For sure the Ice Age DLC will oblige to have a pre-pottery state, such authorizing pottery as a common tech discovered later in game. Not sure though if the devs intend to release this DLC with the base game or later.
Concerning the tech progress regarding pottery, I’m relying on my memories form archaeological lessons at the Uni, so I may be wrong.
What I remember essentially is that glazed pottery appeared only far later than the Neolithic era, essentially for building bricks used in prestige buildings like temple, and it’s only far later than it became common to use glazed pottery for vessels.
The direct implication is that the pottery used so far (until the Middle Ages for Western Europe?) had to be thrown away after quite a short time, as there were food left in all those tiny holes that are at the surface of earth, and it gave a bad taste to food.
However, there were also different ways to produce pottery, from very artistic and highly decorated vessels to “mass productions” as this happened in Mesopotamia, using e.g. a wheel, that changed the productivity, the needed amount of earth, freeing more time for other activities, etc. This would be an interesting thing to have this implemented.
One question I always wondered though is the quality of earth used. I’ve been a devoted student of Mesopotamian civilization, but I have to confess I never understood the use of plants to have less fat earth. Apparently, this means that both vessels and clay tablets could only be made with those plants to keep durability and/or resist baking, and there were very peculiar types of soil that were highly valued, e.g. for clay tablets.
Is there any archaeological evidence that for some time some potteries may have been done without those plants? This would have a very direct implication in game, as this would mean it would be a major advancement, needing however lot of work to replace the very ephemeral vessels, and needing the discovery of plant use to allow better durability?