Event: Pizza Talk: "Construction, Use and Repair: Late Neolithic Pottery from Southeastern Albania"

Speaker: Gazmend Elezi, Ph.D. Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA

The large amount of ceramic sherds in archaeological contexts and the variety of ceramic wares, shapes and dimensions during the Late Neolithic period in the Balkans is an indication that pottery was involved in many social activities. As such, it is among the best proxies to understand the daily life of Neolithic communities. In this paper, I am going to present the first preliminary results of a multidisciplinary and multidimensional approach of the Late Neolithic pottery from the Korçë region in SE Albania. In order to investigate the sociocultural dimensions of the pottery, I have used a number of methods including typological and stylistic classification, ceramic petrography, X-ray analysis, and residue analysis. The first results of this study show that, although there are significant similarities between different sites, there are also technological, stylistic, and functional differences that characterize the ceramic assemblage of each settlement. The variety of pottery is also evident within each site, while there are some indications for sharing technologies between different media. The potters have used different clay sources or recipes for manufacturing their vessels, while a number of techniques were used for finishing and elaborating their surfaces. Ceramic vessels were also involved directly or indirectly in the extended exchange networks developed in the area during this period. Moreover, some of the ceramic containers seem to have an additional social value that probably was not related to their function as their life was extended by repairing them.