The pottery was hand-shaped with crushed granite mixed into the clay and features a surface brushed with strokes. It first appeared in Europe in the Early Neolithic. From the end of the 2nd millennium to the end of the 1st millennium BC, it spread across eastern Lithuania, western Belarus, south-eastern Latvia, and later to central Belarus, north-western Lithuania, and Užnemunė (geographical region located on the left bank of the Nemunas River). The still-wet surface of the pot was brushed with strokes of grass, straw, or twig bundles; sometimes, special combs were used.
Three main pot shapes can be distinguished: pots with S-shaped curved walls (height 17–29 cm, diameter 21–26 cm), barrel-shaped pots with straight walls (height 12–26 cm, diameter 10–24 cm), and rimmed pots. Early brushed pottery is characterized by faint and irregular strokes and is otherwise unornamented. Late brushed pottery (end of the 1st millennium – 1st–2nd century) is strongly decorated with strokes, features rims, and bears decorations made by pinching, finger or nail impressions, incisions, rollers, or stamps. The most common ornament in brushed pottery is pinching, applied in three ways: vertically, horizontally, or in wavy patterns. Brushed pottery emerged as a new phenomenon of the Bronze Age, influenced by various ethnocultures. From the 2nd–3rd century, this type of pottery began to decline as rusticated pottery spread.
