Archaeology and Apprenticeship: Body Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice

9. Craft Apprenticeship in Ancient Greece: Reaching beyond the Masters

171 CHAPTER NINE Craft Apprenticeship in Ancient Greece Reaching beyond the Masters Eleni Hasaki In the study of ancient Greek culture, the figure of the accomplished master artisan—in vase painting, wall painting, sculpture, gem cutting, or architecture—has been the protagonist. When ancient sources or signatures do not single out any masters in a particular period or craft, modern scholars designate “masters,” “painters,” or “architects.” Indeed, the “Rampin Master” (530 BCE; Boardman 1978) in sculpture, the “Berlin Painter” (470 BCE; Beazley 1911) in vase painting, and the “Theseion Architect” (440 BCE; Dinsmoor 1940) in architecture, all of whom are called by fictional names in the absence of signed works, must have been style-setting figures in Late Archaic and Classical Athens. This focus on accomplished and innovative master craftsmen, however, has meant that the role of apprenticeship—whether that of the master as apprentice himself in his early career or that of the master as a teacher to others in his later years—is rarely considered. The tendency of ancient sources to place the spotlight on the first inventor (Greek protos euretes) of a specific artistic technique, also obscures the gradual process of acquiring craft knowledge that lays the foundation for the innovation to occur (Kleingünther 1933). Accomplished architects , sculptors, painters, and military engineers secured their legacy in 172 Archaeology and Apprenticeship posterity by writing technical treatises after the completion of major projects , proudly offering lavish dedications in major sanctuaries or displaying the tools of their crafts on their gravestones. As for their treatises, they are now lost, except for lists of titles and authors’ names of a select few. Their number in antiquity must have been considerable, however, since the Athenian Euthydemos in the fourth century BCE could actually boast of his collection of technical treatises (Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.2.8–10). Euthydemos’s collection may have included the treatises “On Painting” and “On Symmetry and Colors” by his contemporaries Melanthius and Euphranor, respectively. The popularity of treatises, primarily on mathematics , astronomy, military engineering, and medicine, increased in the Hellenistic period (Gutzwiller 2007; Meissner 1996). In Roman times, the architect Vitruvius mentions in his treatise at least thirty-seven architects and engineers who had previously authored treatises (On Architecture, Intro. 11–14, 1st cent. BCE). These treatises were intended mostly for self-promotion and for the attraction of potential new customers (civic entities or individuals) rather than for didactic uses. Despite the plethora of now lost treatises, no craft-related beginner’s handbook is mentioned or has survived from Greek antiquity. Ancient cultural priorities and the limitations of our current analytical models make our search for the ancient apprentice even more difficult . The works of ancient apprentices may lie hidden in catalogued objects described as “unfinished,” “poorly executed,” or “primitive.” We look around the workshop for an apprentice only when the work is too shabby to have been executed by the master of the culture and the period under study. Anabel Thomas (1995, 76), in her work of Renaissance painters , notes poignantly: “Unidentified members of the workshop force are on occasion plucked from an ill-defined background, to take responsibility for apparently ‘mediocre’ or ‘uncharacteristic’ work that would otherwise have to be attributed to the master.” Most important, the work of apprentices is rarely detectable; it is usually destroyed before it enters the archaeological record: clay is reshaped, metal recast, glass recycled, wood reshaped, textile rewoven, marble reshaped or burnt into lime. This study is the first attempt to document, extensively but certainly not exhaustively, both tangible remains of and the ancient references to craft apprenticeship in the Greco-Roman world (with an emphasis on Greek antiquity) and to lay the foundations for more extensive and intensive studies of craft apprenticeship in Greek and Roman antiquity. I discuss first the evidence that originates within the world of craftsmen (apprentice pieces, iconography of apprentices at work, signatures, curse tablets, apprenticeship contracts) and then the evidence for craft apprenticeship originating outside the world of craftsmen, usually in the writings of philosophers and encyclopedists (table 9.1). Craft Apprenticeship in Ancient Greece 173 Apprenticeship was central to the successful transformation of a novice into a master craftsman; its importance seems even to override natural inclination or talent, as Aristotle in the fourth century BCE boldly states: “Crafts are teachable; otherwise, good craftsmen would be born, not made” (Nicomachean Ethics 2.1). Moreover, the goal of an apprenticeship for...