Pottery, status, pollution and people: some thoughts on how cultural concepts and processes may have resulted in the decline and disappearance of domestic potting in late prehistoric and early historic Ireland

The decline, and then disappearance, of domestic potting in Late Bronze Age andIron Age Ireland has been described as “inconceivable” and a “conundrum” by BarryRaftery (1995). There seems no practical or technological reason for the abandonmentof this most useful artefact type. What is more, when domestic pottery is finally re-introduced to Ireland, the best part of a millennium later in the eighth century AD,its spread is limited to parts of Ulster. Native ceramics do not become common acrossIreland again, until the thirteenth century AD. This paper assumes that, with no practical, or technological reason for pottery’s abandonment in Ireland, there must have been cultural factors influencing society to abandon potting. Using the work of Claude Levi-Strauss and Mary Douglas, on the associations of food, food preparation and dining, with status and pollution, this paper will try to sketch out some possibilities as to the kinds of cultural process which may have made the early Irish eschew pottery.