Craft Specialization Research Articles

Salt, clay, and society: Towards a reconstruction of salt-making chaînes opératoires in the Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Kraków–Wieliczka salt-bearing region

Abstract The progress of field research and studies of archaeological sites from southern Poland (Małopolska) and experimental activities related to salt-making in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in the last two decades have created conditions for attempting to recreate the chaîne opératoire of this branch of prehistoric production. The use of ceramic containers for evaporating brine and drying and portioning salt means that we are dealing with two operational sequences (production of ceramics and salt) intertwined at some stage – from obtaining raw materials (clay and brine) to the distribution of transportable product and discarding of disposable containers. We conducted multi-aspect studies on the characteristics of materials related to each stage, including their spatial location, based on all available material from western Małopolska, in particular several large-scale benchmark sites (Podłęże 17, Brzezie 17 and Kraków-Bieżanów 11). This allowed us to identify certain differences in production sites. A comprehensive review of the source database also allowed us to establish a rather limited scope of both the degree of craft specialisation of the brewers and the scale of the centre’s influence. Nevertheless, in some periods, as in the beginning of the Urnfield period, this centre gained supra-regional importance, as evidenced by, among others, certificates of weight standardization of finished products.

Craft Specialization in the Highland Longshan Society: Perspective from the Bone Needle Workshop on the Central Mound at the Shimao Site, Shaanxi, China

The emergence of Shimao, a proto-urban center at the contact zone between agropastoral communities of the Loess Plateau and herders/hunter-gatherers of Monogolian Plateau, offers critical insights into the economic activities during the transition to the Bronze Age in continental East Asia. Unprecedented in scale in prehistoric China, the bone needle workshop at the central mound was a prelude to the specialized, industrial-scale bone production workshops seen in the Bronze Age cities of Zhengzhou, Anyang, and Zhouyuan during the second and early first millennium BCE. The bone needle production at Huangchengtai probably supplied a sophisticated craft industry for the production of garments using animal hides and textiles.

Beyond ‘Community Craft Specialisation’ in Prehistoric Mainland Southeast Asian Metallurgy: Copper Smelting Behaviours at Khao Sai On, Nil Kham Haeng, Non Pa Wai, Phromthin Tai, and Tha Kae in Central Thailand

Archaeology in Lopburi Province has been under long-term development since the 1970s and has led to the discovery of Khao Wang Prachan Valley (KWPV) as one of three currently known primary copper production (mining and smelting) sites in Southeast Asia. However, since the 1980s, archaeometallurgical research has focused mainly on the two sites of Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), dated from the Neolithic (ca. 1800 B.C.) to Early Iron Age (ca. 2300 B.C.), that are known to have large sequences of archaeological material linked to copper production. Although other sites with evidence of copper production are known in this restricted geographical area, their assemblages have not previously been subjected to archaeometric study. This article discusses the results of archaeometallurgical analyses of slags from Khao Sai On (KSO), Tha Kae (TK), and Phromthin Tai (PTT) with sequences dated during the Middle-Late Iron Age. Slag analysis reveals that different smelting behaviours were occurring at these sites. One heterogenous smelting behaviour at Khao Sai On was probably linked to a smaller community practicing metallurgy among other activities, while Phromthin Tai shows more homogeneous production linked to a larger settlement. Although these three sites are located within 26 km of each other, smelters were probably exploiting different local copper deposits around KWPV. The results seem to support a community based type of production where production behaviours are linked to local geology, technical competence, and intensity of exploitation.

Technical and Technological Analyses of Excavated Textiles

Textiles are particularly complex and labor-intensive structures, thus their constructive elements, such as fibers and yarns, as well as the final textile products (e.g., threads, cords, fabrics, and applied decoration) reveal a range of important technical, technological, and sociocultural information. In this paper, we discuss the analysis of excavated textiles at two levels: 1) Technical analysis that offers basic information about the qualities of examined textile samples. 2) Technological analysis that provides insights into technology, social relations of production, and the level of craft specialization or production modes. Both analyses offer new evidence for environmental resources, sustainability, trade, and exchange, as well as transfer of technical knowledge, innovations, and expertise. Yet, excavated textiles, being formed of organic materials, survive poorly in archaeological contexts and thus represent environmentally limited remnants of the original pattern of textile consumption. Additionally, excavated textiles are often recovered in minute fragments, altered due to post-depositional processes and, therefore, their analysis is usually challenging. The scope of this paper is to provide an account of the current state of the technological analysis of excavated textiles looking back at its origins, and to offer a concise and clarified synopsis of the main methods and terms used to study and document the technological characteristics of excavated textiles.

The first petrographic characterisation of a prehistoric rock crystal mine in the Swiss Alps

Over the past decades, there has been increasing evidence for the prehistoric use of rock crystal in mountainous environments, including craft specialisation and long-distance exchange. Yet there are only a few known sites where the mineral was quarried in sustainable quantities. One of them is situated near Fiescheralp in the Upper Valais (Switzerland) and dates to the Early Mesolithic and a final stage of the Neolithic. Here we present the first petrographic characterisation of a prehistoric rock crystal mine in the Swiss Alps, involving a combination of different methods. The article provides a detailed description of the fluid inclusions within the quartz crystals and an overview over the related mineral paragenesis. This gives interesting new insights into the formation of the analysed fissure and allows comparing rock crystal artefacts found in other archaeological sites to this particular source. The results form the basis for further investigations concerning the circulation and distribution of the raw material in the past.

Nascent craft specialization in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A? Bead making at Shubayqa 6 (northeast Jordan)

The emergence of craft specialisation is a key area of interest for archaeologists investigating the socio-economic history and development of past societies. In southwest Asia, as elsewhere, the origins of craft specialisation have been associated with the emergence of surplus food production, households and social stratification. We present evidence for nascent skilled production of green stone beads at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) site Shubayqa 6, northeast Jordan. Thousands of pieces of debitage, roughouts and finished beads exhibit signs of standardised production that was probably geared towards exchange. This hints towards incipient skilled craft production that was likely part-time and seasonal. We therefore argue that the appearance of specialist artisans in this autonomous and non-hierarchical society has no correlation with surplus food production, households, or social stratification.

An Early Bronze Age stone tool assemblage from al-Badʿ Oasis in northern Arabia: a technological and functional analysis

Archaeological research on the 4th millennium BCE throughout the Levant has shown how craft specialization, extended trade and supply routes, as well as increased social stratification, established the foundation for the urban Early Bronze Age formation process in the third quarter of the 4th millennium BCE. The specific context of northern Arabia, along the fringes of the fertile crescent, remains, on the contrary, largely unexplored. In this paper lithic finds from an Early Bronze I village, named al-Rudaydah in al-Badʿ Oasis, situated in north-western Saudi Arabia, near the Red Sea, are presented. All the stone tool artefacts, over 100 lithics, found in a rectangular drystone masonry dwelling, were subjected to technological and traceological analyses. Most of the artefacts are small chips and flakes resulting from tool maintenance and recycling. Formal tools include so-called tabular scrapers and trapezoidal blade segments with gloss. The results show that the scrapers were likely imported as blanks or ready-made tools, the glossy artefacts were likely sickle insets.

New insight into prehistoric craft specialisation. Tooth-tool use in the Chalcolithic burial site of Camino del Molino, Murcia, SE Spain

The study of non-alimentary tooth wear is an excellent tool to identify the development of specific activities and thus, to delve deeper into the social organisation and complexity of past populations. This paper analyses extra-masticatory wear in the dentition of a sample of 102 articulated skeletons from Camino del Molino, a unique collective tomb that housed 1,348 individuals throughout two contiguous phases spanning much of the 3rd millennium BC. After preliminary macroscopic observation of the dental sample, 8 individuals with cultural dental wear were identified and 5 of them were analysed with SEM. In all cases, the maxillary anterior dentition displays evidence that can be defined as occlusal and interproximal grooves consisting of fine, parallel striations, as well as labial notches and chipping of the enamel. The results suggest that 8 individuals, mostly women, used their dentition in craft tasks, such as in the processing of fibres for textile production, hence representing the earliest evidence of craft specialisation in the Iberian Peninsula and potential proof of a possible sex-based division of labour in a Chalcolithic community.

At the Cutting Edge of Identity: Re-Examining the Craft Imagery of Tomb 29 from the Isola Sacra Necropolis, Ostia

Since Guido Calza first published the results of his excavations at the Isola Sacra necropolis at Ostia, Tomb 29 has been identified as the tomb of a blacksmith, specifically a ferramentarius who made and sold small tools. Yet the imagery displayed on the tomb presents several key features that suggest this interpretation is inaccurate, despite its continued prevalence. These features, from the contents of the work scenes to the collections of tools that are portrayed alongside them, indicate that this tomb commemorates the identity of a professional sharpener, specifically one that sharpened the tools of other craftsmen working in Ostia and Portus. This reinterpretation reveals a profession that is otherwise absent from the iconography of Roman craftsmen while providing a number of interesting insights into the organization of labour and craft specialization in the Roman world.

Personal adornments in West-Central Africa—the case study of a talc bead from the Kongo Kingdom (Mbanza Kongo, Angola)

A mustard-gold-colored talc bead was recovered during the 2014 excavation campaign carried out in Lumbu (Mbanza Kongo, Angola) together with the nineteenth-century glass trade beads imported from Bohemia and Venice. Results from this multi-analytical and minimally invasive study suggest that this bead may have been brought to the kingdom’s capital by means of an established intra-kingdom trade network or as an offering intended for the king or a member of the nobility. However, it was undoubtedly manufactured within the Kongo kingdom using talc sources known by the local population. As such, this talc bead constitutes the first evidence of local production of personal adornment objects in the Kongo kingdom and one of the first examples of craft specialization for personal adornment purposes in central and southern Africa since pre-historic times.

Anarchy Meets Hierarchy: Sociopolitical Implications of Diachronic Variation in Exchange Indices from Central California’s Pecho Coast

ABSTRACT For decades, it has been recognized that Chumash-speaking peoples of the Santa Barbara Channel had a highly complex society that featured sedentism, high population density, craft specialization, and chiefdom-like political authority. Among the material evidence indicating complexity are shell bead production centers on the Channel Islands and sewn-plank canoes. Chumash speakers to the north, including the yak tityu tityu yak tilhini, in what is now known as the San Luis Obispo area, lacked plank canoes and major bead-making workshops, so there has long been certain ambiguity about the nature of their sociopolitical organization and its origins. Here we briefly review the historic evidence for traits of complexity north of Point Conception. Then we evaluate the cumulative archaeological record of obsidian and shell beads from the Pecho coast, including new findings from CA-SLO-585. Patterns in the relative abundance of these commodities show striking differences over time, as obsidian disappears during the Late Period at the same time that beads increase. These trends raise the possibility that territoriality arose during or slightly before the Late Period at Pecho in tandem with hierarchical political authority.

Foragers during a period of social upheaval at Little Muck Shelter, southern Africa

ABSTRACT By the turn of the second millennium AD, farmer societies in southern Africa’s middle Limpopo Valley were undergoing significant economic, political and social transformations that ultimately led to the development of state-level society at Mapungubwe. This included the appearance of social hierarchies, élite groups, trade wealth, craft specialisation and a royal leadership system. Whereas this farmer sequence has been relatively well-studied, forager histories, and their involvement in associated socio-economic systems, are scarcely acknowledged, despite their presence before, as well as during, the farmer-occupation period. Foragers are instead seen as passive or even inactive in local economies and thought to begin ‘disappearing’ after AD 1000. In opposition to these views are recent results from excavations carried out at Little Muck Shelter showing that a forager presence continued into the second millennium AD and that those living at the site were engaged in trade with farmers during the process of state formation. We show this by presenting the distribution of cultural material throughout the site’s occupation and a sample of stone tools and trade items dating from before 2000 BP to AD 1300. Specifically, diagnostic stone artefacts persist into the contact period and until Mapungubwe’s appearance that are morphologically consistent with those from before the BC/AD transition. The occurrence of traded glass beads, ceramics and ostrich eggshell beads also increases and peaks in the second millennium AD, showing continued engagement with the local market economy. Evidence from the shelter demonstrates the contributions that indigenous hunting and gathering communities made during the rise of the Mapungubwe state, when trade wealth came to mark social élite groups, a period that can be characterised as one of social upheaval.

Who Has an Art, Has Everywhere a Part: Craft Production, Specialization, and Prestige in Praehistoric Societies

Craft specialization means that certain tasks and/or activities are performed exclusively by certain members of a community, either as their main/basic activity, or parallel to other activities. The emergence of specialization is often associated to complex societies, or more precisely, its presence presupposes social stratification and is negated in non-stratified societies. However, the organization of production of various goods and the development of specialization are much more complex, and cannot be simply characterized in terms of presence/absence, since there are various modes and levels of specialization. Therefore, over the last decades the need is recognized for a new revised theoretical framework. Some authors suggest new definitions of specialization and production organization, specifically emphasizing social and cultural aspects (along with the purely economic ones) that influence the technological choices. Power and prestige status are not solely linked to control over resources and larger amount of material goods, but also to their character – prestige objects are an important factor in the development of crafts, the emergence of craft specialization, and emergence/increase in social inequality. In praehistory, the symbolic importance and value were ascribed to certain technologies and objects, not only on the grounds of exotic raw material or other highly valued qualities (durability of an object, as well as non-utilitarian traits, such as colour), but also due to the effort and skill applied in their production. Such prestige objects secured or reflected the esteem and status to the individuals who made and/or possessed them.

Textile production and craft specialisation at Tianluoshan in the lower Yangzi Valley—ERRATUM

Textile production and craft specialisation at Tianluoshan in the lower Yangzi Valley—ERRATUM

Textile production and craft specialisation at Tianluoshan in the lower Yangzi Valley

Early craft specialisation provides insights into the emergence of social complexity. Textile production also offers a lens through which specialisation can be recognised. Here, the authors present a detailed contextual and technological analysis of a large assemblage of textile-production tools from Tianluoshan, a waterlogged Middle Neolithic site in the Yangzi Valley, China. Using thechaîne opératoireapproach, tools are identified, their roles in the production process explained and their significance explored. The results trace the production of textiles from spinning through loom weaving to fabric construction with needles. The use of a variety of fibre-based plants is suggested and tentative evidence for the early use of ground looms explored.

Emergent complexity and political economy of the Houlouf polity in North Central Africa (1900 BCE-1800 CE)

Long-term socio-cultural change is a non-linear process involving demography, economy, culture, social organizations, symbols and ideas. It is generally marked by succession of social formations with different organizational requirements and “worldviews”. The concept of emergent complexity used in this paper thus refers to the punctuated shift that led to the formation of social ranking and socio-political centralization. Five successive social formations of varying duration have been reconstructed in the ca. 4000 years long development of the Houlouf polity located the Cameroonian portion of the Chadian plain:
 1) – small scattered pastoral-nomadic groups;
 2) – autonomous mixed-farming communities;
 3) – competing and rival peer-polities;
 4) – ranked and centralized polity – Chiefdom in local political terms -; and finally,
 5) – paramount chiefdom – Sultanate in local political lexicon-.
 This paper, anchored on high resolution paleoclimatological data and changes in regional settlement location and distribution, outlines the main steps of that evolutionary process. The dimensions investigated include settlement dynamics, political economy, the production and use of material culture, as well as their connected patterns of exchange from 1900 BCE to 1800 CE. A short review of research on trade in West African archaeology shows that the study of long-distance exchange tends to focus on characterization and provenience analyses of in-coming raw materials and goods. Important as it is such an approach does not provide access to the internal dynamics of the receiving societies. This paper examines the concomitant changes in site-location, flows, distribution, and consumption of long-distance traded items, patterns of craft specialization and production intensification, showing that they were part of interlocked feed-back loops. Evidence of intensification of local production geared to export is systematically documented in their chrono-cultural contexts for the first time. These deviating/amplifying feed-back loops triggered a dynamic that resulted in the emergence of five successive social formations in the Houlouf region ca. 4000 years evolutionary sequence.

Realizing potentiality. Donut stones in ancient Maya society

Archaeologists often encounter tools whose primary functions are difficult to pinpoint. The expectation of a function separates tool uses from ancient users and their practices. The phenomenological critique of the Cartesian subject-object binary has led to new conceptualizations of the ways in which people interact with and are entangled by the objects around them. Instead of Heidegger’s deterministic thingness, we discuss the enabling potential of things. Our case study are ancient Maya donut stones. These ring-shaped and relatively heavy artifacts were commonly made of limestone. Interpretations cover subsistence, food preparation, crafting, architectural applications, weapons, and other uses. We gathered published data on 125 donut stones from ten Maya sites, dating from 300 B.C.E. to 900C.E. After omitting entries with insufficient data, multivariate data analyses of fifty-five Classic donut stones allow distinguishing two groups of donut stones. These groups differentiate some functions, notably cordholders. Our discussion of in situ donut stones from rapidly abandoned buildings at Aguateca, Copan, and Ceren challenge the interlinked binaries of private vs public, subsistence vs craft specialization, and male vs female division of labor in ancient Maya society. We outline a culture-specific tasksphere in which people employed versatile tools for subsistence- as well as craft-related activities.

Bronze Weapons of the Qin Terracotta Warriors: Standardisation, Craft Specialisation and Labour Organization by Xiuzhen Li

Bronze Weapons of the Qin Terracotta Warriors: Standardisation, Craft Specialisation and Labour Organization by Xiuzhen Li

V. Gordon Childe and Arnold Hauser on the social origins of the artist

Vere Gordon Childe’s theory of craft specialisation was an important influence on Arnold Hauser’s book The Social History of Art, published in 1951. Childe’s Marxist interpretation of prehistory enabled Hauser to establish a material foundation for the occupation of the artist in Western art history. However, Hauser’s effort to construct a progressive basis for artistic labour was complicated by art’s ancient connections to religion and superstition. While the artist’s social position and class loyalties were ambiguous in Childe’s accounts of early civilisations, Hauser consigned artists to the lower echelons of society. This relegation did not imply that Hauser had a low regard for artistic skills. Quite the opposite, the artist’s inferior social status enabled Hauser to distance artists from the ruling class, and consequently, to separate artistic handiwork from the dominant ideology that works of art manifested.

Shell bead crafting at Greater Cahokia

Shell beads were important to Mississippians, and thousands of beads were found mostly associated with burials. Here I synthesize data on shell bead workshops from Greater Cahokia, along with crafting techniques. Different bead types required different tools, which, in conjunction with shell remains, allow the differentiation of columella versus disk bead workshops. Perishable drill tips were probably used. Bead size standardization is distinguished from craft specialization, and time spent on crafting indicates full-time specialists. Expeditions to get lightning whelk shells from the Gulf of Mexico were a part of the operational chain. The resources spent traveling to obtain shells, large workshop areas, time spent crafting beads, ethnohistoric accounts of shell barter, and the roles lightning whelk artifacts had/have in helping souls travel during liminal situations such as transitioning to death, all underscore the importance of Mississippian shell beads.