The Itinerary of a Lead Repair, or: How to Do an Archaeology of Slavery in Ancient Greece (Sara Eriksson, UC Berkeley & University of Bonn)
Abstract: How can unfree labor be rendered visible in the archaeological record? How can we do an archaeology of slavery in contexts that offer no unambiguous evidence of enslaved lives, from a society where the same tasks might have been done by free and unfree people working side by side? Beginning at the Hellenistic Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia, Greece, I trace the events that at some point in the second century BCE led to the pieces of a pot that had been repaired with lead being deposited at the sanctuary. Following the flow of the lead from the moment of deposition back to when it was mined, I think through the labor that shaped the metal’s itinerary, and the enslaved and free, human and non-human agents that would have performed this labor.