Tracking the division of labour through handprints: Applying Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to clay 'tokens' in Neolithic West Asia

The residents of Boncuklu Höyük, a mixed forager-farming community dating to the pre-ceramic Neolithic c. mid-9th to mid-8th millennium cal. BC, used their hands to manipulate local clays into artefacts, often leaving behind traces of their palm prints and fingerprints on the surface of the objects. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a digital imaging technique that uses multiple images and mathematical models to reveal the 3-dimensional shape of an artefact's surface, provides a detailed, post-processing interactive view of the prints on each artefact. Geometric clay objects are the single-most abundant artefact category at Boncuklu Höyük with over 1000 clay objects recovered and studied at this central Anatolian village to date. The aim of the project is to understand the manufacture, use, and disposal of geometric clay objects at Boncuklu Höyük through an analysis of the hand and fingerprints present on their surfaces. RTI reveals palm and fingerprints on more than half of the study sample consisting of eighty-eighty clay artefacts. Analysis of the prints using friction ridge density protocols indicates that adult females were the primary makers of the artefacts. The results were unchanged when taking into account artefact shape and type, and when considering temporal and locational data. The association of these artefacts during manufacture principally to women suggests an early link in the life of the object to women, potentially suggesting a gender based division of tasks at Boncuklu Höyük.