New fingerprint evidence for female potters in Late Bronze Age Canaan: The demographics of potters and division of labour at Tel Burna
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Techno-stylistic studies in ceramic analysis have largely focused on characterising production groups, based on the similarity of various objects and how they were made. The demographics of potters and the division of labour often remain enigmatic in current chaîne opératoire research. A growing number of biometric studies have demonstrated the potential of fingerprints preserved on ceramic surfaces for classifying the age and sex of potters. In this paper, we use a recently introduced identification matrix to model labour divisions based on 52 fingerprints preserved on a diverse range of objects from the Late Bronze Age II stratum at Tel Burna. The sample includes objects from the recently exposed cultic enclosure. Based on broad ethnographic considerations, women were the principal potters in Canaanite society. Our study tests this hypothesis with regards to who made pottery for cultic use. We identify patterns in age categories and a sexual division of labour for the manufacture of select objects and vessel types. The results lead us to discuss possible effects of imperialism on labour organisation. We provide the first compelling insights into the social relations of pottery production at a time when Egypt exercised hegemony over the city-states of the Southern Levant .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".