Shaping an identity : Pitted Ware pottery and potters in southeast Sweden

Abstract: The thesis is concerned with pottery and culture during the Middle Neolithic (c. 3300 – 2300 cal BC) in southeast Sweden. Its purpose is to investigate and discuss the significance of pottery in the Pitted Ware culture, particularly on the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. The history of research concerning this subject area is recounted and the known Neolithic remains from the island of Öland are reviewed. The two Pitted Ware sites so far excavated on the island, Köpingsvik and Ottenby Royal Manor, are presented in detail, and ceramics from these two sites are used in the pottery analysis that makes up the empirical core of the work. The assemblages are approached by similar methods and by posing similar questions, and the analytical methods used include recording of the large ceramic assemblages (aspects of design), microscopic analysis of ceramic thin sections and raw clay samples (aspects of raw material use and pottery technology) and lipid residue analysis performed on extracts from pulverised ceramic ware (aspects of pottery use). The results clearly point to a rather elaborate and socially embedded ceramic craft tradition, with a strong preference for decorated vessels and clearly defined ideas on how the pots should be produced and what they should look like. The technological analysis revealed a rather complicated and restrictive raw material situation, with which the potters coped partly by developing local tempering traditions. The functional analysis revealed a striking variability in pottery use between the two sites. The various differences in pottery observed between the two sites are discussed in terms of local sub-traditions within the overall Pitted Ware ceramic tradition, that may have developed through the work of individual potters and contacts with different areas and groups of people. In this way an attempt is made to view pottery and the ceramic craft in the Pitted Ware culture from a more dynamic perspective.