Ceramics and seasonality: Mobile lifeways and ceramic production of the Catacomb population, lower don Eastern Europe

•Catacomb camps on the Sal-Manych steppe were occupied seasonally in the summer-autumn.•Low investment ceramics were produced and replaced as needed at temporary pastoral camps.•The compositional signatures of mortuary vessels more closely resemble that of neighboring regions than local camps. Located on the plains of southern Russia, the Sal-Manych steppe has been exploited by mobile pastoralists since at least the Eneolithic. Recent investigations into temporary settlement in the region have uncovered a number of pastoral camps dating to the second half of the third millennium BCE, locally associated with the Catacomb culture. According to seasonality research, camps at balka Volochaika and Chikalda were occupied in the summer-early autumn seasons, while stable carbon, nitrogen, and strontium isotope values of faunal remains on site suggest that domesticated herds grazed on pastures outside the Sal-Manych region in the winter and spring. However, beyond routine herding activities, the everyday economy should be understood as also including the production of everyday technologies such as ceramics. Using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) paired with macroscopic technological analysis, this research indicates that ceramic production strategies at these camps entailed the production and replacement as needed of ceramic vessels at temporary camps located on the Sal-Manych steppe, involving at least short distance curation. Ritual vessels deposited at regional kurgans mainly cluster geochemically with ceramic materials from the Lower Don and North Caucasus, rather than nearby camps.