ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the emergence of the earliest ceramic technology amongst mid-Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherer cultures who occupied the Ural Mountains and the adjacent West Siberia Plain, a low-lying basin drained by the Ob' River, which flows northwards to the Arctic Ocean. In contrast, the least investigated areas are found in the northern part of the West Siberian plain, to the north of the Siberian Urals, where only isolated mid-Holocene sites have been found. In the prehistory of the Urals and western Siberia, the rapid and widespread emergence of earthenware vessels during the Neolithic of the forest and forest-steppe zone appears to coincide with the move away from the more mobile forms of life that had characterized earlier periods. Throughout the Neolithic and Eneolithic periods, the overall regional coherence distinguished them from contemporary hunter-fisher-gatherer archaeological cultures in both eastern Siberia and the East European Plain.
