A forensics expert for the local police department, Ido Hefetz has been working with the archaeologist Shulamit Terem to study the fingerprints left many centuries ago on ceramics found in the Motza neighborhood of Jerusalem. Hillel Kutler writes:
Beginning in November 2019, excavations at the three-acre site uncovered traces of structures and artifacts from the early Byzantine period (the end of the 4th century CE to the beginning of the 7th century): a church, an olive press, a wine press, and a kiln. An alcove adjacent to the kiln contained clay fragments of lamps and roof tiles, with remnants of jugs and bowls lying nearby. . . . More than one-third of the 230 shards were covered in centuries-old fingerprints.
The clay used to make the pottery was of fine quality, ensuring the prints were well preserved. Hefetz could plainly see that the fingerprints were predominantly of the left and right thumbs, with their depth revealing something of the potters’ technique: oth thumbs were pressed hard into the clay to compress it into a mold.
Furthermore, the same adjacent thumbprints appeared on both the top and bottom sections of each lamp, suggesting that one person had multitasked. Scores of the fingerprints were identical, leading Hefetz to conclude that one individual was the primary potter. One or possibly two additional people produced the rest of the lamps. Most revelatory on a fundamental level was Hefetz’s realization that fingerprint patterns today are virtually unchanged from 1,500 years ago.
With further work, Hefetz hopes to be able to draw conclusions about the age and sex of the potters.
Read more on Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-fingerprints-tell-us-about-jerusalems-ancient-artisans-180981238/