The Clay Industry

J.R. Baldwin (@juliettromeobravo.bsky.social): "Clay sourcing and clay preparation must have been an enormous industry. What is known about Bronze Age clay production?"

You'd think sourcing mattered, but clay was ubiquitous. The material may have been subsidized, here I think of Gilgamesh's Uruk, said to have been part city, part orchard, and part clay pit. It was the labor that was profitable, with employment occurring via ad hoc hiring or regular corvée duties.

Clay was used for most everything: utensils, tools, appliances like ovens, pottery, construction and infrastructure, writing, toys, so on and so forth. So, it may be surprising that it doesn't seem industrialized on the same level as, e.g., wood in other parts of the world. It's a bit unclear.

When we see clay enter economic documentation, it's usually as finished products or labor agreements for product manufacturing. In this way, we don't see the material exchange hands, only its work. This tracks for premodern societies, where human labor is fundamentally the most lucrative commodity.

This is based on extant archival records, which lean toward large purchases of baked brick and pottery, or labor large enough to require something be written down. There are several industries that are largely invisible due to this bias, with clay and reed being the most apparent examples.

At the same time, clay was integral and this is something that cannot be recorded on an economic level. According to royal inscriptions, brickmolds were made w/ fragrant items like cedar, syrup and perfume - they would divine the fate of temples and palaces. Humans were made of clay (and holy spit).

So, I don't have much to hang this idea from, but I hesitate to say clay was necessarily profitable. There's reason to suspect that, culturally and environmentally, it was one of the most cost effective choices out there for businesses and states alike. It was human time and effort that mattered.