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Artisans in Mesopotamia

In Ur, Mesopotamia archaeological evidence has found workshops were artisans created goods for both everyday needs and for demonstration of class and power. It has been that artisans consisted of basket makers, copper smiths, fullers, forester, gold and silver smiths, leather workers, potters, rope makers, reed weavers, cloth weavers and wood workers. All these roles were performed by men, with the exception of cloth weavers done by women. Artisans had specific titles to describe their jobs from this time period; some titles included the word geme for women workers and the word gurus for male workers. These workers lived their lives similar as semi-free serfs meaning they had to dedicate their lives to periods of state service but they could also do work without restrictions on their own at other times.

Another type of artisan was known as erin, who depending on the task, worked for part of the year on a seasonal basis. Thanks to archaeological accounts, these foresters were found to have worked a form of corvée, in other words an obligation to perform certain services, as the repair of roads, for the lord or sovereign as done similar in feudal times. In return, they received rations of barley and other products of subsistence during their term of service. There were also given permanent rights to plots of land but were not given ownership of it. These workers were called into service primarily as forest specialists but at times of war were also recruited into the military.

Archaeologists refer to the fourth type of artisan as a UN-il. THe UN-il workers were given work full time apart from receiving rations of food. Uni-il workers were not allowed to have land but in some cases they received small plots. There is significant evidence that they were also employed by the major institutions of the state throughout the year. FInally, a fifth term for artisans in Mesopotamia was a sag and it blatantly meant male or flame slave. According to Wright, a female sage who worked in the weaving labor shops was, "a person whose legal status was that of slave... 'bought with silver'". A sag worker was permanently employed in a workshop and received rationed food but had absolutely no land rights.

Gemes

Gemes were semi-free labor women and found to work in temples and state production. Evidence that they were weavers, millers and oil pressers were found in written documentation at Girsu-Lagash. A geme had a master to answer to and he could force her to work as a weaver or miller. Employment of this type were found to last all year round, even though some of these women were like indentured servants and were able to leave the weaving workshop after their debt was paid off. The geme resembled the UN-il more than the erin, since these women were permanently employed in the temple and palace workshops on an annual basis and received rationed subsistence as a compensation. Unlike the UN-il none of the geme workers were given rights to land.

Economic status of Female Weavers

There was evidence found that demonstrated craft producers were in the low to middle class range based on compensation pay in Mesopotamian society. Other individuals who were in supervisory positions were paid significantly different, like boat captains and farm supervisors. Even non-supervisors like herdsmen and scribes received higher pay than craft workers. Women weavers received the worst pay of all and were at the lowest end of the economic scale. GIven that the women were without land resources, they were among the poorest of the craft workers and almost any other profession with the exception of the millers. we know that women of high status like temple priestesses, wives of rulers who carried out economic functions, and millers and oil pressers were compensated well because of documentation that lists their occupations. Women who worked as weavers were not included in historical workshop lists but it does include the number of male workers per shop. Wright said this alludes to an apparent gender ideology Mesopotamians had in excluding women from state and temple service and its operations.

Ethnic Diversity among Female Weavers

Female weaver were made up of many different types of ethnic backgrounds. According to wright, weavers worked in subgroups of twenty women who came from diverse ethnic backrgrounds. Archaeologists have found that the majority of these weavers were either indentured citizens, "purchased" workers, prisoners of war, and women from foreign places. Unlike female citizens and local slaves of Mesopotamia, foreign women's roles were of outsiders and their kinship relations went without any description or historical documentation. Their children were not entiltled to the same rights as other Mesopotamian local and their were identified mainly by their ethnicity.

Table 4.1. Rates of compensation for various professions in UR III. ||
 * P. 64 (Wright 2008)

Designation ||~ Allotments Barley ||~ (Monthly) Wool ||~ Oil ||~ Land || Conveyors etc. ||= Male ||= n.d.* ||= n.d ||= n.d. ||= n.d ||= Yes || sag ||= 30-100 L ||= 1.5 kg. ||= 2.5 L ||= No || Supervisor ||= Male ||= n.d. ||= 150-1200 L ||= n.d. ||= n.d. ||= Yes || sag ||= 30-35 L ||= n.d. ||= n.d. ||= Yes ||
 * ~ Profession ||~ Sex ||~ Legal
 * ~ Overseers
 * ~ Craft Workers ||= Male ||= guru ||= 60-300 L ||= n.d. ||= n.d. ||= n.d. ||
 * ~ Weavers ||= Female ||= geme,
 * ~ Foresters ||= Male ||= erin ||= 75 L ||= 4 kg. ||= n.d. ||= Yes ||
 * ~ Foresters ||= Male ||= UN-1 ||= 60 L ||= 4 kg. ||= n.d. ||= Rare ||
 * ~ Farm
 * ~ Herdsmen ||= Male ||= n.d. ||= 60-90 L ||= n.d ||= n.d. ||= Yes ||
 * ~ Scribes ||= Male ||= n.d. ||= 60-5000 L ||= n.d. ||= n.d. ||= Yes ||
 * ~ Boat Captain ||= Male ||= n.d. ||= 60-510 L ||= n.d. ||= n.d. ||= Yes ||
 * ~ Millers ||= Female ||= geme,


 * Data compiled from Maekawa (1987), Steinkeller (1987) and Waetzoldt (1987).
 * n.d. = No data. ||

This article is useful considering it shows the economic roles women fulfilled in the working society of Mesopotamia. It was interesting to find that 2000 years ago women were subjugated to a pay gap that still exist today. Through Wright's analysis I was able to learn that Mesopotamians struggled with discrimination of several ethnicity, ideologies based on sex and gender, slave trade, and social stratification. For anthropologists who argued that early civilizations lacked complexity in their societies, an article like this is crucial to understanding that that was not in the least true and that humans have always faced complexity in their particular society as well as throughout history.

Wright, R. P. (1998), Crafting Social Identity in Ur III Southern Mesopotamia. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 8: 57–69. doi: 10.1525/ap3a.1998.8.1.57 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/doi/10.1525/ap3a.1998.8.1.57/pdf