Radiocarbon dating of grass-tempered ceramic reveals the earliest pottery from Slovakia predates the arrival of farming

We present a novel method of bulk separation of organic content from the grass-tempered pottery from Santovka (Slovakia). The procedure is based on the consecutive application of three inorganic acids, dissolving clay, silica content, and low molecular or mobile fractions to separate organic inclusions added to the pottery matrix during the formation of vessels. Radiocarbon dates obtained with this method are coherent and produce the shortest time span compared to other pretreatment methods presented in this study. The paired dates of grass-tempered pots with the radiocarbon age of lipids extracted from the same pots point to a difference of 400–600 14C years, however, they are in line with the site’s chronostratigraphic Bayesian model. Grass-tempered pottery from Santovka (Slovakia) is dated to the first half of the 6th millennium cal BC, making it the earliest pottery north of the Danube. It seems feasible that ceramic containers from Santovka were produced by hunter-gatherers, and pottery pre-dated the arrival of farming in the Carpathian region by a couple of centuries