ABSTRACT
Earlier in this book, current approaches which emphasise the symbolic and social significance of material culture were used as a means of assessing the changes which took place in the forms of monumental architecture produced through the Neolithic. In this chapter, a similar perspective will be applied to pottery, in the expectation that the pattern of development displayed by a form of portable artefact will be quite different in character. Perhaps more than any other aspect of the Neolithic archaeology of Britain, ceramic studies represent the preserve of a quite small number of specialists. This may be unavoidable: the study of this material requires both considerable technical knowledge and an acquired familiarity with a very large body of evidence. I would personally make no claims to this degree of immersion in the subject: my objective here is to distil what may be said concerning the social implications of ceramic production and use in the British Neolithic, and to set this alongside other classes of evidence. Pottery is only one class of artefact, and I could as easily have chosen to investigate stone axes, flint tools, bonework or carved chalk objects. However, pots have the advantages of being relatively numerous and thoroughly studied, as well as having been a form of evidence which was of critical importance to the modes of investigation of a number of different schools of archaeology. As a result, this material has been central to the construction of our understanding of the Neolithic, and has formed the backbone of a number of the canonical statements (e.g. Childe 1925; Piggott 1931; 1954; Smith 1974).
