Fingerprints on ancient terracotta figurines show men, women and children worked on figurines

A recent preliminary study by Ph.D. student Leonie Hoff of the University of Oxford, published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, provides insight into how ancient fingerprints left on terracotta figurines reveal the age and sex of their makers.

The figurines, recovered from the ancient port city of Thonis-Heracleion in Egypt, date to between the Late and Ptolemaic periods (seventh–second centuries BC). This is the second study to examine ancient Egyptian fingerprint impressions and the first to use Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technology for measuring prints from Late and Ptolemaic period materials.

Thonis-Heracleion was founded in the eighth century BC and became a major port city during the Saite and Ptolemaic periods. Its positioning by the Canopic mouth of the Nile made it ideally located for defense and the regulation of trade and migrants from Greece.

The city continued to flourish until the founding of Alexandria, which took the status of main harbor. Thereafter, Thonis-Heracleion gradually declined until it was almost forgotten. Excavations in the 1990s rediscovered the city, and it was from here that 60 terracotta figurines, nine of which had clearly preserved fingerprints, were recovered.

Little is known about figurine-makers. What is known is that traditionally, figurines in Egypt were made from Nile silt, a relatively coarse material not suitable for detailed work. Later, craftsmen developed finer clay techniques, allowing them to make more intricate figurines similar to Greek standards.

It is assumed that these figurine makers were likely men of lower status, based on the Greek word for their profession, koroplathos, derived from πλάσσω (to mold) and κόρος (boy/doll) and has a masculine ending, suggesting this was typically a male profession. Information on ancient Egyptian figurine-makers is scarce; thus, it is not certain whether the profession was also typically male-oriented, as was the case for ancient Greece.

To make the figurines, wet clay sheets were pressed into molds, which resulted in fingerprints. Once the molds had partially dried, the two halves were fixed together to make a complete figurine. This too could result in some fingerprints.

These fingerprints were subject to ridge density analysis, which measures how many epidermal ridges appear within a set area. Female fingerprints typically contain more densely packed ridges than male prints in the same area. These measurements were then compared against ridge density patterns found in contemporary Egyptian populations.

To determine age, ridge breadth (the width of the ridges) was measured. Children typically have thinner ridges than adults. Using these characteristics, Hoff could classify the fingerprints as belonging to either children/sub-adults or adults and determine the sex of the adult who made them.

The sex could not be determined for children. These results also accounted for the shrinkage that different types of clay may experience after drying.

The study identified approximately 14 different individuals who worked on the clay figurines. However, according to Hoff, it was not possible to determine if the same individual worked on multiple figurines.

“For my material, identifying specific individuals is currently not possible due to the mostly fragmentary state and also the fact that the figurines are not from exactly the same date. However, there is some work on an assemblage of Roman lamps from the Levant where the same individual could be identified on multiple objects, so in theory, this is certainly possible with archaeological material. It just depends on whether the material is coherent in terms of date and how fragmentary the imprints are.”

Despite this limitation, it was found that males and females worked on the production of figurines in almost equal measure, with females being slightly more involved in the production of local Egyptian figurines than Greek imports. This suggests that despite the etymology and other textual evidence that suggested figurine-making was an all-male profession, females in both cultures participated in this craft.

Additionally, the study also provided surprising results, says Hoff. “I was perhaps initially a little surprised to find such clear evidence of children’s involvement, but it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it since this type of work lends itself to the involvement of children, and ethnographical evidence confirms the involvement of children cross-culturally in potteries.”

This evidence of child involvement was found on Greek import and Egyptian figurines. Interestingly, children were found never to make figurines by themselves; those of older individuals always accompanied their fingerprints. Children were likely tasked with pressing the clay sheets into the molds, a task more suited to a child’s smaller hands.

Thereafter, the older supervising adult would remove the clay and fix the two halves; if not done correctly, this could ruin the figurine. This chain of operations is attested by the fact that children’s fingerprints were only found within the figurines. In contrast, adults’ fingerprints could be found within and outside, along the figure’s base.

However, while Greek and Egyptian figurine-makers employed child labor, it was determined that Egyptian figurines tended to pair a supervisor (adult) and an apprentice (child) very close in age. Meanwhile, Greek figurine production showed a pattern of pairing young apprentices with notably older supervisors. This suggests that the two cultures employed different approaches to craft training.

“For the site I’m working on, the terracotta material is currently quite limited. I’m hoping that we find more terracottas to be able to add more data to the study,” says Hoff, expressing her wish to expand on the current findings and provide more detailed insights into the lives of ordinary people in ancient Egypt.

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