Old habits die hard: Early and Middle Copper Age pottery technical traditions in the Budapest Region, Hungary

• Technological analysis of pottery reveals a mutual technical knowledge in the Copper Age in Hungary. • Various learning networks were detected in the Budapest region. • Pottery forms partially determined the applied forming method. • The technological diversity reflects the level of mobility and contact networks of the communities. The location of today’s Budapest was an important interaction zone of the Carpathian Basin in the Early and Middle Copper Age (4500–3650 cal BCE). We investigate the technological knowledge of pottery-making, transmitted through interpersonal relationships, to detect whether making stylistically different pottery sets had common technological and therefore social origins or whether we can speak of newly emerging knowledge and techniques. Pottery assemblages of seven settlements were studied resulting in the observation of numerous forming methods, additional preforming techniques, and surface treatment techniques. A mutual technical tradition has been identified in the region in which most of the pottery forms had their own way of forming. This was possibly shared by most of the potters, despite the changes in pottery forms and decoration over time. Besides, different levels of technological diversity were observed on a few sites by using common techniques on different pottery forms or uncommon ways of pottery making. Thus, our results imply that various learning networks could have existed in the region. In some settlements, the dominance of the mutual technical knowledge implies that the potters were in close social connection contrary to others with possibly higher mobility and more intensive contact with other communities.