Craft and industry in Greece in this period were just as small scale in organization as agriculture. Potters, smiths, leatherworkers, stone cutters, and other craftsmen normally worked in small workplaces, owned by the craftsmen themselves. They were assisted by family members and maybe a few slaves. Some sculptors became famous exhibiting their work—statues of gods and goddesses, athletes and priestesses—in religious centers such as the island of Delos and in places such as Delphi and Olympia, where also small figurines of bronze or lead were offered for sale to visitors who could dedicate these at these sanctuaries. This would explain the stylistic similarities and mutual influences that can be discerned in these objects of art and craft. Many of the other crafts were “house industries” in the hands of women: wool working, spinning, and weaving, although some textiles such as the expensive purple-dyed materials must have been produced in more or less industrial workplaces (fulling and dyeing were strenuous work, done by men). In the larger cities of the Near East such as Babylon or Nineveh, greater specialization in crafts and professions was possible than in Greece. Technically, the industries of pottery, sculpture in stone and marble, and bronze working by the 6th century BC had all reached a peak that in subsequent periods would hardly be surpassed. In each polis, though, only a small number of persons could have derived their livelihood from sources of income other than agriculture: a smith, a carpenter, a potter, a stone cutter. Even less frequently would one have encountered someone like a singer-poet who dramatized the great epics and who, like the oracle-monger/healer/magician, often traveled from one polis to another.
World History
