Faience Craftsmanship in the Middle Kingdom. A market paradox: inexpensive materials for prestige goods?

The production of faience in ancient Egypt seems to represent a historical market paradox, as it does not fit into a theoretical bipolar (prestige/common) partition of goods. Made of common and inexpensive components, faience artefacts are both widespread across lower strata of society and in use in the uppermost segments of society, often beside very expensive materials, such as metal and ivory. The article aims at analysing four key elements which can determine a clearer social profile for faience production in the Middle Kingdom: a) the geographical setting of production, encompassing both the provenance of raw materials and the places of production; b) the identity of the makers, including the skills and the degree of specialisation required; c) (a revision of ) the taxonomy of artefacts produced; d) the (geographical) identity of the end-users. Accordingly, faience cannot be considered per se a prestige good, especially since the primary components can be found everywhere and the technology employed is not extremely complex. The only segment in the operational chain that could be controlled is the manufacture: the control over the technical skills of the artisans. The labour, i.e. the skilled artisan, can convert common objects into prestige goods. The only way to clearly distinguish the social role of the faience is to primarily assess for each type of faience artefacts its production technique and the end-user target.