Young Hands at Work. Using Finger Impressions to Explore the Demographic Constitution of Early and Middle Bronze Age Pottery‐making Communities of Practice

Abstract

Summary Fingertip impressions preserved in the surface of clay artefacts can provide demographic details about the people who manufactured and decorated pottery vessels, and by extension allow exploration of the composition of communities of practice engaged in pottery manufacture. This paper describes the development of a method of measurement and analysis of fingertip impressions which were sometimes used as decorative motifs on pot surfaces. The technique can be applied to pottery from across archaeological periods; however, the research presented here focusses on communities of practice among Early and Middle Bronze Age potters of eastern England, and assessing their demographic make‐up through analysis of fingertip impressions. The preserved fingertip impressions reveal potting communities comprised children and women, but adult men were seemingly excluded, and suggest a connection between craft activity, age and sex.

Who Made the White Gold? Exploring the Demographics of Iron Age Salt Production in England through Fingerprint Analysis

“…Most pedestals bear curved impressions of trough edges as well as impressions of the manufacturer’s fingers and thumbs left as they were squeezed into shape. The widths of fingertip impressions can also be measured to assign an age to the person whose fingertips the impressions record (Sharpe & Van Gelder 2006a; 2006b; Laing in press). Figure 8 shows an example of an impression on a pedestal from Trunch Lane, Ingoldmells, whose width indicates it was made by an adult male thumb (Laing 2021), which correlates with the epidermal ridge measurements within the print.…”