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people, soils and landscapes through time

ANCIENT FINGERPRINTS

Tracing the Workforce: Fingerprints and Pottery Production in the Levant from Egyptian Rule to Iron Age Kingdoms

Pottery from one of the largest early urban centres in the southern Levant preserves direct traces of the people who made it.

Results at a glance

01

420 samples

The experimental programme included 420 samples made from regional clays and different temper types.

02

6–20%

Measured shrinkage varied from about 6% to 20% depending on raw material and preparation.

03

Main message

Fire preserved the fingerprint but also reduced its dimensions. Reliable interpretation therefore requires correction based on the properties of the actual ceramic fabric.

WhereUpper Galilee, Israel
Settingearly urban centre of Qedesh
ChronologyEarly Bronze Age II, approximately 3000–2700 BCE
Archaeological archivepottery with plastic fingerprint impressions
Methodspalaeodermatoglyphics, ceramic analysis, experimental archaeology

Position in space

Qedesh as a laboratory of ancient labour

Qedesh lies in the uplands of Upper Galilee. The research connects pottery from the site with regional clay resources and experimental measurements of their shrinkage.

  • Upper Galilee, Israel
  • Early Bronze Age II, approximately 3000–2700 BCE
  • pottery with plastic fingerprint impressions
  • palaeodermatoglyphics, ceramic analysis, experimental archaeology

What we investigate

1 / People

Who made the pottery

Ridge breadth and density support probabilistic investigation of adults, adolescents, women and men involved in production.

2 / Technology

How clay changes a print

Drying and firing reduce both the clay body and its print. Biometrics can be distorted unless shrinkage of the relevant fabric is measured.

3 / Labour

How production was organised

Fingerprints help investigate division of labour, specialisation and the transmission of craft knowledge.

Results at a glance

420 samples

The experimental programme included 420 samples made from regional clays and different temper types.

6–20%

Measured shrinkage varied from about 6% to 20% depending on raw material and preparation.

Biometrics

Different corrections can move the same print between age and probable sex-group ranges.

Workforce

Interpretation of workforce composition must be grounded in experimentally measured shrinkage.

Open Access study

Distorted touch: clay shrinkage experiments and the challenge of fingerprint analysis

The study presents the first experimental dataset of this scale linking fingerprints on pottery from Qedesh with measured shrinkage of regionally relevant clays and temper types. It demonstrates that generic predetermined corrections are insufficient for reliable biometric interpretation.

palaeodermatoglyphicsceramic analysisexperimental archaeology
Open studyView visual documentation

Visual documentation and experiment

Ancient fingerprints and their documentation.
Pottery from Qedesh preserving manufacturing traces and fingerprints.
Experimental samples used to measure shrinkage during drying and firing.

Human Earth Lab interpretation

What the site shows more broadly

An ordinary touch can survive for millennia and become archaeological evidence. Its meaning emerges by connecting biometry, ceramic technology, experiment and context.

Team and outputs

Team

Jon Ross

Jon Ross, collaborators of the Qedesh project and Human Earth Lab, Department of Archaeology, Charles University.

Full profile →
Outputs

Ross 2026

Open Access study, visual documentation, experimental shrinkage data and a methodological framework for ancient fingerprint analysis.

Result details →