Learning Across the Divide: Understanding Knowledge Sharing Through Petrographic Analysis on Ceramics From the Rhine-Meuse Delta During the Middle to Late Neolithic Transition (3400–2200 bce)

Abstract

Vlaardingen (VL) communities on the Dutch West coast (3400–2200 bce) are part of a unique, long-term continuity in the European Neolithic. Despite large-scale changes in European populations during the Neolithic, the genomic diversity and cultural practices of VL communities can be retraced to the Mesolithic. The resilience of VL communities is attributed to their settlement system: a hypothesised network connecting diverse VL settlements and enabling optimal exploitation of the dynamic Dutch wetland environments. However, no systematic evaluations of this settlement system exist to date. This study sheds light on the VL settlement system through ceramic petrography. We conduct the first large-scale petrographic survey of VL vessels, incorporating new and legacy data. Moreover, we introduce a novel statistical approach to petrographic data which detects knowledge sharing about paste recipes between VL settlements. Ethnographic studies show that knowledge about paste recipes is transmitted within households. Therefore, the diversity and similarity in paste recipes at, and knowledge sharing about paste recipes between, VL sites should reflect the community structures and intersite relations proposed by the VL settlement system. The results point towards more complex intersite mobility of persons, ceramics and/or knowledge than envisioned in the VL settlement system. VL potters shared knowledge about paste recipes irrespective of spatial proximity. Moreover, VL potters at specific sites experimented with paste recipes and vessel shapes from neighbouring FBW and CW communities, respectively. This willingness to exchange knowledge and to experiment with novel behaviours from across social boundaries may explain the millennia-long persistence of communities in the Dutch wetlands.