Among the most personal findings revealed by this approach are fingerprints. The clay, while still wet and malleable, retained the ridges of the person who pressed the bulla against the cord that sealed the package. Uziel and Shalev’s team has managed to recover and individualize these impressions using photogrammetry and transformed reflectance techniques.I have already noted this new Israel Science Foundation project here. But this article has accessible coverage of the story, with emphasis on how the project is recovering the abovementioned biometric data, along with information about the material the bullae were attached to and what that might tell us about their function.Although the age of the remains prevents matching them to specific identities, their morphology makes it possible to estimate the age and sex of the artisan or official who handled each piece, as well as the force applied in sealing. These traces, which no written record could have preserved, turn the bullae into somatic testimonies of the past.
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