Earliest known European pottery?

slowburner

Evidence of a community of prehistoric artists and craftspeople who “invented” ceramics during the last Ice Age – thousands of years before pottery became commonplace - has been found in modern-day Croatia.
The finds consist of 36 fragments, most of them apparently the broken-off remnants of modelled animals, and come from a site called Vela Spila on the Adriatic coast. Archaeologists believe that they were the products of an artistic culture which sprang up in the region about 17,500 years ago. Their ceramic art flourished for about 2,500 years, but then disappeared.

An interesting assertion in the article is that the knowledge of making ceramics may have been 'lost and found' several times over the Palaeolithic period

Now it is becoming clear that the story was much more complex. Over thousands of years, ceramics were invented, lost, reinvented and lost again. The earliest producers did not make crockery, but seem to have had more artistic inclinations.

www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/archaeologists-uncover-palaeolithic-ceramic-art

Original paper here;
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0041437#pone-0041437-g004

Coles

Very interesting.

Worth mentioning the Venus of Dolní Věstonice. Perhaps as much as 29,000 years old.

dr gonzo

Even the iconic venus of Willendorf is as much as 24000 years old, so, in my limited knowledge, I would be very much inclined to agree with that article. Ceramic is practically indestructible past a certain level of firing. Seeing as artistic artefacts predominate in the early ceramic days, I would say its a fair assumption that the beginnings of ceramic production was predominantly artistic rather then utilitarian.