Early pottery in China: A review of archaeological and environmental data from eight sites

This dissertation investigates conditions surrounding the origins of pottery in China. Based on a synthesis of published data, a multi-causal hypothesis about pottery origin has first formulated. It suggests that the origin or adoption of pottery may have been determined jointly by subsistence strategy, sedentism, population size, and social relations. To examine this hypothesis, twelve early Neolithic sites in China were investigated by the author. Eight of the twelve sites are addressed at length in this dissertation. These sites are distributed across a broad area in which the natural environment is highly variable, and the cultural contents of the sites differ. Using archaeological and environmental data from the eight sites, the four variables that are believed to have affected the appearance of pottery are evaluated for each site. Meanwhile, the intensities of actual pottery use of the eight sites are estimated as well. The results indicate strong correlations between the use of pottery and subsistence strategy, sedentism, population size, and social relations. By comprehensively analyzing the four socioeconomic factors and their relationships with pottery use, it is argued by the author that a multi-causal model is more suitable to explain the origins of pottery cross-culturally than any single-factor theories.