There was a time when there were no ceramic pots.

Ceramic vessels, pots, were first used in the British Isles in the early 5th millennium BC/4000BC onward.  That's 6000 years ago.  We know this as the period which was termed the Neolithic was the first archaeological stratified  layer, or contexts,  to contain ceramic vessels. This period has been termed the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition and is recognised generally as a transition to farming although in the Far east, Russia, China, pottery was first being made by hunter gatherer with the earliest reliably dated C14 determinations being 14000-9000 years ago (Zwelebil et al 2010).

The term for the introduction of first pottery vessels has been called 'ceramisation' (Koojimanns 2010).   He sees this as a social process.
The pot below is a Neolithic, round bottomed pot from Balfarg, Scotland. The 2 sherds are from Hembury Causewayed Enclosure, Devon dated 3850 caL bc.and have been designated as the Hembury  style by Piggott, 1931, and has been referred to as southwest baggy pot tradition. Pots typical of this style can be seen in Exeter Royal Albert memorial Museum. They have also been found at Carn Brea, Cornwall.


Cleal R M J, 2004. Dating and Diversity of the Earliest Ceramics of Wessex and the Southwest England. In Cleal, R M J , and Pollard, J. 2004. Monuments and Material Culture: Papers in Honour of an Avebury Archaeologist: Isobel Smith.  Salisbury. Hobnob Press.

Kooijmans, L., 2010. The ceramisation of the Low Countries: seen as the result of gender specific processes of communication. In Vanmontfort, B., Kooijmans, LL., Amreutz, L., Verhart, L., 2012. Pots, Farmers and Foragers. Pottery traditions and social interaction, in the earliest Neolithic of the Lower Rhine Area. Leiden University Press.

Piggott, S, 1931. The Neolithic Pottery of the British Isles. Archaeology Journal 88,

Zwelebil, M. Jordan, P. 2010.  Ceramics before farming: The Dispersal of pottery Among prehistoric Eurasian Hunter-Gatherers.
Oxford. Taylor and Francis.