A.G.A.T.H.O.C.L.E.S. The ‘Archaeology of Gesture’: Apprenticeship, Tools, Hands, Organization, Collaborations, Learning Experience and Social Network Analysis
Progetto A.G.A.T.H.O.C.L.E.S. aims to explore the training models and the collaboration networks in one of the most dynamic industries of the ancient Classical World: the ceramic industry. For this purpose, the pottery industry is the most common reality in the ancient world to address issues of knowledge transfer, gender division and mobility. Nowadays, the study of the ancient itinerant works and the dynamics of craftsmen’s mobility needs to move towards an ‘Archaeology of Gesture’, which is a new approach related to the analysis of the hidden ancient gestures and technological procedures. Numerous technological aspects related to the ancient artisanal ‘hands’ and tools, usually invisible to the naked eye, can now become visible thanks to advances in archaeometry, computational-imaging technology and other innovative toolkit this project intends to adopt through an highly-interdisciplinary approach (also with the involvement of forensic and experimental archaeology). Moreover, an unusual approach for the ancient Greek world is involved: the Social Network Analysis. SNA can in fact innovate the methodologies used to identify the workshops and can provide new procedures to define the possible groups, relationships, dependencies and elements that can explain the existence of this complex productive network. Moving across microscopic analyses to macroscopic data-processing (related to the ancient dynamics of
‘transmission-flow’ of artisanal knowledge and skills), the project specifically addresses the case-study of the red-figure workshops in Southern Italy and Sicily (5th-4th century BC). These workshops, with their extensive networks of itinerant specialists, are ideal to investigate training and collaboration by focusing on five key aspects: a) collaborative patterns within the workshop, b) collaborative patterns with other workshops, c) age and gender differentiation of workforce, d) workers’ mobility, e) capacity of cultural adaptation of the ancient artisanal industry