Fingerprints on terracottas from the 7th–2nd centuries BC tell how it happened. from Heracleion.
The production of Greek and Egyptian terracotta figurines from the city of Heracleion at the mouth of the Nile involved not only men, as previously thought, but also women, teenagers and children. It is possible that this craft was a family one, says Oxford University graduate student Leonie Hoff. She came to this conclusion by studying fingerprints on the figures; her article was published in Oxford Journal of Archaeology.
The city of Heracleion (another name is Thonis) was founded in the 8th century BC. During the Sais and Ptolemaic periods it was a major port for trade with other countries and was home to many Greek traders and artisans. After the founding of Alexandria (331 BC), the importance of Heracleion began to gradually decline. From the end of the 2nd century. BC the city began to sink under water, but life glimmered in it for quite a long time. Then the city was forgotten, its flooded remains were discovered only in the 1990s, and since then they have been periodically explored.
From these excavations come 60 terracotta figurines from the 7th–2nd centuries BC, nine of which have preserved fingerprints. They remained due to the peculiarities of production: a layer of wet clay was stamped into molds, and the resulting halves were joined; as a result, prints could remain on the inner surface of the figurine and at the “junction”.
The author of the article, Oxford University graduate student Leonie Hoff, photographed prints on terracotta using the RTI technique (Reflectance Transformation Imaging ). In this case, the camera and the subject are fixed, but the lighting is changed – the light source moves around the find, describing a hemisphere with a constant radius. Then the pictures are combined into one image, which allows you to examine the surface of the object in detail, including making accurate measurements. If the print “went” inside the figurine, casts of it were made and photographed in the same way. The images made it possible to measure the density and width of the epidermal ridges (papillary lines), and from them determine gender and age: in women these ridges are denser, and in children they are thinner.
Judging by the prints, 14 people participated in the production of nine terracottas from Heracleion: men and women, teenagers and children. It is interesting how the prints are arranged, in what combinations and on which terracottas. Some figurines are reliably made in Egypt, which is clear from the clay and/or image; others belong to the “Greek” group, among them there are definitely imported ones, but some could have been made by local coroplast masters. There were approximately equal numbers of men and women among them, but on the “Egyptian” fingerprints, women’s fingerprints are more common. The placement of “adult” marks on a figurine is independent of gender, and adult women and men never worked together on the same figurine from the Heracleonian sample. Women probably had enough experience to make terracotta themselves.
This is especially noticeable if you look at the traces of children’s fingers. They are found only with “adult” prints and only on the inside of the figures. Most likely, children were entrusted with simpler operations – pressing clay into molds, and adults took upon themselves the removal of impressions from the mold, their connection and modification, as more responsible operations. Mentors could be both women and men. Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine the gender of the children from their prints, so it is unclear whether the boys studied with only men, and the girls only with women. But it turned out that the age difference between the “Egyptian” students and mentors was small: it is possible that the “teachers” were teenagers, older brothers or sisters. The masters who left their marks on the “Greek” terracottas were noticeably older than their apprentices.
It is possible that different approaches to learning and the different roles of women are traces of different craft traditions. The fact that figurines were made by both adults and children, regardless of gender, may indicate the family nature of the craft. However, as the author himself notes, the sample size is very small. A significant chronological dispersion of the finds is also obvious. So the study so far raises many more questions than it answers.
Based on materials Phys.org And Oxford Journal of Archaeology
Source: www.nkj.ru
