Tracking the division of labour through handprints: Applying Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to clay 'tokens’ in Neolithic West Asia

Bennison-Chapman, Lucy; Hager, Lori D.

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2018.09.004

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…This is neither representative of an early urban context nor is it an adequate sample for the time span involved. More recently, Bennison-Chapman and Hager [17] applied new imaging methods to palm and fingerprints on Neolithic clay "tokens" from Boncuklu Höyük in Turkey. Using ridge density, they found that adult women and men and children applied prints to the objects, but adult women left prints on tokens six times more often than men or children.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fingerprint evidence for the division of labour and learning pottery-making at Early Bronze Age Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel

et al. 2020

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The organization of craft production has long been a marker for broader social, economic and political changes that accompanied urbanism. The identity of producers who comprised production groups, communities, or workshops is out of reach using conventional archaeological data. There has been some success using epidermal prints on artefacts to identify the age and sex of producers. However, forensic research indicates that a combination of ridge breadth and ridge density would best identify the age and sex of individuals. To this end, we combine mean ridge breadth (MRB) and mean ridge density (MRD) to distinguish the age and sex of 112 fingerprints on Early Bronze Age (EB) III pottery from the early urban neighbourhood at Tell eṡ-Ṡ â fi/Gath, Israel, dating to a 100 year time span. Our analysis accounts for the shrinkage of calcareous fabrics used to make six type of vessels, applies a modified version of the Kamp et al. regression equation to the MRB for each individual print, and infers sex by correlating MRD data to appropriate modern reference populations. When the results are combined, our analyses indicate that most fingerprints were made by adult and young males and the remainder by adult and young females. Children's prints are in evidence but only occur on handles. Multiple prints of different age and sex on the same vessels suggest they were impressed during the training of young potters. Production appears dominated by adult and young males working alone, together, and in cooperation with adult and/or young females. Vessels with prints exclusively by females of any age are rare. This male dominant cooperative labour pattern contrasts recent studies showing that adult women primarily made Neolithic figurines in Anatolia, and more females than males were making pottery prior to the rise of city-states in northern Mesopotamia.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fingerprint evidence for the division of labour and learning pottery-making at Early Bronze Age Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel

et al. 2020

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“…For example, bite marks from milk teeth in a clay ball from the lower levels of the Neolithic site at Çatalhöyük suggest the presence of a young child (2-3) able to observe, explore and interact with the technologies of manufacture (Hodder 2011) -see Fig. 1; likewise, children's prints on objects at Early Bronze Age (Fowler et al 2020) and Neolithic sites (Bennison-Chapman and Hager 2018) indicate the presence of children experiencing a technologically rich environment (see also Röder (2018) for further examples).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Environmental Influences on Infant Development and Their Potential Role in Processes of Cultural Transmission and Long-Term Technological Change

Coward

Howard-Jones

2021

Childhood in the Past

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Emerging understanding of the extent to which the childhood environment can influence long-term neural and cognitive development may justify greater attention to its role in prehistory. In this review, we attempt to identify a range of ways in which changes to the rearing environment might impact on cognitive function with the potential to modify processes of cultural transmission. We focus on the types of change to the infant environment that may arise when moving from mobile huntergather to more settled agrarian lifeways. We consider the evidence for such early environmental factors bringing about enduring effects on perceptual tuning, shared attention, behavioural regulation and observational learning, and how these might contribute to differences in processes of cultural transmission across lifeways. We conclude that the potential developmental significance of cultural changes to the infant environment suggests more attention should be paid by archaeologists to lines of evidence related to early childhood environments in prehistory.

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“…The 2-D fingerprint images are used to locate the minutiae across multiple and distinct clay items. Bennison-Chapman and Hager [4] apply Reflectance Transformation Imaging to fingerprints on Neolithic clay "tokens. " The subject is shot from a stationary camera position, and light is projected from a different known direction for each photograph.…”

Section: Imaging Systems For Ancient Fingerprints Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since using a caliper for direct measurements can pose challenges for accurate data acquisition, the mean ridge breadth (i.e., the average ridge-valley pairs in the investigated area) is often used in the regression model to estimate age [16,17,30,34]. To determine sex, the ridge density is calculated as the number of ridges counted in a predefined area and compared to a threshold for sex attribution [4,16,17,32,72,74].…”

Section: Demographic Data Estimation From Ridge Breadth/densitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Study of Three-Dimensional Fingerprint Recognition in Cultural Heritage

Sero

Garachon

Hermens

et al. 2021

J. Comput. Cult. Herit.

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Fingerprints play a central role in any field where person identification is required. In forensics and biometrics, three-dimensional fingerprint-based imaging technologies, and corresponding recognition methods, have been vastly investigated. In cultural heritage, preliminary studies provide evidence that the three-dimensional impressions left on objects from the past (ancient fingerprints) are of paramount relevance to understand the socio-cultural systems of former societies, to possibly identify a single producer of multiple potteries, and to authenticate the artist of a sculpture. These findings suggest that the study of ancient fingerprints can be further investigated and open new avenues of research. However, the potential for capturing and analyzing ancient fingerprints is still largely unexplored in the context of cultural heritage research. In fact, most of the existing studies have focused on plane fingerprint representations and commercial software for image processing. Our aim is to outline the opportunities and challenges of digital fingerprint recognition in answering a range of questions in cultural heritage research. Therefore, we summarize the fingerprint-based imaging technologies, reconstruction methods, and analyses used in biometrics that could be beneficial to the study of ancient fingerprints in cultural heritage. In addition, we analyze the works conducted on ancient fingerprints from potteries and ceramic/fired clay sculptures. We conclude with a discussion on the open challenges and future works that could initiate novel strategies for ancient fingerprint acquisition, digitization, and processing within the cultural heritage community.

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Tracking the division of labour through handprints: Applying Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to clay 'tokens’ in Neolithic West Asia

Cited by 16 publications

References 23 publications

Fingerprint evidence for the division of labour and learning pottery-making at Early Bronze Age Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel

Fingerprint evidence for the division of labour and learning pottery-making at Early Bronze Age Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel

Exploring Environmental Influences on Infant Development and Their Potential Role in Processes of Cultural Transmission and Long-Term Technological Change

The Study of Three-Dimensional Fingerprint Recognition in Cultural Heritage

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