Technical Innovation and Practice in Eneolithic and Bronze Age Encrusted Ceramics in the Carpathian Basin, Middle and Lower Danube

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between technical innovation and social identity in the practice of making encrusted ceramics. The widespread use of white inlay as a means of decorating ceramics and of highlighting motifs suggests a shared aesthetic between cultural groups in the Carpathian Basin and along the Middle and Lower Danube. There were, however, several different primary materials and combinations of these used to make inlays including bone, crushed shell (aragonite), calcite, and quartz; there is a clear shift over time away from the use of calcite and shell to bone. Inlays were also prepared in different ways, resulting in different textures and light-reflecting qualities. In addition, there is variation in the tools and techniques of the body used to make the inlay beds, as well as methods of affixing inlay to vessels. These differences reveal contrasting practices and ways of engaging with materials that go beyond what might be expected in terms of variation between the production of individual batches of inlay. Nor are they related to associations with different kinds of contexts, for example settlements or cemeteries.