Clay raw material procurement and pottery have a closerelationship but different working technologies. Most of scientificpublished research related to past pottery productions deals with the identification of clay sources, firing techniques, potterymaking technologies, pottery use wear and residue analysis, pottery typologies and chronologies. The lacking of understandingand of identification of past clay procurement technologies mightbe probably related to the lacking of research by new methodologies in the supposed clay procurement areas. Moreover, at least into prehistoric and protohistoric research problematic, there is also a void or a very low level of understanding of the recognition of clay handicraft areas inside or nearby settlementloci. Raw material procurement was and still i is a dynamicprocess. We make here a critic re-thinking of published data from Neolithic areas from eastern Sicily, Levant and Asia from different research approaches.
Our objective is to point out the visible and the invisible featuresof clay procurement “chaînes opêratoires” among thesegeographical areas. The analytical approach to published data from several fields, among which ethnoarchaeology, geoarchaeology, micromorphology, lithic and bone analysis, isuseful to extract technological information to make modellisation(s) to predict past human planning behaviours related to specific raw materials.