Later Neolithic Pottery example essay topic

The Neolithic phase of human affairs began in Europe about 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. But probably men had reached the Neolithic stage elsewhere some thousands of years earlier. Neolithic men came slowly into Europe from the south or south-east as the reindeer and the open steppes gave way to forest and modern European conditions. The Neolithic stage in culture is characterized by: the presence of polished stone implements, and in particular the stone axe, which was perforated so as to be the more effectually fastened to a wooden handle, and which was probably used rather for working wood than in conflict. There are also abundant arrow-heads. The fact that some implements are polished does not preclude the presence of great quantities of implements of unpolished stone.

But there are differences in the make between even the unpolished tools of the Neolithic and of the Palaeolithic Period. The beginning of a sort of agriculture, and the use of plants and seeds. But at first there are abundant evidences that hunting was still of great; importance in the Neolithic Age. Neolithic man did not at first sit down to his agriculture. He took snatch crops. He settled later.

Pottery and proper cooking. The horse is no longer eaten. Domesticated animals. The dog appears very early. The Neolithic man had domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.

He was a huntsman turned herdsman of the herds he once hunted. Plaiting and weaving. A later development was the use of pottery, and discoveries of pottery and grains of cultivated cereals at archaeological sites mark the slow spread of Neolithic farming across Europe. Geneticists have suggested that this wave of advance explains the patterns found when they analyse the frequencies of various genes in European populations The farming revolution did not reach the British Isles and Scandinavia until after about 4000 BC. The analysis of pollen in different levels of lake sediment indicates that land was being cleared for agriculture in Ireland by about 4000 or 3800 BC. The earliest Neolithic pottery found in Ulster (Lyles Hill pottery) is similar to pottery found in northern Britain, suggesting that the earliest Neolithic colonists may have come to Ireland from northern Britain.

The pottery bowls were made by winding coils of clay in a circle to form the sides of the bowl, smoothing them, and finally firing them on an open fire. Later Neolithic pottery is decorated with dots or lines in the surface of the clay. Neolithic axes found in Ulster are often made from porcellanite, a type of stone found at Tievebulliagh in Co. Antrim or at Brackley on Rath lin Island.

These axes would be flaked into the rough shape of an axe and then polished with an abrasive stone such as sandstone. Over 1400 porcellanite axes have been found, mostly in Ulster, but also in other parts of the British Isles. About 160 of these axes have been found in Britain, showing that axes were an important item of exchange. Flint was also used for arrowheads, knives and's capers, and was traded to areas which did not have natural sources of flint. One of the implements most commonly found is the's caper, which was presumably used to prepare the hides of cattle. These Neolithic people probably "migrated" into Europe, in the same way that the Reindeer Men had migrated before them; that is to say, generation by generation and century by century, as the climate changed, they spread after their accustomed food.