One of a number of so far un-provable theories of how utilitarian pottery started is based on the use of woven baskets (which significantly predated pottery). Baskets and animal skins were used by nomadic tribes to carry their possessions. Pottery had to wait until people became more settled because it was too heavy to carry far. At least 25,000 years ago clay was used to smear on the sides of such wicker baskets, which were then sun-dried to make them either heat resistant or more waterproof. When heated deliberately or accidentally in, say, a hut fire, the basket might burn off leaving the potentially “fired” clay container. Once pottery became practical, there is also the possibility that wicker moulds were used to shape early clay vessels, which would burn off when fired leaving the wicker-impressed decoration. Certainly there was a “design” link between baskets and clay pottery, as many early pots used basket impressions or rope marks as designs. This pattern could be made by repeatedly pressing various artefacts into the clay surface, possibly using a small woven wicker patch.

Decorated Pots, Cord Marked 2,200 to 1,900 BC and
 Wicker Pattern 500 to 400 BC both Chinese
- courtesy R&G McPherson Antiques

In time the “firing” technology no doubt developed by using stones or shaped lumps of clay to focus the heat, improving the effectiveness of fires, also forming crude chimneys providing better draught, which would make the fire hotter and improve the robustness of the clay object. In whatever way the route to fired pottery progressed, it happened very early in Homo Sapiens’ development.

It is evident that pottery was discovered independently at different dates and in different places round the world, and throughout history different cultures have made pottery objects using local materials and traditional techniques and styles. Finding the earliest use of pottery is extremely difficult as archaeologists continue to unearth earlier and earlier objects. Also, although dating techniques are technically advanced, they can provide misleading or inaccurate results. For example, complex calibration methods have to be used for the carbon fourteen and thermoluminescence techniques popularly used today, making them error prone. Basically, before writing was invented around 5500 to 5,000 years ago to record “history”, much is open to interpretation and conjecture.

As stated earlier, the first ceramic objects so far discovered, made by man around 30,000 years ago, during the last glacial period, were not utilitarian but were ritualistic. Even though he was still in the Stone Age (Neolithic), Homo Sapiens (Cro Magnon) had discovered not only how to fire clay on bonfires, but even to make simple beehive shaped kilns. Clearly cave painting, carving images in outcrops of clay, and small pottery, bone and stone figurines had important functions in the social life of Stone Age man, even though these meanings have been lost in time.