CHAPTER 13 Pottery Kilns in Trypillian Settlements. Tracing the Division of Labour and the Social Organization of Copper Age Communities ALEKSEY KORVIN-PIOTROVSKIY,ROBERT HOFMANN,KNUT RASSMANN,MYKHAILO YU.VIDEIKO AND LENNART BRANDTSTÄTTER INTRODUCTION The Trypillia culture, which is famous for its high- quality ceramic vessels, also provides evidence for complex pottery kilns, as revealed by excavations on Trypillian sites more than fifty years ago. These have been reviewed in recent decades by Ellis (1984), Pet- rasch (1986), and Willms (1999) and, most recently, a detailed analysis by Tsvek (2004) has been published (Figure 1). Until recently, the Trypillian pottery kilns which were known were more or less randomly found during settlement excavations. Within the area of the large Trypillian settlements, three specialized pottery workshops were found in the BI/II and BII set- tlements of the East Trypillia culture in Veselyj Kut and Myropillya, Trostyanchyk (Tsvek, 2004: 290). However, it should be emphasized that kilns have not been found on the largest settlements in the South Bug-Dnipro region to date. There was only one indi- cation in the central part of Maidanetske: here, in 1985, a pit with an assemblage of vitrified pottery was excavated, which could represent production remains from a pottery workshop located within the Neigh- bourhood. The first direct evidence for ceramic production on very large settlements is the result of the recent large-scale geomagnetic survey of those sites. In the first campaign in 2011 at Taljanky and Maidanetske, a small number of characteristic mag- netic anomalies were detected (Kruts et al., 2011: 65, 81: figure 12). Besides other different opinions, the interpretation of these objects as pottery kilns was the most favoured one which was later also published (Rassmann et al., 2014a: 109). In 2013, Vladimir Kruts and Aleksey. Korvin–Piotrovskiy excavated three of these anomalies in the northern area of the settlement of Taljanky. This fieldwork confirmed the assumption that all these anomalies were indeed pottery kilns characterized by a complex construction. Based on these results, similar anomalies in Taljanky, Maidanetske and in Nebelivka were excavated in 2014 (Videiko et al., 2015a). The following paper will provide an overview of the current state of research and the new excavation results in Taljanky and Maidanetske. Furthermore, we will discuss the implications for the reconstruction of specialization and division of labour in Trypillian settlements. POTTERY KILNS AND DIVISION OF LABOUR From a technological point of view pottery kilns rep- resent a technical solution to achieve certain qualities of the intended finished product. They allow higher and better controlled temperatures, better controlled firing atmospheres, and have a higher degree of effi- ciency with regard to the input of fuel compared to other pottery burning techniques (e.g. Rice, 1987; Ellis, 1984: 130–164). Pottery kilns are an indicator of intensified pottery production, a certain degree of division of labour, and craft specialization: special knowledge and experience would have been necessary to handle the process of firing properly. Furthermore, the maintenance of pottery kilns had to be managed, requiring labour and capital investment, and for their preservation and repair. Based on archaeological evidence and the increasing quality of the finished products, several authors (e.g. Kaiser & Voytek, 1983; Ellis, 1984; Parzinger, 1992; Scharl & Suhrbier, 2005) argue that pottery pro- duction became more specialized in Southeastern and Eastern Europe possibly from the early Neolithic and certainly from the late Neolithic and Copper Age. Current research allows us to trace the process of how production capacities and firing temperatures were improving (e.g. Petrasch, 1986: 47–49; Dusek, 1984). In contrast, it is still difficult to answer the question of precisely how this specialization worked, as well as © European Association of Archaeologists 2015