By recovering and interpreting the hidden technological variability in the first pottery at Ilindentsi-Massovets, this paper reveals the innovative adaptations to local conditions that the adoption of pottery production, as a new technology, must have involved. Seventy-one samples were analysed using low-resolution binocular microscopy and high-resolution petrographic and scanning electron microscopy. The variety established within each of the major components in pottery production at the site is interpreted in the context of the local raw materials (availability) and technological approaches (decision making), thus reaching beyond the traditional interpretative models that suggest large-scale uniformity in Early Neolithic pottery production across extensive European regions.

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The frontier position of the Balkan Peninsula, next to Anatolia and the Aegean, emphasises its key importance for the study of the Neolithisation processes taking place in Europe during the seventh–sixth millennia BC. A look at the distribution of most Early Neolithic sites along the submeridional alluvial plains of its central mountainous part often leaves the impression that the valleys of the Vardar, Struma, Mesta and Maritsa rivers functioned as natural corridors, allowing for the rapid advance of the farming way of life towards the interior regions of Europe. However, comparative analysis of the distribution patterns of specific diagnostic components of Early Neolithic cultures, such as white painted pottery, anthropomorphic figurines and miniature “cult tables”, from the Early Neolithic settlements in the Middle Struma Valley, southwestern Bulgaria, namely Kovachevo, Ilindentsi, Brezhani, Drenkovo and Balgarchevo I shows a rather unexpected direction and dynamic of cultural/social contact during this crucial period.