The primeval pottery can be found at Neolithic Age to early Iron Age (5.000 - 400 B. C.) habitation sites. Its use was twofold: either for everyday life or religious. Therefore artefacts include different shapes like bowls, vases, pitches or dippers, as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic bowls or rare small women statues.Pottering expresses the individuality of tribes and larger societies. It also helps us to observe the geological extension of the wholes. Moreover, archaeologists are able to follow the contacts with surrounding folks and the routes of trade (they ran usually from Balcan archipelago to the south-western lowlands in Slovakia).

The first potters manufactured vessels with linear decoration. We have no records of the contemporary names of societies so they were given the titles according to the typical features of the pottery, e.g. Funnel or Bell-beaker Cultures if we consider the shape, or Corded-Ware or Linear Cultures due to the ornamentation. They inhabited south-western and eastern fertile areas (Bíňa, Hurbanovo, Nitra etc.). The artefacts (conical bowls, hollow-pedestalled vessels) were thin-walled, smoothed , with engraved lines and spirals, sometimes painted with yellow or red tints.

The following period kept the shapes and brought vases, keg-like bowls, hemispherical or three-fourth globular vessels, decorated with narrow grooves with small, note-like holes (the bearers of this culture migrated via Moravia’s Gate, southern Poland and Poprad Basin to Spiš).The Linear Cultures resulted into the Želiezovce Group which produced thin-walled pottery decorated by different methods( alternating red or yellow stripes, polished grey or black areas). This was also the period of culmination of plastic art (human faces, zoomorphic reliefs on vessels found in Iža, Patince,...). But coarse-walled pottery was more common, probably because of its everyday use (cooking, storing the food etc.), with almost no ornaments.

These early cultures were predecessors of unique Bukk Culture. Its representatives inhabited karst areas and accessible caves in East Slovakia. The shape of vessels remained unchanged but the importance of the ceramics is in the mastery of forming the 1-3 mm thin walls from the fine clay that can be found in some caves (e.g. in Domica). The pottery was highly appreciated by the neighbouring folks because of its beauty and therefore exported to areas of southern Poland, but also to distant areas (Serbia).

In some way Želiezovce Culture was influenced by Lengyel Culture. The shape of wares changed from spherical to sharp profiles, cups, covers, ladles appeared together with pitchers and goblets. The stress was laid upon the details of decoration - three-dimensional human or animal motifs were popular. Except of this they used mono- or bichromatic painted decorations - but often the styles of ornaments lasted only for one generation.

Then, during the social and technological changes of Aeneolithic, the adornments suddenly and inexplicably disappeared for about two thousand years. The walls became more coarse, clay contained sand, the surface was rugged, without ornaments except of simple semispherical protuberations, mostly functional.

The end of Lengyel Culture brought again new forms of adornment - furrowed pricks or stab-and-drag (found in Nitriansky Hrádok). Simultaneously had been developing Tisza-Polgár Culture around the northern Tisza, typical for ochre cylindrical and quadrangel bowl or cups. Together with it we can observe the spread of the Channelled pottery Culture, almost over the whole territory, but it didnｴt lasted long (until the 3.000 B. C.).

At the end of the Stone Age the north-eastern parts were inhabited by the bearers of Corded-Ware Culture, probably migrants from Upper Dnester (e.g. settlements in Bardejov).

The beginning of the Bronze Age (1900 B. C.) was characteristic by the invasions of groups from the north to the south west who produced ball-shaped cups and pitchers with rope decorations. The south areas of Slovakia became the cross of the migrating tribes, therefore the pottery had signs of different cultures. In fact, decoration was poor except of the ceramics with white grooves found in Hurbanovo or plumb-line plastic ornament in Rusovce.

For Maďarovce Culture pottery was typical bronze-glitter of usually black vessels. Otomani Culture is interesting because of remarkable ornaments (white lines and circles on black surface) or ingenious portable small stoves. Those were very popular and exported to distant settlements.

In the Middle Bronze Period were vessels used for cremation burial purposes. Thousand years lasting rule of Lusatian Culture started. The shape (biconical vessels, amphorae, egg-shaped bowl, etc.) and decoration (smoothed surface, shallow grooves, geometrical ornaments, bronze covers or tin foils) differed from site to site but had something in common - they were used as urns and alms (Liptovský Mikuláš, Dolný Kubín).

The beginning of 1.000 B. C. can be characterised by artefacts of Gáva Culture: vases with broad horizontal mouth or bowls with leaf-like mouth (Terňa).

Finally, when the importance of the iron tools grew, character of the society started to change. The greatest influence had the Hallstadt site in Austria, that gave the name to the name of the whole period (700-400 B. C.) on the Kalenderberg Culture (Sereď, Krakovany). The incredible imagination of potters was expressed first of all in ritual ceramics found in prince’s barrows. Artefacts included anthropomorphic vessels (with attractive silvery decoration and clay-made chains), bull’s plastics etc. It must be said that there is an evidence of human offerings.

Probably North-Tracian tribes belong to those who finished here primeval development. For the first time there occurred potter’s wheel were biconical pitchers and vases with prolonged neck were made. The products weren’t of a high quality and from a certain point of view we can consider this development to be a regression - for a while. With penetration of Celts to our territory (400-300 B.C,) developed La-Téne Culture with pottery based on the mastery of the potter’s wheel. But hand-made ceramics preserved at some settlements during the Roman Period and the period of Great Moravia.