Papers by Jon Ross
Current chaine opératoire approaches for classifying ceramic assemblages prioritise surface featu... more Current chaine opératoire approaches for classifying ceramic assemblages prioritise surface features indicative of fashioning techniques. Microstructures identified in petrographic thin-sections confirm macroscopic observations and are used to characterise clay recipes. However, surface features indicative of vessel shaping are rare in most ceramic assemblages. Consequently, the majority of the assemblage is filtered out of the study sample. This approach is therefore not well- suited for small assemblages where the diversity of fashioning techniques is not represented. For the chaine opératoire method to achieve its full potential in ceramic analysis, additional imaging protocols are required. This paper presents the results of a low-cost study for identifying production groups, by classifying mesoscopic signatures of fashioning techniques on freshly-cut thick sections. Data from the Early Bronze Age strata at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel, are used to illustrate the utility of this approach for understanding how an early urban settlement was provisioned with pottery technology.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Fowler, K. D., Ross, J., Walker, E., Barritt-Clearly C., Greenfield, H. J., and Maeir, A. M. 2020. Fingerprint Evidence for the Division of Labour and Learning Pottery-Making at Early Bronze Age Tell Eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel. PLoS One 15(4): e0231046. The organization of craft production has long been a marker for broader social, economic and poli... more The organization of craft production has long been a marker for broader social, economic and political changes that accompanied urbanism. The identity of producers who comprised production groups, communities, or workshops is out of reach using conventional archaeological data. There has been some success using epidermal prints on artefacts to identify the age and sex of producers. However, forensic research indicates that a combination of ridge breadth and ridge density would best identify the age and sex of individuals. To this end, we combine mean ridge breadth (MRB) and mean ridge density (MRD) to distinguish the age and sex of 112 fingerprints on Early Bronze Age (EB) III pottery from the early urban neighbourhood at Tell eṡ-Ṡ â fi/Gath, Israel, dating to a 100 year time span. Our analysis accounts for the shrinkage of calcareous fabrics used to make six type of vessels, applies a modified version of the Kamp et al. regression equation to the MRB for each individual print, and infers sex by correlating MRD data to appropriate modern reference populations. When the results are combined, our analyses indicate that most fingerprints were made by adult and young males and the remainder by adult and young females. Children's prints are in evidence but only occur on handles. Multiple prints of different age and sex on the same vessels suggest they were impressed during the training of young potters. Production appears dominated by adult and young males working alone, together, and in cooperation with adult and/or young females. Vessels with prints exclusively by females of any age are rare. This male dominant cooperative labour pattern contrasts recent studies showing that adult women primarily made Neolithic figurines in Anatolia, and more females than males were making pottery prior to the rise of city-states in northern Mesopotamia. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2019
The organization of craft production has long been a marker for broader social,
economic, and pol... more The organization of craft production has long been a marker for broader social,
economic, and political changes that accompanied urbanism. The identity of producers who comprised production groups, communities, or workshops is out of
reach using conventional archaeological data. There has been some success using
epidermal prints on artifacts to identify the age and sex of producers. However,
while age estimates are well developed, determining the sex of ancient potters is
complicated by similarities between the prints of adult women and adolescents of
either sex. Forensic research indicates that a combination of ridge breadth and
density would best identify the age and sex of individuals. To this end, we propose
an identification framework to classify fingerprints grounded in experimental and
forensic research. In this study, we classify 38 fingerprints on Early Bronze Age
(EB) III pottery from the early urban neighborhood at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel.
Mean ridge breadth (MRB) and mean ridge density (MRD) are used to distinguish
the age and sex of prints after accounting for the shrinkage of calcareous fabrics
used to make four type of vessels. We apply a modified version of the Kamp et al.
(1999) regression equation to the MRB for each individual print. The MRD data are
correlated to comparable data from populations with appropriate ancestry to infer
sex. When the results are combined, our analyses indicate that two thirds of the
fingerprints were likely made by adult men and teenage boys and the remainder by
adult women and adolescent girls. This result suggests that men or women were not exclusively making pottery at early urban centers in the Levant. This pattern contrasts a fingerprint study of post-state urban pottery production during the EB in northern Mesopotamia, which suggested women no longer made pottery after cities and states were established in the region.
In this paper, we propose an alternative analytical method for identifying vessel shaping techniq... more In this paper, we propose an alternative analytical method for identifying vessel shaping techniques at the meso-scopic scale to complement current micro and macro methods in ceramic analysis. We demonstrate how this simple and low cost method permits clear and rapid identification of the signatures indicative of different pottery shaping techniques. The datasets that are generated using this method provide a new perspective on vessel structure for characterising neglected stages of the chaîne opératoire, with the analytical potential to shed further light on economic life, learning frameworks, and group identities. Material from the Early Bronze Age III of Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel are used to demonstrate the utility of the method on a site assemblage. We identify different combinations of coiling techniques used to make different vessel types and propose that potters are specialising in the production of specific parts of the repertoire.
by Haskel J Greenfield, Aren M . Maeir, Yigal Levin, Hendrik J. Bruins, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Mechael (Mickey) Osband, Itzick Shai, Joe Uziel, Tina L Greenfield, Jeremy A Beller, Adi Eliyahu Behar, Andrea Squitieri, Jon Ross, and Philipp Wolfgang Stockhammer Collection of articles (first of two issues), edited by Aren Maeir, on the Tell es-Safi/Gath Arch... more Collection of articles (first of two issues), edited by Aren Maeir, on the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project. First issue covers introduction, general studies, and topical studies covering the Early Bronze through the Late Bronze Ages
Posters by Jon Ross
The poster presents the results of a pilot study aimed at identifying techniques used to shape Ea... more The poster presents the results of a pilot study aimed at identifying techniques used to shape Early Bronze III holemouth jars and platters from Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel. We propose an alternative analytical method for identifying different procedures of vessel forming and manufacture at the mesoscopic scale. Ceramic thick sections are scanned onto a computer using a standard desktop printer scanner to create high-resolution digital images, which are viewed and enhanced using Macnification® software. We demonstrate how this "low-tech" method permits clear and rapid identification of the features indicative of different shaping techniques to complement conventional macroscopic (radiographic) and microscopic (thin section analyses) approaches. The mesoscopic signatures of shaping techniques provides an additional line of evidence to decipher steps in the production chain of hand-built holemouth vessels and platters. This is achieved through profiling the orientation, morphology, and distribution patterns of non-plastics and voids. The examples considered in this study revealed novel structural arrangements of features not previously discussed in the literature on preferred orientation — most of which is suited to radiography at the macroscopic scale of analysis. The results from this analysis evidence a surprising degree of technical diversity and this simple method was particularly effective on the coarse ware fabrics of the holemouths. The pilot study lays the foundation for characterising the technological traditions of ceramic production represented at Tell es-Safi/Gath.
Conference Presentations by Jon Ross
The Experimental Archaeo Group is an informal archaeology graduate student initiative for pooling... more The Experimental Archaeo Group is an informal archaeology graduate student initiative for pooling ideas and skills into creating experimental typesets, with the express purpose of expanding our reference knowledge for understanding past behaviours related to food provision and subsistence in prehistory. In this paper, we present on two of our current projects. The bone chop mark study was designed to identify different tool types and butchery practices, based on the morphology of chop marks left on the bone. Our results help to track the origin and spread of metallurgy and understand the transformative effects metal technology had on prehistoric societies. For our second project, a compression pattern study of experimental pots was designed to improve identification criteria for the recognition of shaping techniques on finished vessels. Our results aid in distinguishing between different potters and production groups, in order to characterise the organisation of production at the spatial scale of the household. The findings from both projects contribute to a more dynamic and holistic vision of the evolution of early complex societies, with the potential to set a new standard for the archaeological analysis of ceramics and faunal remains, in a global context.
In this paper, we present an alternative approach for identifying pottery production groups by cl... more In this paper, we present an alternative approach for identifying pottery production groups by classifying shaping techniques on freshly cut thick sections. We expand existing identification criteria by piloting a new method for characterising vessel structure. We demonstrate how this simple and low-cost method permits clear and rapid identification of the signatures indicative of shaping techniques to complement conventional macroscopic (radiographic) and microscopic (thin section analyses) approaches. Ceramic thick sections are scanned onto a computer using a desktop printer scanner to create high-resolution images, which are enhanced using Photoshop and Macnification® software. Material from Early Bronze Age houses at Tell es-Safi/Gath are used to demonstrate the utility of the method for understanding the domestic economy. We discovered that methods of vessel manufacture were far from homogenous. The paper discusses how shaping techniques intersect with the domestic repertoire to understand how an early urban neighbourhood was supplied with ceramic containers. We propose that this alternative approach has considerable analytic potential for addressing ‘producer specialisation’ at the spatial scale of the household.
The Early Bronze Age (ca. 2850-2500 BCE) ceramic technology project at Tell es-Safi/Gath is part ... more The Early Bronze Age (ca. 2850-2500 BCE) ceramic technology project at Tell es-Safi/Gath is part of a broad front-forward movement in knowledge to advance understanding of the making of prehistoric vessels, in recognition of the wider anthropological significance of techniques and the co-becoming of crafters and the objects they make. The project comprises of a multicomponent analytical programme to understand patterns of production in an early urban complex society, in the southern Levant. Rather than limiting the analysis to conventional macroscopic or microscopic techniques, the paper discuses an alternative imaging method for identifying pottery forming techniques at the mesoscopic scale, which was piloted on cooking vessels and serving platters. The resulting classification of manufacture provides an index to scale the degree to which technological knowledge, skills, and learned behaviours were standardised, routinised, shared, or constrained to (1) particular vessel types in the domestic repertoire, (2) within and between individual households, and (3) across occupational horizons. This “anthropological classification” of the chaînes opératoires in a domestic assemblage is presented as an alternative means for operationalising the identification of specialist production in archaeological contexts, which has been much debated in the archaeology of production.
The organisation of production in early state societies in the Near East is often assumed to invo... more The organisation of production in early state societies in the Near East is often assumed to involve the development of specialised workshops. Yet little attention has been paid to the organisation of production in domestic contexts. In this paper, we use the classification of variability in pottery forming techniques to investigate the organisation of pottery production in an Early Bronze Age non-elite neighbourhood in the southern Levant. Rather than limiting the analysis to conventional macroscopic or microscopic techniques, this study uses an alternative method for identifying pottery forming techniques at the mesoscopic scale to expand criteria for the identification of shaping techniques. Ceramic thick sections are scanned onto a computer using a desktop printer scanner to create high-resolution images, which are enhanced using Photoshop and Macnification® software. We demonstrate how this simple and low-cost method permits clear and rapid identification of the signatures indicative of shaping techniques to complement conventional macroscopic (radiographic) and microscopic (thin section analyses) approaches. The continuities and discontinuities in forming techniques provides an index to scale the degree to which technological knowledge, skills, and learned behaviours were standardised, routinised, shared, or constrained to (1) particular vessel types in the domestic repertoire, (2) within and between individual households, and (3) across occupational horizons. Data from the Early Bronze III Stratum at Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel are employed to illustrate the utility of the technique.
Teaching Documents by Jon Ross
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Papers by Jon Ross
economic, and political changes that accompanied urbanism. The identity of producers who comprised production groups, communities, or workshops is out of
reach using conventional archaeological data. There has been some success using
epidermal prints on artifacts to identify the age and sex of producers. However,
while age estimates are well developed, determining the sex of ancient potters is
complicated by similarities between the prints of adult women and adolescents of
either sex. Forensic research indicates that a combination of ridge breadth and
density would best identify the age and sex of individuals. To this end, we propose
an identification framework to classify fingerprints grounded in experimental and
forensic research. In this study, we classify 38 fingerprints on Early Bronze Age
(EB) III pottery from the early urban neighborhood at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel.
Mean ridge breadth (MRB) and mean ridge density (MRD) are used to distinguish
the age and sex of prints after accounting for the shrinkage of calcareous fabrics
used to make four type of vessels. We apply a modified version of the Kamp et al.
(1999) regression equation to the MRB for each individual print. The MRD data are
correlated to comparable data from populations with appropriate ancestry to infer
sex. When the results are combined, our analyses indicate that two thirds of the
fingerprints were likely made by adult men and teenage boys and the remainder by
adult women and adolescent girls. This result suggests that men or women were not exclusively making pottery at early urban centers in the Levant. This pattern contrasts a fingerprint study of post-state urban pottery production during the EB in northern Mesopotamia, which suggested women no longer made pottery after cities and states were established in the region.
Posters by Jon Ross
Conference Presentations by Jon Ross
Teaching Documents by Jon Ross
economic, and political changes that accompanied urbanism. The identity of producers who comprised production groups, communities, or workshops is out of
reach using conventional archaeological data. There has been some success using
epidermal prints on artifacts to identify the age and sex of producers. However,
while age estimates are well developed, determining the sex of ancient potters is
complicated by similarities between the prints of adult women and adolescents of
either sex. Forensic research indicates that a combination of ridge breadth and
density would best identify the age and sex of individuals. To this end, we propose
an identification framework to classify fingerprints grounded in experimental and
forensic research. In this study, we classify 38 fingerprints on Early Bronze Age
(EB) III pottery from the early urban neighborhood at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel.
Mean ridge breadth (MRB) and mean ridge density (MRD) are used to distinguish
the age and sex of prints after accounting for the shrinkage of calcareous fabrics
used to make four type of vessels. We apply a modified version of the Kamp et al.
(1999) regression equation to the MRB for each individual print. The MRD data are
correlated to comparable data from populations with appropriate ancestry to infer
sex. When the results are combined, our analyses indicate that two thirds of the
fingerprints were likely made by adult men and teenage boys and the remainder by
adult women and adolescent girls. This result suggests that men or women were not exclusively making pottery at early urban centers in the Levant. This pattern contrasts a fingerprint study of post-state urban pottery production during the EB in northern Mesopotamia, which suggested women no longer made pottery after cities and states were established in the region.