Cardium Pottery

The cardial or Impressokultur or (impression ) ceramic is a group of related cultures of the early Neolithic period, which in the 7th millennium BC on the eastern Adriatic coast and around the Western Mediterranean (including North Africa) and on the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Malta (but not in the Balearic Islands ) spread. Dominant element are stamp-like footprints ( Cardium edule ) with cockles were produced. Therefore, the culture was first called cardial culture. Subsequently But since appeared increasingly ceramics, exported to other objects impressions possessed, the expression Impresso culture has been introduced. Currently, both names are common.

Oldest footprint ceramic is often found at high altitudes or caves (eg Gruta do Calderão in Tomar, Portugal) and, with few exceptions, not in the back country of the coastal region. Be found also in some Portuguese middens shards with Cardium - prints, which are also found in the Algarve, the Alentejo and the Mondegomündung, rather rare. The initial homogeneity of the Impressokeramik broke up into several, partly ( insular ) Postimpresso - cultures. More on that later part of the territory on both sides of the Rhone Chassey- Lagozza - Cortaillod Culture ( CLC), the first indeed received own name in southern France, northern Italy and southern and western Switzerland, but is now regarded as uniform. In Portugal, the early period undecorated vessels follow with characteristic wall buckling and edge shapes which were common in the 3rd millennium.

Apart from decorating the vessel shape is different. The younger ceramics is generally flachbodig, while the ceramic with the cardiac patterns is still rundbodig. The Rundbodigkeit is the subject of debate, as the vessels of the Mediterranean Neolithic before emergence of cardial pottery flachbodig ( hence stable ) were. In the region with cardial ceramic alone an area had developed in Africa rundbodige ceramic, but in the Mesolithic - wild exploitative context. Contacts the carrier of the cardial - culture with African hunter-gatherers are controversial.