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If a nomadic life style and pottery are mutually exclusive then logic states that one must give way! Thus if pottery is discovered at a given site the assumption must be that the people were not nomadic.

Roy.

One also has to allow for transitional phases. I really doubt that one day the chief of an HG or pastoral group woke up and said "hey guys, from now on we're going to be farmers."

Once you begin growing food you have to store it - that's the whole point of agriculture. Pottery is not a universal solution to this question. In places with limestone formations we see grain cellars chipped out of the stone which serve the same purpose.

H-G's typically deplete an area of its easily accessible resources fairly quickly. Once it becomes too much effort to find more fruit/nuts/roots/edible stuff they move on. Archeologists in the sixties & seventies did extensive caloric studies -- calories spent gathering versus caloric return -- trying to understand H-G mobility patterns. They also studied contemporary H-G's such as the !Kung, the Dorobo, the Mbuti and the Hadza -- and other groups in South America, Borneo, and Australia -- to try to understand their strategy. At one point it was joked that there were more Harvard anthropologists in the Kalahari than !Kung.

In areas with plentiful aquatic resources, you may find slightly different adaptations but still likely to have seasonal movement to adjust to fluctuating resource availability. You also get a different variation in the arctic where people have a convenient freezer outside the igloo door.

H-Gs who specialized in following migrating herds (notably reindeer in northern Eurasia) illustrate a highly specialized adaptation and -- in areas with animals disposed to domestication like the Middle East -- probably led to pastoralism. In most of the prehistoric world, convenient migrating herds were not commonplace, and adaptations were complex involving extensive knowledge of when and where certain resources would be available seasonally and regionally and moving to take advantage of them.

The Chinese potters making pots long before plants are domesticated should probably not be interpreted as indicating sedentism. How would they manage that?

JGF wrote:
In most of the prehistoric world, convenient migrating herds were not commonplace, and adaptations were complex involving extensive knowledge of when and where certain resources would be available seasonally and regionally and moving to take advantage of them.

The Chinese potters making pots long before plants are domesticated should probably not be interpreted as indicating sedentism. How would they manage that?

Hi JGF -

You're assuming that the ancient climate and animal populations were then as they are today.
They demonstrably were not, and one makes that assumption at their peril: its like the assumption that comets do not hit, and our climate has changed before and will change again.

Exactly what purpose(s) were the Chinese potters making pots for?

Exactly what purpose(s) were the Chinese potters making pots for?

Good point!

Roy.

H-G's typically deplete an area of its easily accessible resources fairly quickly.

Large herds of animals will chew through the grass and move on also. In such an instance the predators will tag along. I'm not saying you're wrong, kb, but there seems to be a chicken and egg question here. The HGs could simply have been part of a whole eco-system and played their part accordingly.

Pit firing is the one oldest known method for the firing of pottery.Firing pottery is one of the type of pottery which is very old method.

This thread is 7 years old. Somewhat dated even by archaeological standards!

It all depends on what the hunter gatherers were hunting and gathering. Kangaroos and emus in OZ and and game in New Guinea etc do not "migrate" as such, they graze wherever they can. On the other hand during the cooler months in Northern NSW and Canberra bands would move to the highlands and feast on the Bogong moths which were just emerging. in addition they would go to set sites to have battles and sports contests.

It also depends on what is meant by nomadic. Many nomadic groups had set hunting grounds, but they could be pretty large. Naga bands confined themselves to the hill, The Wiradjuri roamed the whole of Western NSW etc.