While looking for books for this New Book Chronicle, I set out to read publications on ancient crafts, a topic that has been highlighted in many volumes, especially during a peak in the 2010s. To my surprise, there are not many recent ones that research crafting through the archaeological evidence of the objects and tools; instead, the theme had evolved into exploring how these crafts and craftspeople were embedded into the wider society and economy of their communities. One common thread is evaluating the ‘workshop’ and the manner and scale of production, ranging from self-sufficient households, producing most of their tools and implements themselves, to surplus production in these households for exchange and trade, to specialisation in a certain craft and the operation of larger industries for networks of consumers. This opens new avenues to explore the organisation of crafts within their networks of exchange of goods and knowledge as well as for researching change and continuity in a society.
The four chosen books highlight some of these aspects. Ergasteria: premises and processes of creation in Antiquity is a collection of contributions on workplaces and their networks of raw materials and trade in the Classical world on various crafts. The craft of antler, bone, horn and ivory working in the early medieval emporia c. AD 600–850 looks at the impact of one craft in particular. Ladders and axes of the American Southwest’s Pueblo region, 400–1900 CE: legacies of technological innovation explores a less studied but abundantly used object. And the final book, Anacaona’s gift: cotton and the woven arts of the 11th to 17th century Caribbean, seeks to bring a now overlooked craft back to its former prominence.
The volumes are quite diverse in their approaches, but all are built on the detailed research of the archaeological record, supported by textual sources. All concentrate on materials that have either so far not been as comprehensively researched as others or they highlight new ways to understand them.
Elena C. Partida & Constanze Graml (ed.). 2025. Ergasteria: premises and processes of creation in Antiquity. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-80327-825-4 paperback £65 free to access https://doi.org/10.32028/9781803278254
Eργαστηρια (Ergasteria) is the ancient Greek word for workplaces or workshops as well as places where production and trade happened. The contributions in this edited volume all look at ergasteria across the Classical Greek and Roman world. The main focus is on Greece with a few examples from Italy and further case studies from France, Tunisia, Türkiye and Ukraine. Twenty-two chapters are organised loosely in five groups with three to six contributions in each. In the brief Introduction, the editors Elena Partida and Constanze Graml deliver an overview of the many different ideas presented by contributors. It becomes apparent that the theme of ergasteria is the only common element and that, though workshops are at the centre of the observations, no overarching or connecting topics are explored and no set research questions are addressed across the chapters. The artefact and site discussions are all of a high standard and mostly of the same length apart from one very long one and a few very short chapters. The information gathered is quite a treasure trove because so many aspects—such as production and trade, workspace organisation, chaîne opératoire, ideas of creation, social role of craftspeople and much more—are touched upon. The reader will learn about a panoply of craftspeople in their workspaces from bronze casters and sculptors, potters, fabric dyers and purple dealers, stonemasons, stonecutters, painters, builders to architects and more.
The first group looks at the ‘Spatial approach to workplaces: urban, religious, littoral context’ and considers the evidence for craftspeople in different workshop settings. These include rural, urban or suburban areas, those scattered across the settlements and some in specific districts, for example where pottery production is sometimes found (Keramkeikos). Some spaces can highlight the position of a craftsperson or artisan. Those of higher status may be closer to the centre, and those of lesser status more on the outskirts, but they could also be positioned based on work environment factors such as the smell or noise from the workshop. Workplaces are found in all sorts of locations and no firm pattern can be established, though some trends are visible; pottery kilns and workshops are usually found outside the city walls, whereas metalworking is more often found within the city. People would have considered many factors when choosing a site for their workshop. The rationale for decision-making could range from it being the traditional place for the activity to more practical requirements that need to be fulfilled (such as being close to the source material, or near a river for transport or water use, close to markets, etc.).
The second group is about ‘Workshops related to quarries and sculptures’ that provided the raw material for many buildings, some of which still exist in ruins, as well as examples of the figurative art that have in significant numbers survived to the present day. At the beginning of the process, there is the selection of the right piece of stone, with the stonecutters in the quarries making the first choice for the creation. Maybe they already had knowledge of what the resulting object needed, through contact with the stonemason/sculptor, and in some cases in situ workshops of the sculptor at the quarry have been found. A re-evaluation of the evidence of Roman marble sculpture workshops tries to reunite stone sculpting and polychrome painting of sculptures.
Group three, ‘In the ateliers of potters and coroplasts’, observes the technical diversity found in pottery and highlights that ceramics for different purposes (domestic/ritual/burial) were produced in the same workshops. Moreover, it shows that ceramics were made to local tastes and can also show independent trends, as well as be receptors of new ideas that are closely connected to the socioeconomic web of a community. Traditions in ceramic production can be observed (such as the pithoi production in Stamna), that are kept for a long time but still allow for innovations to slide in. The transfer of knowledge in local communities, here presented as knowledgescapes in the northern Apennines, looks at evidence in Etruscan pottery workshops for how knowledge can be interpreted as social resource and therefore can combine practical and social values through pottery production.
The countless building projects across the Classical world, many of them monumental—which could be realised only through large logistical endeavours, long time-scale planning and preparation—are highlighted in group four ‘Construction sites, open-air workshops and building workforce’. Contributions in this section show the networks of craftspeople involved and the necessary integrated efforts of the workforce, architects and artists. This merging of people is also identified as a driving force for the exchange of ideas and skills and it brought development to the building trade. To understand the complexity of creating monumental buildings, the organisation of the construction site is an important starting point, highlighted here with the example from Kastraki, on the island of Agathonisi. Two case studies look at Athenian architecture outside of Athens to explore how and why ideas and forms, as well as craftspeople of Attic workshops, moved as far as the edge of the Greek world.
The final group, with only three chapters, looks into ‘Repair, re-use and spolia: concepts of chaîne opératoire’ and how repurposing can be revealed and researched. Two case studies highlight the mainly pragmatic, ready-to-use reasons for the repurposing of worked stone and other materials. The final inspiring chapter looks at the possible steps and choices involved in creating a lyre, as a theoretical example to test if the chaîne opératoire is still a good working model.
Together, these chapters deliver a fantastic overview of various work environments and how they connected to the community and to wider networks, though the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. The topic of creation is mentioned in some chapters, yet a unifying framework is missing with only short, self-evident and overly general statements featuring in the Introduction. Specific questions to all contributors or a concluding chapter could have delivered a more distinct reflection of the dynamics between workshops and creation in ancient Greece and beyond. Nonetheless, the volume delivers a plethora of interesting and important studies on archaeological sites with workspaces, which illuminate the skills and lives of the craftspeople and their traded goods and arts. All contributions have been executed with great detail and thought, which will inspire future research.
Ian Riddler & Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski. 2025. The craft of antler, bone, horn and ivory working in the early medieval emporia c. AD 600–850. London: Bloomsbury; 978-1-350-29261-1 hardback £81.
Ian Riddler and Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski focus in their book on an often-marginalised topic: the waste material of antler, bone and horn workings. By detailing these finds, and considering them in their context in space and time, the authors extract information about developments and changes in the craft and their economic implications. The chronological and geographical frameworks for the study are the pre-Viking so-called emporia—trading posts and ports, along the North Sea littoral, looking from the northern emporia in Britain towards Europe to deliver a broader perspective. These emporia were part of a much larger exchange and trade network but were also built in connection with their hinterland and integrated into local entities.
The main part of the volume compares seven sites, chosen for their good evidence of craft materials for bone, antler and horn working, most of which still has to be analysed in detail. The sites are the four Anglo-Saxon sites of Hamwic (Southampton), Gipeswic (Ipswich), Lundenwic (London) and Eoforwic (York), and three from along the North Sea: Dorestad (today’s Wijk bij Duurstede, Netherlands), Quentovic (near Étaples by the mouth of the Canche River in northern France) and Ribe (Denmark). Some of these sites have been explored only in small parts, some moderately so and some are very well excavated. Ribe is extensively investigated and analysed, and this book is a starting point to consider the other sites in similar detail by looking into the production processes, including waste material, and to deliver new insights into this important settlement form.
Emporia have been studied in the past but in relation to trade and economy. This volume focuses on production, especially on one craft: antler, bone, horn and ivory working. The primary objects considered are combs and some textile working tools. For the main part the antler are from red deer, the bone either from whales or domestic animals, the latter also supply the horn. Firstly, each emporium is summarised with excavation history, dating evidence and which materials have been studied so far. This delivers the foundation for the further investigation into the craft of bone/antler working itself as well as production and workshops.
The theoretical framework for the study looks at different modes of production based on scale and skill as well as a typology of specialised workshops both based on other materials, such as ceramics and textiles. The difficulties of finding a workshop space during excavation (this is true for finds across time and space) is also considered and leads on to how the production sites and process of bone/antler working can be identified and evaluated. The amount of material signifies the scale of the production. The waste of antler, bone, horn and ivory in the emporia is often quite a substantial amount and offers a good starting point for the investigation. An important step is to look into production episodes and not only into household/workshop sites, especially for manufacturing from antler and bone. In Hamwic the material clearly shows a development over time from ‘basic household production’, where antler and bone were made into objects for only the household’s use to a ‘household industry’ where surplus objects were crafted and traded on, and where traits of specialisation become visible.
Phases of origin and development of craft production are proposed for each site under consideration to view the impact that these may have had on the craft itself. The finds of worked antler, bone and horn from six of the sites are scrutinised, mainly in terms of the waste material. Together with a detailed look at the dating of the finds, they are then contextualised to reveal uses of antler and sometimes bone and horn in household-sized production. Some of the finds reflect just episodes of production, but in some cases an increase over time from basic household to household industry can be observed. At the site of Hamwic, lots of waste material from antler working was found; this and a few finds of whale bone are compared with material in the other sites through time. In Hamwic, phases 2 and 3 show an increasing use in basic household production but there is a visible standardisation in the craft and connection of craftspeople, to what can be described as one community workshop. Visible changes in the supply and use of material can be observed in phase 4; in phase 5, a decline of the craft is apparent.
The occurrence and use of whale bone, which is rarer than the bone from domestic animals is discussed in a separate chapter, and all evidence from the seven emporia is gathered and presented. The main objects made from whale bone are parts of combs and gaming pieces. Tools made of antler and bone became essential parts of tools for other crafts, such as textile and leather working, and are found together with materials from other manufacturing processes, showing that different crafts were practised under one roof and in one household.
The final chapter looks at the place of the craftworker in society. Archaeological finds deliver most of what is known about the craftspeople working bone, antler and horn as well as the process in the early-medieval period, as there is little written evidence on the topic. The few known texts show the bone worker as rather a low-status craftsperson who had to fight the dogs for the long bones. The model of an itinerant specialised worker was developed for finds from Scandinavia and is compared to the finds in the case studies emporia. For these, the itinerant comb-maker theory is unlikely and a model with a production centre and dispersion through trade and exchange from there is more evident. The workshops and the households produced not only one type of object, such as combs but also other objects made from the same material, such as weaving equipment, awls, needles and skates (for Dorestad), and antler and bone were most likely worked by the same people with the same tools.
The authors state that this book is only a first step to assess this waste material but they have clearly shown the huge potential that detailed analyses such as this volume can have for incorporating and widening the view for further material to deliver a more meaningful evaluation of the economies and production centres of these emporia and a better understanding of the early medieval world.
Richard V.N. Ahlstrom. 2025. Ladders and axes of the American Southwest’s Pueblo region, 400–1900 CE. Legacies of technological innovation (British Archaeological Reports International series S3236). Oxford: BAR; 978-1-4073-6251-9 paperback £43.
Initially Richard Ahlstrom wanted to include only a small section about ladders in a paper he was writing about Pueblo pit houses in the American Southwest, when he realised that the most recent major work on the subject was published in 1891. Rather than simply register scholarly surprise that such a subject should have been ignored for so long and then continue the tradition by moving onto something else, as is typical for many of us in the academic world, he spent a decade diligently researching the construction techniques, woodworking tools and wooden ladder types. The result is a substantial monograph that not only documents in detail the different types and remains of wooden ladders that have survived since around 400 AD in the extremely dry conditions in the modern US states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona but also explains their history within the context of technological traditions and innovations, societal changes and European colonisation.
Due to the multistorey architecture of the Pueblo peoples, ladders were essential. Ladders were used to build and plaster the walls of the pit houses and erect the roofs. Once complete, the ladders enabled movement across different levels of the house, whether domestic pit houses, kivas or other pit structures. Ladders were not simply functional but were embedded in the societal beliefs and culture. Pueblo-origin stories frequently detail the ascent by ancestors through different cosmological realms using reeds, trees or ladders. It is only in the nineteenth century with the increasing preference for single-storey houses here that ladders were used less regularly.
The study spans about 1500 years, during this period, due to growth and expansion of Pueblo communities, changes in the architecture can be observed: from pit houses, with sunken floors below ground level, to their replacement during the eight to tenth centuries AD by surface stone constructions as primary habitations. From then on, pit structures were used as ‘combined ceremonial–communal–residential structures’, termed kivas by archaeologists. Definitive finds of workshops have not been made so far, but presumably crafting also happened in the kiva. The publication also spans the arrival of the Spanish in the seventeenth century AD and the lengthy and unrelenting process of European colonisation. At the intellectual core of the book is the desire to explore and understand the technological diffusion of tools, practices and facilities with respect to wooden ladders and the stone and subsequently iron axes that were used to make them within Pueblo crafts and society.
The ladders are systematically categorised in three ways: whether the ladder incorporates one or two upright poles (Chapters 5 & 6); the nature of the footholds; and the technique of step/rung attachment (such as cut in, lashed, notched, mortised). They can be further sub-classified according to the sources and treatment of the materials and tools involved in the construction of the ladders. The appendix details 94 Pueblo and Navajo remains of ladders. This corpus is expanded by including evidence of ladder footprints, ladder rests and roof hatches (Chapter 4). The application of dendrochronology to the surviving ladders, the detailed examinations of archaeological sites, archives and museum collections and the consultations with Pueblo cultural advisers and craftspeople provides a richly detailed ethnohistorical perspective.
The innovations from one- to two-pole ladders and hafted stone axes can be traced back to widespread use in the construction and maintenance of pit houses in Pueblo communities during the late sixth to early seventh centuries AD. These two-pole ladders may well represent an independent invention. The subsequent millennium saw relatively little change of design in either the ladders or the axes until this continuity of craft and form was gradually transformed by the arrival of the Spanish colonists and the introduction of iron axes and tools and new designs of one- and two-pole ladders made specifically with these new iron woodworking tools. The encouragement of blacksmithing and the new woodworking in Pueblo communities by the Spanish Franciscan missionaries was designed to facilitate colonisation and provide labour for new religious and state institutional buildings. There is compelling evidence spanning 1600–1750 AD that Pueblo craftspeople clearly adopted and excelled in the new technology but relatively little to suggest that these new skills were used in their domestic residences. While the logistical challenges in accessing iron by Pueblo peoples in the New Mexico colony can be cited as a major constraint, the book persuasively relates details in the variability in woodworking adoption or rejection across Pueblo communities to broader colonial currents of religious and societal acceptance or resistance.
To sum up, the book is well written in a clear and accessible style, supported by many illustrations and brings a niche subject to the foreground, introducing the surprisingly many different ways of constructing a ladder. Ahlstrom delivers an excellent and detailed study on ladders and axes, revealing that through researching such a mundane object over a long time, continuity and changes become evident, both in the crafting traditions of the ladders and in the societal changes behind them.
Joanna Ostapkowicz. 2025. Anacaona’s gift: cotton and the woven arts of the 11th to 17th century Caribbean (Taboui 10). Leiden: Sidestone; 978-94-6427-123-2 paperback €50 online Open Access https://doi.org/10.59641/b12464en
Caribbean archaeology is based overwhelmingly on objects made of stone and ceramics and, to a lesser extent, on wooden items. In this book, Joanna Ostapkowicz presents a further group that has long been overlooked but is integral to understanding Indigenous Caribbean societies. Woven objects, made of cotton and other fibres, are an essential part of the culture—from everyday items such as hammocks, nets and baskets and body ornaments to special objects such as regalia belts or wrapping textiles for the dead—and are intertwined with society and status as well as being fundamental to the local economy. The book gathers the archaeological evidence of these woven objects, which only rarely survive, and are now found mostly in museum collections and in references in archives. With the help of ethnohistorical sources, the objects are contextualised in their wider meaning for their communities. The Indigenous people of the Greater Antilles in pre-Columbian/early Colonial times, collectively known as Taíno, are at the centre of this study.
The first chapter ‘Cotton wealth: power, politics, and possession’ is the basis for the following chapters and introduces the reader to the world of the Taíno. The early Spanish sources describe the social order among the Indigenous communities as cacicazgos (regions or provinces) controlled by caciques and cacicas (male and female chiefs or leaders), who are recorded as also controlling surplus cotton and other goods. Each household spun and worked cotton for their daily use, such as hammocks, clothing parts and nets. The surplus cotton was gathered and stored by the caciques/cacicas, to be used as gifts, in trade or to be manufactured into elaborate items, such as belts and adornments often decorated with beads or shells. The few woven objects that survive today are testament to the highly skilled artisans who were able to weave intricate and complex patterns. The author stresses that the importance of cotton, raw and spun, as well as these artfully crafted artefacts, is grossly underestimated and argues that the control of cotton was fundamental to the power of the chiefs and that “cotton weaving constituted one of the most important forms of Indigenous material culture” for the Taíno and beyond (p.20). The social standing of the caciques and cacicas is investigated through the early texts. The role of the cacicas, though similar to the male version, is not yet fully understood, but they appear to have been especially skilled makers and givers of these valuable gifts and items crafted from cotton (such as belts and headdresses). One of the cacicas mentioned in the texts is Anacaona of Jaraguá, who very generously hosted Columbus’s brother Bartolomé Colón in 1497 and offered him many gifts, among them large amounts of spun cotton. The story highlights the importance that material wealth, in the form of cotton and other goods, held for the power of the caciques, but also the special role of a cacica.
The history of growing cotton in the Caribbean is then outlined. The knowledge of processing the cotton to a workable fibre in pre-Columbian times is also understudied and, so far, little is known about how it was done. The book proposes an outline that reveals it as a labour-intensive and time-consuming process, from collecting the bolls of cotton from the plant, to drying and beating these, to cleaning the fibres before they could be spun into yarn, with the last step of spinning considered to be the most time-consuming. The yarns would be kept in balls for later use, exchange or dying before they were woven into items. The toolkit for weaving is discussed in relation to the main archaeological remains of spindle whorls and loom weights and various types of looms; it is proposed that they were employed to create the different objects ranging from everyday items to the artistically crafted high-value artefacts.
Chapter 3, ‘Woven artefacts and the circulation of cotton wealth’, looks at the objects and their distribution among the circum-Caribbean communities, namely the Taíno, Lucayan and Kalinago. The woven objects mentioned most frequently in the Colonial sources are hammocks and basketry in the domestic sphere, and special attention was given to regalia, richly decorated adornments of the body, such as belts, naguas (aprons or short coverings for the private parts of a woman once they reached sexual maturity; the length of the items corresponded to the woman’s marriage status and age) and head coverings that were perceived as important markers of social status. Few of these physical objects survive, but the evidence can be substantially extended by adding in examples from figurative art in stone and wood and the many imprints of basketry and woven textiles in ceramics. The dead or parts of a body were commonly wrapped in woven textiles, and this is interpreted as an act to protect the ancestors. The final chapter looks ‘Through the Spanish lens’ and discusses the early records on how the Indigenous people and the cotton trade are portrayed by the invading onlookers and includes an inventory of known artefacts from the early Colonial period.
The volume succeeds in demonstrating the importance of integrating the history of weaving and textiles into the larger discussions on the development and understanding of the pre-Columbian communities of the Caribbean. Firstly, the interpretations of the craft skills illuminate the high level of artistry and reveal the links they formed within a household and to the wider society and exchange and trade networks. Secondly, the role of the production and control of cotton and cotton objects are found to be fundamental to the social and economic world of the Taíno. This well-written and well-illustrated book is sure to attract many readers to a whole new world visualised by the material culture and the vivid reports of the Spanish explorers.
