Early Neolithic Pottery from Western Belarus

The paper discusses Early Neolithic pottery of Dubičiai type from western Belarus. Its most distinctive features include organic temper in the clay mass, a belt of deep round pits under the rim, strokes made by a round stick (‘hooves’), and thin slanting grooved lines or slanting decoration with such lines. The hypotheses on the origins of Dubičiai-type pottery are also discussed. According to many scholars, the area of occurrence of Dubičiai-type pottery includes the Belarusian part of the River Nioman (except for the basin of the River Vilija), the left bank of the Upper Prypiac basin, southern Lithuania, part of northeast Poland, and the northern part of Volhynia. At the same time, D.Y. Telegin, O.M. Titova and G.V. Okhrimenko distinguish Volhynian culture in the region of the same name. It has many similar traits with Prypiac Nioman culture. The scale of differences between Early Neolithic pottery from western Palessie and Volhynia and Dubičiai-type pottery from the region of the River Nemunas allows us to consider Volhynian culture not as a separate culture, but as a local variant of Prypiac-Nioman culture. Sokołówek-type pottery has been discovered at sites in Podlasie and in the Belarusian part of the River Buh region. It is similar to Dubičiai-type pottery in morphology and ornamentation, but has less organic temper in the clay mass. It is most probably the result of the local development of Early Neolithic traditions in the western part of the Prypiac-Nioman culture area.