POTTERY'S ORIGIN STORIES U Why did hunter-gatherers make the world's first pots? By Kate Ravilious ntil recently, many scholars believed that the earliest pottery was made some 9,000 years ago, when Neolithic peoples in the Near East first settled down permanently and turned to farming. Archaeologists thought that pots were initially used to cook cereals to make them more digestible or to ferment surplus grains so they could be stored for longer periods-as beer, for 48 example. Pottery, archaeologists reasoned, increased farmers' efficiency, enabling them to process large harvests and stock their cupboards against lean months. And because producing ceramics requires time and pots are themselves cumbersome objects, it was assumed that the transient lifestyles of huntergatherers were ill-suited to making pottery. But archaeological discoveries have gradually chipped away at this consensus. Around 10 years ago, improvements ARCHAEOLOGY * May/June 2022