The volume under review brings together twelve studies of craft production in the ancient world that, while varying widely in time period, geographical/cultural context, nature of evidence considered, theoretical underpinnings and methods employed, are united by their adoption of a perspective that, according to the volume editors, ‘puts ancient makers centre stage’ (p. 1) and by the fact that their authors ‘go beyond traditional archaeological and art historical approaches’ (p. 2). Seven of these studies are based on presentations made in the context of a panel organised by the editors titled ‘Making Value and the Value of Making’ for the 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology in 2018.
In their introduction (Chapter 1) the editors make the case that traditional approaches in classical archaeology to the study of artefacts have been constrained by their focus on technological and typological issues – in particular an interest in determining how the objects were manufactured – and, at the same time, by their limited concern with the people who created the objects and the nature of the creative process – ‘making’. They point out that obstacles to the adoption of more holistic, nuanced and thus informative approaches to the investigation of ancient craft producers and production have been the highly uneven and mostly quite thin textual evidence for these, the tendency for archaeologists to divvy up for practical reasons the study of material culture by ‘industries’ (pottery, glass vessels, iron artefacts, items in worked bone etc.) and the widespread adoption of the chaîne opératoire approach to the evaluation of artefacts, as this assumes that the manufacturing process was governed by a predetermined set of operations carried out in a specific sequence. The editors argue that, by drawing on perspectives regarding making that have been articulated over the past few decades in various areas of social theory, it is possible to gain an enhanced set of understandings of ancient craft producers both as creative individuals and as valued members of broader, often interconnected communities, the productive process and, ultimately, the objects that they produced. Prominent among the theoretical works that the editors have in mind are those of the social anthropologist T. Ingold and the (recently deceased) prehistoric archaeologist M.-A. Dobres regarding making and those of the educational theorist E. Wenger concerning ‘communities of practice’. The editors also advocate collaboration with contemporary craft producers as a fruitful method for gaining not only an enhanced understanding of technical details in the manufacturing process, but also insights into less tangible, in some cases ‘sensual’ aspects of making. They further posit that contemporary concepts and cultural developments regarding work and the process of making – including things such as coworking, makerspaces, craftivism and object-based learning – can be mobilised beneficially in approaching the study of ancient craft production.
Given the diversity of the chapters, it will be useful to characterise each of these, if only in brief terms. Chapter 2 – A. Brysbaert and Hochscheid: a conceptual discussion of the relationship between craft production and its value to society that references illustrative examples from ancient Greece. Chapter 3 – N. Massar: a predominantly text-based study of the productive processes involved in Dionysius I's mobilisation and equipping of a large military force to oppose the Carthaginians in Sicily c. 400 bce. Chapter 4 – B. Munro: a discussion of multi-material recycling workshops located for the most part inside abandoned rural structures in Italy dating to the fourth to seventh centuries ce. Chapters 5 and 6: see below. Chapter 7 – D. van Hal and Hochscheid: a study of the craft of aulos making in classical and Hellenistic Greece that draws on textual and artefactual evidence. Chapter 8 – M. Harlow: a discussion of the craft of spinning in the Roman world that employs comparative evidence to estimate the scale of this activity. Chapter 9 – G.J. van Wijngaarden: a study of cylinder seals in the Bronze Age Aegean that seeks to determine the value ascribed to these items. Chapter 10 – H. Frielinghaus: a study of copper alloy votive offerings with repairs from the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, undertaken with a view to understanding their implications for the way in which these objects were ascribed value. Chapter 11 – C. Cheung: a study of repairs to dolia in Roman Italy that considers the implications of this practice for the value of these items. Chapter 12 – K. Lapatin: a study of glyptic (the carving of hard stones into intaglios, cameos, vessels and small-scale sculpture) in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds that draws on textual and artefactual evidence. Chapter 13 – W. Wooten: a consideration of a ‘doing as learning’ approach to research, teaching and rehabilitation therapy about/centring on ancient craft production with a focus on the module ‘Making in Antiquity’ and a project titled ‘The Art of Making in Antiquity’, both associated with King's College London.
The authors draw on the theoretical and methodological perspectives advocated by the editors in the introduction to differing degrees, with some employing these to only a minor extent. In order to explore both the potentials of and the constraints faced by this theoretical and methodological programme, we can consider at slightly greater length the approaches employed and the results obtained in the two chapters that leverage these perspectives in the most integral and sustained ways.
In Chapter 5 Russell sets out to evaluate the utility and limitations of the chaîne opératoire approach for understanding the working methods of Roman stone carvers. By considering the evidence for these methods provided by selected sarcophagi and, to a lesser extent, architectural elements and freestanding sculpture – for the most part unfinished pieces – Russell is able to document substantial variability in the ways in which carvers went about the task of executing a piece, arguing that it is more useful to envision the process as a flow shaped by choices made by the carvers as they advanced the work rather than a predetermined sequence of operations. He points out that this position fits with the critiques of the chaîne opératoire method articulated by Ingold, who faults it as a ‘hylomorphic’ approach that fails to take into account the ‘continuous modulation’ and ‘textility’ involved in acts of making. Although this constitutes an interesting and informative case study, as Russell acknowledges (p. 77), many other crafts would have been substantially less open to less strongly structured approaches to the making process on account of specific associated constraints. Indeed, for a large number of craft producers in the ancient world the tasks that dominated not just their day but perhaps something like the entirety of their working life would have consisted in substantial part of relatively simple (for those possessed of the requisite skill and experience) and repetitive operations that in many crafts had to be performed under unrelenting time constraints due to the narrow windows of temperature and/or degree of hydration within which their materials remained workable, the costliness of fuel and/or the need to sustain a certain level of output. Here one thinks of a glassblower, who might have churned out dozens of unguentaria in the course of a single work session, taking no more than an estimated two to three minutes to transform a gather of viscous glass on the end of their blowpipe to a fully formed vessel ready for transfer to the annealing oven, or a potter working in an African Sigillata workshop in Tunisia, who might have spent much of their post-childhood life throwing what was for the most part a narrow set of standardised vessel forms.
In Chapter 6 E.A. Murphy addresses the topic of cross-craft relations in the ancient world, that is interactions between the practitioners of two or more different crafts, considering the significance of this phenomenon, the various forms that this might have taken and the archaeological markers for such interactions, including multi-craft workspaces, composite artefacts (artefacts comprised of components manufactured in two or more different materials that required the labour of producers with skill sets associated with different crafts) and skeuomorphism (the manufacture of an artefact in one material that mimics the form of an artefact generally associated with a different material). She then surveys the evidence for such relations at Pompeii, recognising that this likely constitutes the richest array of evidence for such relations from any site in the ancient world, while emphasising that her effort represents a theoretical exercise that is not intended to be comprehensive in its scope. What is most striking about the results of Murphy's survey is their scantiness. She is able to point to only one possible instance of a facility where producers were engaged in the manufacture of composite items (the Casa del Fabbro [I.10.7], where it seems likely that workers manufactured wooden furniture that incorporated components in copper alloy and bone, with the latter fabricated on the spot) and two instances of structures that contained spaces employed for two different, if related craft activities (The Casa della Regina d'Inghilterra [VII.14.5.17–19] and the Officina Tinctoria di Terentius [I.8.19], which both contained separate spaces outfitted for felting and for the dyeing of cloth). The bulk of the rest of her evidence consists of instances of single agricultural producers supplying raw materials and/or fuel to one or sometimes two or more different crafts and crafts that employed as a raw material waste generated by a different craft. Although Murphy might have expanded her survey in various ways, for example, by considering instances in which producers in one craft fabricated what were likely custom-made tools or equipment for producers in a different craft (e.g. a smith who fashioned the blowpipe, snap tool and jacks employed by a glassblower; a woodworker who fabricated a potter's wheel used by a potter and the blocks employed by a glassblower) or by including linkages between crafts that occurred at the stage of distribution (e.g. the shop in the east flank of the Terme del Foro [likely at VII.5.25] that appears to have retailed vessels manufactured in copper alloy, glass and ceramic), this best-case instance offers evidence for more than incidental cross-craft relations that this reviewer finds limited. This is not to suggest that cross-craft relations did not exist (e.g. highly complex composite items such as musical instruments, furniture, wagons and ships did have to be fabricated by somebody somewhere) or that the investigation of these is not worthwhile, but rather that the archaeological evidence for them in the context of towns such as Pompeii is not particularly abundant and that they might have been less widespread and significant than Murphy asserts was the case. They may, perhaps, prove to be more clearly attested in certain rural contexts, such as that of an estate that supported producers in multiple crafts who availed themselves of shared workspaces (a circumstance closer to that considered by Munro in Chapter 4).
The studies in this volume constitute a wide array of interesting case studies that in several instances furnish stimulating food for thought regarding how we might approach more effectively the study of and our teaching about craft production and craft goods in the ancient world. How we can devise and then apply approaches that expand the boundaries imposed by the nature of the evidence at our disposal remains an ongoing challenge.
