ABSTRACT
Marks on pottery have been found in many parts of the world; the earliest are about 7000 years old. Most probably served to associate a pot with an owner or producer. A similar purpose may have been served by seals, or seal-like objects, which seem to have originated in south-west Asia and spread – over several millennia – across a wide area from China and India to Egypt and south-east Europe. Early seals served as ornaments or amulets as well as identifying their owners and providing methods of securing containers. In south-west Asia, they allowed people to recognize their property in communal storehouses; ensured that unauthorized opening was detectable; and perhaps conferred magical as well as physical protection on stored goods. Seals also came to be used to secure the doors of storage rooms, as bureaucratic systems were developed for managing commodities. Some scholars have suggested that sealings were systematically retained, after their removal from sealed objects, for auditing transactions. These suggestions are contentious, but we can be confident that a sealing on a container or door offered a record of the identity of the person who had applied it. Like marks on pottery, seal impressions could record that particular individuals owned particular goods or had been present when particular actions took place.
