Credited to Ecuador. Several sources call it the oldest pottery in the Americas, but Wikipedia says it was only 'long thought' to be the oldest in South America, so the superlative is no longer secure.
How it began
The Valdivia culture was one of the earliest settled societies in the Americas. It lived on and near the Santa Elena peninsula of coastal Ecuador from roughly 3500 to 1500 BCE, in villages of houses set around a central plaza, and its people fished, farmed maize, beans, squash, cassava, chili peppers and cotton, and hunted.
The Ecuadorian archaeologist Emilio Estrada identified the culture in 1956 at the village of Valdivia. The exact start of its pottery is debated. Early studies dated the first phase to about 3000 to 2700 BCE, and later digs found an older and simpler ware, called San Pedro, beneath it.
How it works
Early Valdivia pots were rough and practical. Over time they became larger, thinner and more finely finished. Potters used red and gray pigments, and a polished dark red ware is typical of the period. Decoration was often incised.
The best known objects are small figurines. The first, from around 4000 to 3500 BCE by the Metropolitan Museum's account, were carved from stone and stood three to five inches high. About 500 years later ceramic versions appeared at Real Alto. These were made from two rods of clay pressed together, with the lower ends left apart as legs and the hair added as a separate cap of clay. Most appear female, and each has its own hairstyle.
Who pushed back
In 1962 Estrada, with the American archaeologists Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans, argued in Science that Valdivia pottery resembled Jomon pottery from Japan closely enough to suggest that Japanese fishermen had drifted across the Pacific and introduced the craft.
Other archaeologists objected at the time. They pointed to the length of the voyage, the direction of the currents and the odds of survival, and held that the similarities were coincidental results of similar techniques. In the 1970s excavation at the type site turned up older, simpler pottery below the first finds, showing gradual local development. That evidence is widely regarded as settling the matter against a Japanese origin.
What lasted
Valdivia ceramics are among the oldest in the Americas, and the Metropolitan Museum describes the stone and clay figures of coastal Ecuador as the earliest representational images in the hemisphere. Figurines have been found in burials and in household refuse, most often near hearths and food preparation areas. They are usually read as fertility figures, though their real purpose is unknown.
Later fieldwork at Real Alto, Loma Alta, Salango and inland sites changed the picture of the culture itself. It is now described as a tropical forest culture focused on river valleys, not only a coastal fishing people.
Where it stands today
Valdivia pieces are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the National Archaeological Museum of Florence and the Museo de La Plata in Argentina, among others. In Ecuador a collection is displayed at the Universidad de Especialidades Espiritu Santo in Guayaquil. The female figurine known as the Venus of Valdivia is the best known type.
