Abstract
Bioarchaeological evidence reflective of the use of the kick-wheel by a female ceramicist in Archaic Eleutherna is juxtaposed to a projected counterpart from the Late Classical period in Thasos Island Anagnostis P. Agelarakis Resting in the protective embrace of Orthi Petra’s earth she had been carefully laid in a prepared inhumation bed at a semiflexed position facing East, contiguously to funerary pyres and monumental tombs which were to piously safeguard the memory and the honorable passing of Eleuthernians to the domain of the hospitable lord. In the centuries since her passing, the ever gift-giving Gaia had gradually superimposed the burial ground giving opportunity to the nurture of rich olive groves, allotted in recent historic times over small terrace walls, their reparative shoring having unsuspectingly impacted elements of her cranio-dental and R. upper thoracico-appendicular region. Yet, her preserved skeletal remains provided an intriguing record of bioarchaeological data. Physically active until the occurrence of death, between her 45th and 50th year of age, she presented a register of skeletal changes, unique manifestations among the rest of the individuals comprising the Eleuthernian female cohort ranging from the Late Geometric to the Early Classical periods. Forensic morphoanatomic assessments focusing on ante mortem kinetic tasks, body positioning and posturing which had been performed over long time periods of her adult life along with the nature and specificity of acquired palaeopathological changes were reflecting on a roster of most repetitive, exacting, and physically demanding labor intensive activities, affording stressors which were to be ingrained as localized modifications of her skeletal body due to occupational specialization, namely in working with clay on the turntable for ceramic production by the use of the kick-wheel. Differential diagnosis processes carried out in order to carefully evaluate the plausibility of competing explanatory hypotheses on the nature of the occupational specialization did not lend support to alternative in vivo pursuits. Further, research of ethnographic nature and particularly experimentations at the side of a female master ceramicist, in the historic village of Margarites in Rethymnon, provided valuable participant observation opportunities and guided practicums in favor of sensing and conceptualizing corporeally aspects of the assessments made, while also allowing a fine tuning of tangible data collection in substantiating further the Eleuthernian female’s chores in working with the kick-wheel.