In this session we hear two presentations, by Dr. Ville Vuolanto and Dr. Jason Silverman, after which we engage in a joint round of questions and discussion on December’s seminar theme: ‘Approaches into Ancient Labour’. The topics of the presentations are:
‘Child labour and child work in Roman Egypt?’ (Dr. Ville Vuolanto)
In the premodern societies outside of the elite circles, the working contribution of all the household members, also of children, was an ordinary feature of the everyday life. My viewpoint is to focus on how the social circumstances of the families affected the need for children, both boys and girls, to work outside of their households – and what were the consequences for the children in question. The related phenomenon of child slavery falls outside of my presentation today. The sources come from the Roman Egyptian papyri, from the period starting from the first century CE to mid sixth century. The discussion is divided into four main parts: first, I will discuss the different ways in which children ended up working outside of their households. After this, I will pay attention to three different themes: status of the family of origin, structure of the family of origin, and gender of the child. In the third part, I will briefly discuss the working conditions of children. In conclusions, I will shortly discuss the contrasts between the family strategies versus children’s experiences, and the question of child work versus child labour.
‘Labor in the Persian Empire’ (Dr. Jason Silverman)
How does human work structure the economy and society? The new ERC project WORK-IT uses Bourdieusian field theory and the concept of informal taxation to investigate the roles of cultic and forced labor in and around temples in the Southern Levant during the Persian Empire (c. 539–331 BCE). WORK-IT will harness eight types of evidence for temple institutions—building, gifts, taxes, tithes, produce, welfare, priesthoods, and dependents—using sources from the Southern Levant, the Persian imperial heartland, and the wider Ancient Near East. Each source will be analyzed via informal taxation, forced labor, and Bourdieusian field analysis to understand taxation, labor, and their interrelations within ancient weak states (pre-industrial, pre-nation-state polities). These analyses will highlight flaws in modern socio-economic assumptions that have hampered scholarly judgments of socio-economic relations in the Ancient Near East and thus in modern socio-economic narratives. I will also introduce the current and soon to join team members.
Each and every one is most welcome to participate, so tell a colleague and join us!
Time: Tuesday 17 December at 16:15–18:00 EET (UTC+2h).
Live venue: The Faculty Hall of Theology (Fabianinkatu 33, room 4038. To find the room, take the elevator to the fourth floor and enter the glass door to your left).
Virtual venue: Zoom (Meeting ID: 678 8979 2118 / https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/67889792118).
For a look back at the spring programme, see: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/ancient-near-eastern-empires/news/amme-program-announcement-spring-2024.