Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati 2012

“Apprenticeship and Learning from the Ancestors: The Case of Ancient Urkesh,”
in W. Wendrich (ed.), Archaeology and apprenticeship: Body Knowledge, Identity and Communities of Practice, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 203-223.

Apprenticeship and its mechanisms are the topic of this paper, focusing not only in Urkesh, but broadening the discussion also to ancient Mesopotamia and Syria as a whole discourse. Of course, apprenticeship relates to the definition of personal identity, since human beings shape themselves also thanks to the transmission of cultural knowledge(s), as it is clear in the Gilgamesh epos, for instance.

This transmission (both direct, i.e. oral or indirect, i.e. though the medium of the scripture) is well defined at the beginning of this contribution: “In any society, a component of this growing experience of self-consciousness is the awareness of the part of individuals that they belong to a specific group to which they contribute and from which they receive both insight and information. Apprenticeship plays an important role in forming this individual and group identity” (p. 203).

This transmission of knowledge and consciousness is investigated in this paper both under a direct way (from teacher to student) and an indirect one, through emulation or experimentation. As far as archaeology concerns this discourse, the concept of ‘broken tradition’ [on this theme, see CAR website] emerges as a key-topic: “While an archaeologist looks from the outside at a broken tradition and seeks to reconstruct primarily a physical object with its typological characteristics, an ancient time-gap apprentice lives within the same community of practice and re-creates an object starting from the experience of procedures and functional use that are shared with the ancestors” (p. 204).

Evidence for apprenticeship is investigated, analysing the role of scribes, of seal carvers and the function of ancient ‘tablet houses’ (ancient methods of apprenticeship are reported), mostly during the Old Babylonian period. As for Urkesh, the author recalls the founding at Urkesh of a school tablet, showing practice on the reverse [see picture of tablet A1j1, from room B1 of the Royal Palace; cf. mostly Buccellati 2003].

Reverence for traditional or ancient knowledge is exemplified by the practice of seal carving, whose training cannot be, unfortunately, better regained.

Moreover, evidences for time-gap apprenticeship are discussed, presenting the case of Urkesh potters who 1) repeated already known notions, but also 2) “introduced various levels of innovations” [sometimes archaistically revitalizing ancient practices or techniques] and 3) “created something completely new” (p. 211), e.g. imitating other ceramic types (at Urkesh specifically, imitating ancient decoration or earlier wares).

Transfer of knowledge also occurred via script documentation, e.g. the tablet from Urkesh (reporting an architectural plan of three rooms which inspired the building of the Royal Palace) [tablet A12.321, see Buccellati 2005, pp. 18-19], or also the depiction of a potter working in his workshop (p. 220, fig. 10.9).

In conclusion, author’s perspective on this phaenomenon is summarized: “My point here is that in an archaeological context, these definitions [i.e., ‘apprenticeship’ and ‘relationships’] can be expanded to include historical-generative situations where they exist. The examples we have are few, but I think that our view of apprenticeship can extend to a form of apprenticeship where ancients study their own ancestors in a system where the creations and inventions of the ancestors were appreciated and learning from them was viewed as an acceptable source of knowledge” (pp. 220-221).