Child and Clay: Fingerprints of a Dual Engagement at Hama, Syria

Childhood is a time of life, like any other, in which the influence wielded by others is complex and multivocal. This multivocality is clear in the contemporary world, but it is not easy to recognize in archaeological contexts. This contribution argues that recently published fingerprint data from Hama Period J (ca. 2500-2000 BCE) provides evidence for marked tension between two types of engagement with clay that took place in the lives of young potters at the site: learning to produce full-scale ceramics on the one hand and learning to produce miniature vessels and figurines on the other. This tension extended to the nature of the skills that were being learned, the values being transmitted, and the types of social bonds that were formed or undermined.