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A critical evaluation of the existing data corpus on the earliest pottery in East Asia and its chronology as of early 2013 is presented here. Pottery in the Old World emerged in three regions within greater East Asia, namely South China, the Japanese Islands and the Russian Far East, at c. 14,800–13,300 bp (or c. 18,500–15,500 cal. bp). Most probably, pottery-making appeared in these places independently; no solid evidence exists about migrations and/or diffusion of this technology from a supposed single centre in South China. Because the Upper Palaeolithic humans in Eurasia were familiar with clay (as a raw material for making figurines), the most probable driving force for the origin of pottery was the necessity to produce in large amounts durable, light containers for the processing (including boiling) and storing of food.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Drs Paul Lane and Amy Bogaard for their invitation to participate in this issue of World Archaeology. Drs Kazuki Morisaki (Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Nara City, Japan) and Yuichiro Kudo (National Museum of Japanese History, Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, Japan) kindly reported some missing data on the 14C dates for the earliest Jomon sites. Dr Tatiana M. Karafet (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA) suggested the latest reviews on the DNA studies in East Asia, and I appreciate it. This study was supported by grants from several foundations, including the Russian Foundation for Basic Sciences; the Fulbright Program; the Japan Foundation; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology of Japan; and the Korea Foundation. Numerous colleagues shared their opinions and knowledge on the geoarchaeology and prehistory of East Asia with the author in the last twenty years or so, and I am thankful to all of them. This paper benefited from comments and remarks made by Professors Peter S. Bellwood (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia) and Gary W. Crawford (University of Toronto-Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario Province, Canada) on the earlier draft. I also thank Dr Susan G. Keates (Düsseldorf, Germany) who gave several useful suggestions and helped with polishing the grammar. Finally, the remarks of two anonymous reviewers and editorial suggestions by Dr Paul Lane helped greatly to improve the quality of this paper. Nevertheless, I am solely responsible for any possible errors.