Culture history remains the principal paradigm of archaeological thought in northern Albania and its adjacent areas. Within such a framework, particularly given the absence of written records and radiocarbon dating, the diagnostic features of the late prehistoric pottery in this territory become a tool for building blocks of relative chronology. In this way, such artifacts are valued primarily as markers for a given settlement’s strata and possible cultural links with other areas. However, various anthropological studies show that pottery represents a multifaceted component of daily social practices. With this in mind, the present study endeavors to challenge the dominant regional paradigm and to do so it adopts a methodology that goes beneath the surface of late prehistoric pottery. Petrography and paradigmatic classification have been used to examine the pottery excavated from three settlements and two tumuli in the Shkodër region to answer questions related to provenance, production organization, and possible exchange patterns.