LAUSR

One of the early major concepts known as “the Neolithic Revolution” suggested that right after climate change at the end of the last Ice Age, pottery was adopted with a sudden explosion of new behaviors and technologies: farming, sedentism, and grinding stones (Childe, 1936). Evidence came from the Middle East, northern Africa, and Europe. Nevertheless, after many decades of research, development of new dating techniques, and site discoveries, it is clear that pottery appeared in distinct contexts from varied climatic and environmental, technological, subsistence, and mobility contexts and timing. For example, in the New World, the earliest dates associated with pottery in South America reported from the lower Amazon (ca. 8000–7000 cal BP) and lowland Colombia (ca. 7000-5800 cal BP) are suggested to have been adopted by foragers with decreased mobility (Oliver, 2008; Oyuela-Caycedo and Bonzani, 2005) and in Central America, by egalitarian farmers who also foraged and fished, around 5500-3300 cal BP (Iizuka, 2013, 2017, 2021). These adoptions occurred at the onset and during the mid-Holocene. On the other hand, in the Old World, the adoption of pottery vessels occurred much earlier in the late Pleistocene with the first evidence coming from East and Northeast Asia, incorporated by hunter-gatherers in distinct environmental contexts (Buvit and Terry, 2011; Morisaki and Natsuki, 2017). For this reason, we have not reached a consensus on conditions and causes of why people adopted pottery. As there are obvious gaps in knowledge in all locations due to discrete research intensities and histories, and difficulty in accessing important reports and papers written in different languages, exchange of information across traditional boundaries is required to critically evaluate the worldwide emergence of ceramics. In this special issue, we focus particularly on tackling long-debated problems and newly emerging issues related to the origins of ceramics in the Old World. We introduce new case studies and critical reviews of existing work from a variety of regions: Europe, Southwest Asia, Africa, and East, Northeast, and Southeast Asia, extending to Micronesia. We first outline debates and problems, some relevant worldwide, then introduce these issues as addressed by each contributing author outlining the main arguments of each contribution. The reconstruction of accurate geochronology is critical for intraand inter-regional behavioral understanding related to the origins of ceramics. In East and Northeast Asia, with the first appearance of pottery in the late Pleistocene, there are regions and sites with contested dates. According to the most recent AMS-14C dates, South China yields the earliest dated sites, ca. 20,000–17,000 cal BP (Boaretto et al., 2009; Cohen et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2012), and new field studies and results reiterate the strength of those AMS-14C ages (Patania et al., 2019a, 2019b, 2019b). However, because of the microbotanical remains of semi-domesticated and domesticated rice associated with pottery, deposited materials prone to diagenesis in the karstic cave environment, and thermoluminescence dates on pottery reported from earlier studies, also potentially suggest dates closer to the Holocene (Iizuka, 2018; Lu, 2010; Yanshina and Sobolev, 2018; Zhang, 2002; Zhao, 1998). In the Transbaikal region of Russia, various radiocarbon dates and more recent AMS-14C dates obtained directly from carbonized encrustation on pottery fall within ca.14,000–12,900 cal BP (Buvit et al., 2003; Hommel et al., 2017; Konstantinov, 1994; Razgildeeva et al., 2013; Tsydenova et al., 2017). Nevertheless, those who observe wide regional stratigraphic relations suggest ca. 7000-6000 years ago during the Atlantic Optimum (Konstantinov, 1994, 2016). In the Russian Far East, pottery was present as early as 16,000 cal BP (Buvit and Terry, 2011; Hashizume et al., 2016, 2017) and more confidently by 14,000 cal BP (Iizuka, 2018) but compressed stratigraphy makes it difficult to comprehend the fine chronology (Kuzmin, 2006). In Honshu Island of Japan, the Odaiyamamoto I site is often used as one of the main yardsticks to assess the timing of the appearance of pottery, but it has also been suggested for a reassessment due to some anomalous dates (Iizuka, 2018). Without the confirmation of geochronology, debated problems such as absence and presence of diffusion (Jordan et al., 2016; Kuzmin, 2013; Sato and Natsuki, 2017; Jordan and Zebelevil, 2009; Yanshina, 2019) related to the appearance of pottery cannot be adequately assessed. Without accurate geochronology, it is difficult to place subsistence practices, residential mobility, and climatic and environmental conditions in the pottery adoption context. Use of the first pottery is an aspect that is of critical importance. In the past decade, there is a significant increase in studies reconstructing early pottery use, a fundamental aspect in our understanding pottery adoption, with molecular and/or stable isotope methods on residue and carbonized encrustation on pottery in a variety of regions with early ceramics in the Old World (e.g., Craig et al., 2013; Dunne et al., 2016; Kunikita et al., 2013; Lucquin et al., 2018; Shoda et al., 2020). This is a great contribution. Note, however, that geochronological evaluation plays a key role in placing those first functions into behavioral and paleoenvironmental contexts. Furthermore, the first ceramics found worldwide were not vessels, but figurines and pellets made during the Upper Paleolithic in Central Europe, 32,000–27,000 cal BP (Farbstein and Davies, 2017; Iizuka, 2018; Svoboda et al., 2015; Vandiver et al., 1989). The earliest vessels did not appear until thousands of years later in East Asia by ca. 16, 000–15,000 cal BP. The nature of ceramic making behavior, context, and these gaps require research attention. Although correlations of global climatic conditions in the late Pleistocene and the adoption of