Child Labor Fueled The Ancient Pottery Industry, According To The Recent Analysis Of 4,500-Year-Old Pottery Vessels Made In Syria
Archaeologists have analyzed 450 pottery vessels made in Tel Hama, a town located on the edge of the Ebla Kingdom, one of the most important Syrian kingdoms of the Early Bronze Age about 4,500 years ago.
The archaeological team included researchers from Tel Aviv University and the National Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark.
They found that two-thirds of the pottery vessels were made by children as young as seven and eight years old, indicating that child labor helped sustain the ancient pottery industry. The researchers also uncovered evidence of the children’s own creations outside of industrial work.
“Our research allows us a rare glimpse into the lives of children who lived in the area of the Ebla Kingdom, one of the oldest kingdoms in the world,” said Dr. Akiva Sanders, the lead researcher and a Dan David Fellow at the Entin Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University.
“We discovered that at its peak, roughly from 2400 to 2000 B.C.E., the cities associated with the kingdom began to rely on child labor for the industrial production of pottery.”
According to Dr. Sanders, the children toiled in workshops starting at the age of seven. They were taught to create uniform cups, which were used in the kingdom daily and at royal feasts.
Because a person’s fingerprints do not change throughout their life, the size of their palm can be estimated by measuring the prints.
The age and gender of the person can then be deduced from palm size. That is the process the researchers underwent when they analyzed the prints on the pottery.
The pottery from Tel Hama was excavated in the 1930s. Since then, the vessels have been kept in the National Museum in Denmark. After examining the fingerprints on the pottery, it appeared that most of them were made by children. The rest were produced by older men.
trofotodesign – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
Some of the world’s first city-kingdoms formed in the Levant and Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age.
The researchers wanted to study the fingerprints on the pottery to learn more about how urbanization and the development of government influenced the ceramic industry.
Tel Hama was an ancient center for pottery production. Pottery makers in the town were usually around the age of 12 or 13. Half of the potters were under 18, with equal proportions of boys and girls.
When the Kingdom of Ebla was established, the statistics changed. Potters began crafting more goblets for banquets.
The rise of feasts involving alcohol meant that more cups were broken. As a result, more cups needed to be made.
“Not only did the Kingdom begin to rely more and more on child labor, but the children were trained to make the cups as similar as possible,” said Dr. Sanders.
“This is a phenomenon we also see in the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America: It is very easy to control children and teach them specific movements to create standardization in handicrafts.”
The children’s lives were not all work and no play, though. They made miniature figurines and vessels for themselves as a way to express their creativity and imagination.
The study was published in the journal Childhood in the Past.
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