First proto-industrial ceramic FACTories in the 7th-2nd millennia BCE Mesopotamia and Levant. WORK organization from the proto-urban settlements to the supra-regional kingdoms – FACT_WORK

The FACT.WORK project aims to study the appearance and evolution of the first large-scale manufactures in the history of mankind in Mesopotamia and the Levant from the 7th to the 2nd millennium BCE. This programme relies on an innovative and interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, spatial, technical, environmental and sociological analysis of ceramic production systems and workshops. The objective is to reconstruct the organisational patterns of craft work in Near Eastern societies, from the proto-urban phase to the age of the supra-regional kingdoms and great empires. The goal is, on the one hand, to characterize the cultural variability of techno-economic systems and work organisation in a world evolving towards greater complexity and interconnectivity and, on the other hand, to question the existence of recurrent conditions for the emergence of the first large factories.
The feasibility of the FACT.WORK relies on the exceptional quality of research data from recent and ongoing excavations representing the most extensive documentation available on ceramic workshops of the proto- and early Mesopotamian and Levantine history. This dataset will be also complemented by records from sites investigated by other international expeditions.