Hang around archaeologists in Britain and Ireland long enough and you’ll soon hear about grooved ware. So what is it?

Grooved ware is pottery that’s had a certain kind of design pressed or carved into it. It’s important because, like beakers and beaker people, it marks out and defines a whole civilisation, as discussed in the first programme in my podcast Stone Me.  

We have so little left of life 5,000 years ago that every object is treasured, sacred and by necessity a bit over-interpreted. Pottery survives pretty well in the ground and seems to have been common for daily use - cooking, storing, serving - and for rituals, ceremonies and displays of wealth. 

This was a time before metal so when it came to displays of wealth, status and power neolithic people in Britain and Ireland used cloth, precious stones - and ceramics. They used buildings and monuments too, but you know plenty about that already from the podcasts. 

So they put a lot of work, thought and effort into ceramics, and how they decorated their ritual pots became a mark of identity. It indicated not just possibly what you thought about the world and the hereafter, but where you came from, who you belonged to, and where your loyalties lay. 

Designs and styles spread, and so archaeologists are fascinated by what this might mean: does it mean that people moved, or that they were extending political power and the adoption of a new style displayed a practical, political loyalty? Or was it just that people liked the look of some patterns and adopted them?

This is where the fascination with grooved ware comes in. The earliest examples come from Orkney and so the current thinking is that this is where it originated. Of course the discovery of one fragment that’s definitively older at the other end of the country could completely upend this theory, and that’s what’s so exciting about archaeology. 

Fast forward a few hundred years and you find grooved ware all over the place - in Northumberland, Wessex and Stonehenge, right in the south of England. Why is that so important? Because it shows at least the widespread adoption of elements of an Orkney culture, and perhaps some kind of economic, philosophical or political dominance. 

Of course we have no idea what political organisation and relations were like in north Britain 5,000 years ago and should be careful about imposing modern notions on ancient people. But there hasn’t been a period in documented human history when people from one place weren’t hitting people from another place over the head in a bid for influence or control or resources. Neolithic people might have been fundamentally different, but I don’t buy it. 

So the movement patterns of this particular style of pottery are vital in trying to get a grip on social, political and cultural relations between people in different parts of Britain and Ireland in neolithic times. 

But, as always, over-interpretation looms large. People obsess about ceramics because it’s all there is. There’s always the possibility that neolithic people were desperate for the latest trends and might just have wanted nicer plates.