Recently, a worn prehistoric ceramic sherd was found in a field outside the city of Borlänge in the province of Dalarna, central Sweden. The sherd has been identified as a fragment of a vessel belonging to the Battle Axe culture, the first one ever found in Dalarna. At the same time, the sherd is the youngest known Stone Age pottery in the province, and after that the craft seems to have disappeared.The first reappearance dates to the Early Iron Age, 500 BCE–400 CE. Both south and north of Dalarna, ceramic production carried on continuously from the time it was introduced during the Neolithic. With very few exceptions (including northernmost Norway), this applies to the entire northern circumpolar part oft he world despite difficulties in finding raw materials, fuel and suitable weather to perform the craft. Dalarna offers all the prerequisites for producing pottery, but despite this, and despite decades of contract archeology in the province, it seems from the current state of research that this was not done for about 2000 years. The main question is therefore: how may we understand why the ceramic tradition ceased in Dalarna at the end of the Stone Age?