Just read a study that says most ancient pottery was actually made by kids

I was digging through some old archaeology journals online last night and stumbled on this paper from 2023. It looked at finger impressions on pottery from a site in Turkey dating back 8,000 years. They compared the size of the prints to modern children's hands and found over 60% of the pots were likely made by kids aged 5 to 10. Apparently adults were more focused on tasks like hunting or weaving, while the kids were the ones forming and shaping the clay for everyday use. It totally flipped my view of what daily life looked like back then - I always figured pottery was a specialized adult craft. Has anyone else come across research that challenges the traditional views of who did what in ancient societies?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessicaw5418d ago

Wait, so were the kids just messing around making stuff and the adults were like "yeah, that'll hold water"? Or did the adults actually teach them specific shapes and techniques? Because there's a big difference between kids practicing by making little cups and bowls versus them being the main production force for daily use pottery. I'd want to know if the finger impressions were on finished, fired pots or just on clay that was being worked.

reese_perry618d ago

@jessicaw54 That's the REAL question, I'd bet those tiny finger dents were on dried clay scraps, not finished pots.