ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad regional overview of the evidence for the timing and form of the earliest pottery adopted by hunter-gatherers across eastern Siberia. Eastern Siberia can be defined as that territory delimited by the Yenisei River in the west, the Lena River in the east, the Arctic Ocean in the north, and by a chain of mountains in the south and southeast that extends north from Central Asia to separate the Arctic and Pacific watersheds. The style has the same wide spatial distribution as net-impressed pottery and is found in all areas of eastern Siberia. Trans-Baikal is that area of eastern Siberia located to the south and east of Lake Baikal. The region exhibits ecological variation on a latitudinal gradient, with the southern portion sharing affinities with the steppe and steppe-forest ecotones of northern Mongolia, and the northern portion marking the beginning of the dense taiga forests that spread north through Yakutia and the Central Siberian Plateau.
