New research team reports that pottery sherds from Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province, China are 2,000-3,000 years older than other East Asian/Japanese pottery finds

Two of the 20,000-year-old pottery fragments found in a cave in China. Photo: AFP/Science/AAAS

A new report on pottery sherds recovered from the Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province in China states that the “radiocarbon ages of the archaeological contexts of the earliest sherds are 20,000 to 19,000 calendar years before the present, 2000 to 3000 years older than other pottery found in East Asia and elsewhere.” See:

Wu, Xiaohong et al. “Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China“, Science 29 June 2012: Vol. 336 no. 6089 pp. 1696-1700 DOI: 10.1126/science.1218643

ABSTRACT

The invention of pottery introduced fundamental shifts in human subsistence practices and sociosymbolic behaviors. Here, we describe the dating of the early pottery from Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province, China, and the micromorphology of the stratigraphic contexts of the pottery sherds and radiocarbon samples. The radiocarbon ages of the archaeological contexts of the earliest sherds are 20,000 to 19,000 calendar years before the present, 2000 to 3000 years older than other pottery found in East Asia and elsewhere. The occupations in the cave demonstrate that pottery was produced by mobile foragers who hunted and gathered during the Late Glacial Maximum. These vessels may have served as cooking devices. The early date shows that pottery was first made and used 10 millennia or more before the emergence of agriculture.

See also In Science Magazine PERSPECTIVE ANTHROPOLOGY, Gideon Shelach’s “On the Invention of Pottery“, Science 29 June 2012: 1644-1645.

On page 1696 of this issue, Wu et al. (1) report the latest of a series of exciting discoveries made over the past 20 years that have pushed back the earliest evidence for the invention of pottery by more than 10,000 years. Like their findings at the Xianrendong Cave (1), most of the earliest pottery has been discovered in south China (the Yangzi River basin and areas south of it), but evidence for early pottery is also known from the Yellow River basin, and indeed from a much larger area of East Asia that includes Japan and the Amur River basin (2–4). The early dating of East Asian ceramics refutes the idea that the beginning of pottery production was associated with the transition to agriculture. What was the societal context for its invention? …

The report has implications for Japanese pottery as scholars are interested in tracing the possible route of diffusion of pottery-making techniques into Japan (or out of Japan as the case may be).

:::

Pottery alters view of human development (June 30, 2012, smh.com.au)

Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery, archaeologists say.

The findings, in the journal Science, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in East Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, rebutting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gatherers to farmers.

The research also pushes the emergence of pottery back to the last ice age, which might provide new explanations for the creation of pottery, said Gideon Shelach, chairman of the Louis Frieberg Centre for East Asian Studies at The Hebrew University in Israel.

”The focus of research has to change,” Professor Shelach, who is not involved in the research, said.

In an accompanying Science article, he wrote that such research efforts ”are fundamental for a better understanding of socio-economic change [25,000 to 19,000 years ago] … that led to the emergence of sedentary agricultural societies”.

The disconnection between pottery and agriculture might shed light on human development in the region, he said.

Wu Xiaohong, professor of archaeology and museology at Peking University and the lead author of the Science article that details the radiocarbon-dating efforts, said her team was eager to build on the research.

”The paper is the result of efforts done by generations of scholars,” Professor Wu said. ”Now we can explore why there was pottery in that particular time [and] what were the uses of the vessels.” The ancient fragments were discovered in the Xianren cave in south China’s Jiangxi province.

:::

China pottery dated at 20,000 years old 

Cave findings are oldest known in world, experts say

By Didi tang (AP, Jun. 29, 2012 retr. 29/6/2012, AZCentral.com)

BEIJING – Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say.

The findings, which appeared in the journal Science on Friday, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in east Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gatherers to farmers.

The research by a team of Chinese and American scientists also pushes the emergence of pottery back to the last ice age, which might provide new explanations for the creation of pottery, said Gideon Shelach, chair of the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University in Israel. “The focus of research has to change,” Shelach, who is not involved in the research project in China, said by telephone.

In an accompanying Science article, Shelach wrote that such research efforts “are fundamental for a better understanding of socioeconomic change (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) and the development that led to the emergency of sedentary agricultural societies.”

He said the disconnection between pottery and agriculture as shown in east Asia might shed light on specifics of human development in the region.

Wu Xiaohong, professor of archaeology and museology at Peking University and the lead author of the Science article that details the radiocarbon dating efforts, told the Associated Press that her team was eager to build on the research.

“We are very excited about the findings. The paper is the result of efforts done by generations of scholars,” Wu said. “Now we can explore why there was pottery in that particular time, what were the uses of the vessels, and what role they played in the survival of human beings.”

The ancient fragments were discovered in the Xianrendong cave in south China’s Jiangxi province, which was excavated in the 1960s and again in the 1990s, according to the journal article.

Wu, a chemist by training, said some researchers had estimated that the pieces could be 20,000 years old, but that there were doubts.

“We thought it would be impossible because the conventional theory was that pottery was invented after the transition to agriculture that allowed for human settlement.”

But by 2009, the team — which includes experts from Harvard and Boston universities — was able to calculate the age of the pottery fragments with such precision that the scientists were comfortable with their findings, Wu said.

“The key was to ensure the samples we used to date were indeed from the same period of the pottery fragments,” she said.

That became possible when the team was able to determine the sediments in the cave were accumulated gradually without disruption that might have altered the time sequence, she said.

Scientists took samples, such as bones and charcoal, from above and below the ancient fragments in the dating process, Wu said.

“This way, we can determine with precision the age of the fragments, and our results can be recognized by peers,” Wu said.

The same team in 2009 published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which they determined the pottery fragments found in south China’s Hunan province to be 18,000 years old, Wu said.

“The difference of 2,000 years might not be significant in itself, but we always like to trace everything to its earliest possible time,” Wu said.

Read more here

::: Remnants of an Ancient Kitchen Are Found in China By SINDYA N. BHANOO (NY Times, June 28, 2012, correction Jun 29, 2012)

Fragments of ancient pottery found in southern China turn out to date back 20,000 years, making them the world’s oldest known pottery — 2,000 to 3,000 years older than examples found in East Asia and elsewhere.

The ceramics probably consisted of simple concave vessels that were likely used for cooking food, said Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist at Harvard and an author of the study, which appears in the journal Science.

“What it seems is that in China, the making of pottery started 20,000 years ago and never stopped,” he said. “The Chinese kitchen was always based on cooking and steaming; they never made, as in other parts of Asia, breads.”

The crockery, found in Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province, belonged to a group of mobile foragers, Dr. Bar-Yosef said. They were a hunting and gathering community; plant cultivation and agriculture probably did not arrive until about 10,000 years later.

On the other hand, plant cultivation in the Middle East arrived about 1,000 years before it did in China. Still, pottery was not used in the Middle East until much later, Dr. Bar-Yosef said.

“The kitchen of the Middle East was probably based on barbecues and pita breads,” he said. “For pita breads, you don’t have to have pottery — you can grind the seeds and mix it with water, and make it over the fire.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 29, 2012

An earlier version of this post described incorrectly the origins of pottery in the Middle East. Pottery was not used in the Middle East until much later than it was used in China, but Middle Eastern pottery developed more than 8,000 years ago — not “about 2,000 to 2,500 years ago.”

Read more:

Pottery Invented 20,000 Years Ago In China, 10,000 Years Before Agriculture (Nano Patents and Innovations, JUNE 29, 2012)