Aceramic
Aceramic is defined as "not producing pottery". In archaeology, the term means "without pottery". Aceramic societies usually used bark, basketry, gourds and leather for containers.[1]
"Aceramic" is used to describe a culture at any time prior to its development of pottery as well as cultures that lack pottery altogether. A preceramic period is traditionally regarded as occurring in the early stage of the Neolithic period of a culture, but recent findings in Japan and China have pushed the origin of ceramic technology there well back into the Paleolithic era.
West Asia
In Western Asian archaeology it is used to refer to a specific early Neolithic period before the development of ceramics, the Middle Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in which case it is a synonym of preceramic or pre-pottery.
The Western Asian Pre-Pottery Neolithic A began roughly around 8500 BC and can be identified with over a half a dozen sites. The period was most prominent in Western Asia in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Outside Western Asia Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare.[2] Aceramic Neolithic villages had many attributes of agricultural communities: large settlement size, substantial architecture, long settlement duration, intensive harvesting of seeds with sickles, equipment and facilities for storing and grinding seeds, and containers. Morphological evidence for domestication of plants comes only from Middle PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), and by Late PPNB some animals, notably goats, were domesticated or at least managed in most of the sites.[3]
Cyprus
Some of the most famous Aceramic sites are located in the
Americas
The specific term Pre-Ceramic is used for a period in many chronologies of the
References
- ^ "Archaeology Wordsmith". www.archaeologywordsmith.com. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
- ^ "Archaeology Wordsmith". www.archaeologywordsmith.com. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
- ISBN 9781468471359.
- ^ "Untitled Document". www.brynmawr.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
- ^ "Untitled Document". www.brynmawr.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-04-05. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
- ISBN 0500203636