PrefaceReinhard Bernbeck and Koen BerghuijsThe ultimate black box – an introductionOlivier Nieuwenhuyse†Thinking inside the maskClive GambleContaining the flow: ÇatalhöyükIan HodderClay, enamel & plastic. Three ethnographic studies on diversity and innovation in container usageHans Peter HahnJust an everyday story of pots? Thinking through the controversies, materialities, and interdependencies of initial pottery and organic containers in the East MediterraneanPeter TomkinsThinking inside the pot – Improving organic residue analysisBonnie NilhamnEarly pottery in Upper MesopotamiaMarie Le MièreImagined Inceptions: of pottery and basketry in the Upper Mesopotamian late NeolithicKoen Berghuijs and Olivier Nieuwenhuyse†Alternating mediums? The introduction of pottery to the southern Levant and its impact on the production of stone vessels: Sha‘ar Hagolan as a case studyDanny Rosenberg and Yosef GarfinkelEarly pottery in the Southern Levant and beyondKevin GibbsA view from the northern forests: container technologies of boreal hunter-gatherersHenny PiezonkaThe affordances of portable containers in early village societies in the Kopet Dag regionSusan PollockContainers of collective memories. A biographic-contextual approach to the chlorite vessels of the 10th millennium BCE of northern MesopotamiaMarion BenzContainers for spirits: symbolic meaning of early pottery and stone vessels discovered in Tell el-KerkhAkira TsunekiClay containers and mobility in the final stage of Neolithisation: storage bins and the earliest pottery at Tell el-Kerkh, northwest SyriaTakahiro OdakaImmovable and movable containers: evidence from the Syrian Euphrates in the mid-8th millennium cal. BCEAnna Bach Gómez, Adrià Breu Barcons, Miquel Molist and Walter CruellsLifting the lid on the materiality of containing and retrievingCarl KnappettContainer cultures: a synthesisReinhard BernbeckAcross Western Asia, the astonishing increase in the availability of durable ceramic containers in the seventh millennium BCE had significant societal repercussions – so much so that vital social, economic, and symbolic activities became dependent upon the availability of pottery containers. These early ceramic containers, however, established themselves alongside flourishing pre-existing container traditions, with vessels made in a wide range of materials including clay, bitumen, basketry, leather, wood, and stone. How did prehistoric people respond to the emergence of containers as a key factor in their lives? Building on Olivier Nieuwenhuyse’s rich scholarly legacy, this volume brings together 18 papers by leading scholars in the field of container technology, discussing cases from eastern Asia to Africa, but with a focus on prehistoric Western Asia. Looking not just at pottery but also explicitly beyond, the contributions consider and address the cross-overs of different kinds of raw materials for containers and their crafting; the multiplicity of temporal scales in the production, use and discard of pottery; the social anchoring of vessels’ use and deposition as evident in their specific contexts; and local as well as regional variations in early pottery.