of specialists. Certain occupations were common almost ev-
erywhere in ancient India. Carpenters practiced religious rit-
uals, perhaps the most important of which was asking the
spirit in a tree to forgive him before the tree was cut down.
Usually another group of workers, foresters, would chop down
the tree, but when foresters were unavailable, the carpenter
would do it himself. Carpenters carefully measured the fallen
tree and then cut it into the number and size of planks and
beams they needed for a project. Th e planks and beams then
were loaded onto carts and taken to the workplace, either a
construction site or a workshop. In addition to working on
buildings, carpenters made toys, wooden sandals, chests, and
furniture.
Basket makers could be men or women. Th ey gathered
their grasses themselves, mostly from the sides of lakes,
ponds, and waterways. Th ey wove matting used for walls,
fences, roofs, and fl oor coverings. Th ey also wove watertight
umbrellas as well as watertight baskets. Some of their baskets
were fashioned into strainers, allowing water to pass through
while retaining solids. Every Indian home had brooms, and
most had woven hampers and chests.
Blacksmiths worked long hours beside a furnace. Using
pincers, they worked hot metal so that they could hammer
it into shape. Th ey made nails, hammers, axes, saws, spades,
sickles, plowshares, sewing needles, razors, and knives. Cop-
per, tin, bronze, and iron were used to make cooking pans for
the home and armor for warriors. Th e blacksmith’s work was
so important to the success of other occupations that even
tiny villages usually had at least one blacksmith.
A potter mixed wet clay with cow dung and ashes. He
placed this mixture on a potter’s wheel. Aft er shaping the clay
with his hands while the wheel spun, he set it aside to dry.
Later he would put it and other shaped items into a trench
piled with wood. Th e wood was ignited to fi re the pottery.
Th e ancient Indian potter’s work was rarely highly refi ned
because the potter made items for basic uses, such as hauling
water or boiling food. A potter either owned a shop or car-
ried his wares through the streets of his village, town, or city,
while calling for people to buy his pots.
Th e malakaras were garland makers. Malakaras kept
their own gardens, where they grew the fl owers they wove.
Cutting the fl owers was a family aff air, with sons and daugh-
ters joining in the work. To give a garland stiff ness to support
the fl owers, malakaras used reeds and cotton stalks. Gar-
lands were expected to be colorful, and malakaras wove into
the garlands leaves, berries, feathers, shells, and ornaments
carved from horn. Th ey employed people who were out of
work to hawk their wares in the streets of cities.
In China peasants were the foundation of ancient society.
Th e Chinese themselves recognized the importance of peas-
ants, and the work of peasants was considered more impor-
tant than any occupation except warfare. Taking good care
of the land he farmed was the peasant’s principal duty. Peas-
ants were expected to devote their days to laboring in fi elds,
except when the lord conscripted them into his army for
waging a war. Husband, wife, and children were expected to
spend their waking hours toiling in their fi elds, except when
performing other tasks related to farming, such as milling
grain. During the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1500–ca 1045 b.c.e.)
and most of the Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1045–ca. 256 b.c.e.), peas-
ants worked with wooden hoes and hand plows. Sometimes
the hand plows would be edged with bronze. Th e lords, kings,
and emperors of China oft en took trouble to ensure the wel-
fare of peasants, on whom their prosperity rested; during the
fi ft h century b.c.e. some landowners provided their tenant
farmers with iron plows and teams of oxen to pull the plows.
Although farming was not considered an honorable pro-
fession, it was placed higher than most occupations. Ancient
Chinese writers slighted most trades and jobs, and for this
reason it is not fully known what those occupations were, who
performed them, and how many there were. Archaeological
evidence is only just beginning to fi ll in bits of the large gaps
in present knowledge of ancient China’s workaday world.
During the Han Dynasty (202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) the gov-
ernment established 20 levels of rank. Th e top 12 could be
attained only by people of high birth, but the bottom eight
were open to anyone. Th is system gave peasants and other
laborers a chance to improve their lot and may have inspired
some specialization. For instance, some peasants specialized
in keeping mulberry orchards, the leaves of which fed silk-
worms. Women in peasant families prepared the silk from
the silkworms’ cocoons as part of their cycle of work. An am-
bitious peasant could take out a loan and purchase equipment
for milling the harvested grain. Th is venture could result in
the hiring of farmhands who ran the equipment that removed
hulls from the grain and produced fl our.
Th ere was a demand for metal. Th e government set up
factories in which ore was mined, smelted, and poured into
ingots. Th ese ingots, in turn, were sent to factories where
metal objects were made. Th is demand seems to have created
specialists in metallurgy, but their skill levels are unknown. If
only one person was in charge of arranging the molds, melt-
ing the metal, pouring it into the molds, and applying fi nish-
ing touches to the objects, then that person would have been
highly skilled; if the tasks were divided, it is possible that un-
skilled labor could have been used for the tasks of melting
and pouring.
We avers oft en worked out of homes and were probably
peasant women. Th ey worked mostly with hemp, which pro-
vided the cloth for most garments. Silk was highly prized but
also was woven in homes in the countryside. Th e mechanisms
of the looms as yet unknown, but surviving fabrics show that
during the Han Dynasty very thin to very thick fabrics were
woven.
Carpentry became specialized during the last years of
the Zhou Dynasty, when the tropical forests to the south
were opened through conquest. Logging required teams of
workers, needed more for their muscle than their skills. Us-
ing ropes, they hauled felled trees to a stream, where the trees
would be loaded onto boats for transport to a city. In the city812 occupations: Asia and the Pacific