Mobilities, Entanglements, Transformations. Pottery Practices in Neolithic Wetland Sites of the Swiss Plateau. NEENAWA INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE, September 15th - 18th, 2017, Kiev-Kanev, Ukraine

Pottery is one of the most commonly used sources in prehistoric archaeology to construct notions of ‘cultures’ and identities in the past. But with no access to emic perspective of Neolithic societies, questions on cultural and social belongings are rather difficult to answer. By contrast, pottery production practices left a range of traces on the vessels that can be studied archaeologically and archaeometrically (thin section-, (p) XRF-analyses).
The material features of pottery vessels thus comprise histories of their making that not only happens in a material landscape but a social context too. Thus, in the process of making pottery, the itineraries of the used materials (geology) and those of the potters (biographies) become intertwined. With that, pottery opens us an entry point to approach entanglements and transformations in past societies which unfolded in contexts of movement and mobility.