This is especially true for the use of pottery by mobile peoples. We adapt an established model of technological investment to draw attention to three key variables affecting pottery adoption: manufacturing time, utility, and use time. We use the logic of this model to examine how social and environmental contexts, specifically residential mobility in marginal environments, impacts use of and investment in ceramic technology. We further illustrate how the model can be used to reveal seasonal patterns of behavior from the spatial distribution of pottery discarded by mobile foragers and herders.

Explanations for the use of pots as practical domestic tools permeate the literature of technological adoption and change. While many arguments focus on the economic merits of pots, few have attempted to trace the conditions that promote or deter the adoption of pottery. This is especially true for the use of pottery by mobile peoples. We adapt an established model of technological investment to draw attention to three key variables affecting pottery adoption: manufacturing time, utility, and use time. We use the logic of this model to examine how social and environmental contexts, specifically residential mobility in marginal environments, impacts use of and investment in ceramic technology. We further illustrate how the model can be used to reveal seasonal patterns of behavior from the spatial distribution of pottery discarded by mobile foragers and herders.

This chapter introduces the material evidence of the making of riverine communities in the Greater Jiang Han Region in prehistoric central-southern China and their uniquely emplaced social dynamics of collaborating with both the landscape and with one another. By focusing on two types of material remains—hydraulic “landmarks” and special classes of pottery—at the Shijiahe site complex in the Jiang Han Basin that brought together people and place, this chapter demonstrates how these communities integrated the natural and the social through collective activities of place-making and ritualized practices of community building. The chapter argues that these activities all foreground a common set of social values of shared labor, community participation, and an intimate connection to the landscape that persisted through millennia in this region. Ultimately, the chapter advocates shifting attention to the deep-time pattern of living in the Jiang Han region at the local level and seriously considering the alternative path of social development—characterized by heterarchy rather than hierarchy—that was emplaced in the co-evolving socio-natural landscape and integral to the long-term social resilience of the Jiang Han riverine communities.