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This book focuses on the ancient Near East, early imperial China,
South-East Asia, and medieval Europe, shedding light on
mathematical knowledge and practices documented by sources relating
to the administrative and economic activities of officials,
merchants and other actors. It compares these to mathematical texts
produced in related school contexts or reflecting the pursuit of
mathematics for its own sake to reveal the diversity of
mathematical practices in each of these geographical areas of the
ancient world. Based on case studies from various periods and
political, economic and social contexts, it explores how, in each
part of the world discussed, it is possible to identify and
describe the different cultures of quantification and computation
as well as their points of contact. The thirteen chapters draw on a
wide variety of texts from ancient Near East, China, South-East
Asia and medieval Europe, which are analyzed by researchers from
various fields, including mathematics, history, philology,
archaeology and economics. The book will appeal to historians of
science, economists and institutional historians of the ancient and
medieval world, and also to Assyriologists, Indologists,
Sinologists and experts on medieval Europe.
Fakes and forgeries are objects of fascination. This volume
contains a series of thirteen articles devoted to fakes and
forgeries of written artefacts from the beginnings of writing in
Mesopotamia to modern China. The studies emphasise the subtle
distinctions conveyed by an established vocabulary relating to the
reproduction of ancient artefacts and production of artefacts
claiming to be ancient: from copies, replicas and imitations to
fakes and forgeries. Fakes are often a response to a demand from
the public or scholarly milieu, or even both. The motives behind
their production may be economic, political, religious or personal
- aspiring to fame or simply playing a joke. Fakes may be revealed
by combining the study of their contents, codicological, epigraphic
and palaeographic analyses, and scientific investigations. However,
certain famous unsolved cases still continue to defy technology
today, no matter how advanced it is. Nowadays, one can find fakes
in museums and private collections alike; they abound on the
antique market, mixed with real artefacts that have often been
looted. The scientific community's attitude to such objects calls
for ethical reflection.
This book focuses on the ancient Near East, early imperial China,
South-East Asia, and medieval Europe, shedding light on
mathematical knowledge and practices documented by sources relating
to the administrative and economic activities of officials,
merchants and other actors. It compares these to mathematical texts
produced in related school contexts or reflecting the pursuit of
mathematics for its own sake to reveal the diversity of
mathematical practices in each of these geographical areas of the
ancient world. Based on case studies from various periods and
political, economic and social contexts, it explores how, in each
part of the world discussed, it is possible to identify and
describe the different cultures of quantification and computation
as well as their points of contact. The thirteen chapters draw on a
wide variety of texts from ancient Near East, China, South-East
Asia and medieval Europe, which are analyzed by researchers from
various fields, including mathematics, history, philology,
archaeology and economics. The book will appeal to historians of
science, economists and institutional historians of the ancient and
medieval world, and also to Assyriologists, Indologists,
Sinologists and experts on medieval Europe.
Economic history is well documented in Assyriology, thanks to the
preservation of dozens of thousands of clay tablets recording
administrative operations, contracts and acts dealing with family
law. Despite these voluminous sources, the topic of work and the
contribution of women have rarely been addressed. This book
examines occupations involving women over the course of three
millennia of Near Eastern history. It presents the various aspects
of women as economic agents inside and outside of the family
structure. Inside the family, women were the main actors in the
production of goods necessary for everyday life. In some instances,
their activities exceeded the simple needs of the household and
were integrated within the production of large organizations or
commercial channels. The contributions presented in this volume are
representative enough to address issues in various domains: social,
economic, religious, etc., from varied points of view:
archaeological, historical, sociological, anthropological, and with
a gender perspective. This book will be a useful tool for
historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and graduate students
interested in the economy of the ancient Near East and in women and
gender studies.
Economic history is well documented in Assyriology, thanks to the
preservation of dozens of thousands of clay tablets recording
administrative operations, contracts and acts dealing with family
law. Despite these voluminous sources, the topic of work and the
contribution of women have rarely been addressed. This book
examines occupations involving women over the course of three
millennia of Near Eastern history. It presents the various aspects
of women as economic agents inside and outside of the family
structure. Inside the family, women were the main actors in the
production of goods necessary for everyday life. In some instances,
their activities exceeded the simple needs of the household and
were integrated within the production of large organizations or
commercial channels. The contributions presented in this volume are
representative enough to address issues in various domains: social,
economic, religious, etc., from varied points of view:
archaeological, historical, sociological, anthropological, and with
a gender perspective. This book will be a useful tool for
historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and graduate students
interested in the economy of the ancient Near East and in women and
gender studies.
This volume looks at how the issues of textiles and gender
intertwine across three millennia in antiquity and examines
continuities and differences across time and space - with
surprising resonances for the modern world. The interplay of
gender, identity, textile production and use is notable on many
levels, from the question of who was involved in the transformation
of raw materials into fabric at one end, to the wearing of garments
and the construction of identity at the other. Textile production
has often been considered to follow a linear trajectory from a
domestic (female) activity to a more 'commercial' or 'industrial'
(male-centred) mode of production. In reality, many modes of
production co-existed and the making of textiles is not so easily
grafted onto the labour of one sex or the other. Similarly,
textiles once transformed into garments are often of 'unisex' shape
but worn to express the gender of the wearer. As shown by the
detailed textual source material and the rich illustrations in this
volume, dress and gender are intimately linked in the visual and
written records of antiquity. The contributors show how it is
common practice in both art and literature not only to use
particular garments to characterize one sex or the other, but also
to undermine characterizations by suggesting that they display
features usually associated with the opposite gender.
Textile and dress production, from raw materials to finished items,
has had a significant impact on society from its earliest history.
The essays in this volume offer a fresh insight into the emerging
interdisciplinary research field of textile and dress studies by
discussing archaeological, iconographical and textual evidence
within a broad geographical and chronological spectrum. The
thirteen chapters explore issues, such as the analysis of textile
tools, especially spindle whorls, and textile imprints for
reconstructing textile production in contexts as different as
Neolithic Transylvania, the Early Bronze Age North Aegean and the
Early Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean; the importance of cuneiform
clay tablets as a documentary source for both drawing a detailed
picture of the administration of a textile industry and for
addressing gender issues, such as the construction of masculinity
in the Sumerian kingdoms of the 3rd millennium BC; and discussions
of royal and priestly costumes and clothing ornaments in the
Mesopotamian kingdom of Mari and in Mycenaean culture. Textile
terms testify to intensive exchanges between Semitic and
Indo-European languages, especially within the terminology of trade
goods. The production and consumption of textiles and garments are
demonstrated in 2nd millennium Hittite Anatolia; from 1st
millennium BC Assyria, a cross-disciplinary approach combines
texts, realia and iconography to produce a systematic study of
golden dress decorations; and finally, the important discussion of
fibres, flax and wool, in written and archaeological sources is
evidence for delineating the economy of linen and the strong
symbolic value of fibre types in 1st millennium Babylonia and the
Southern Levant. The volume is part of a pair together with Greek
and Roman Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology edited
by Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch.
This volume looks at how the issues of textiles and gender
intertwine across three millennia in antiquity and examines
continuities and differences across time and space - with
surprising resonances for the modern world. The interplay of
gender, identity, textile production and use is notable on many
levels, from the question of who was involved in the transformation
of raw materials into fabric at one end, to the wearing of garments
and the construction of identity at the other. Textile production
has often been considered to follow a linear trajectory from a
domestic (female) activity to a more 'commercial' or 'industrial'
(male-centred) mode of production. In reality, many modes of
production co-existed and the making of textiles is not so easily
grafted onto the labour of one sex or the other. Similarly,
textiles once transformed into garments are often of 'unisex' shape
but worn to express the gender of the wearer. As shown by the
detailed textual source material and the rich illustrations in this
volume, dress and gender are intimately linked in the visual and
written records of antiquity. The contributors show how it is
common practice in both art and literature not only to use
particular garments to characterize one sex or the other, but also
to undermine characterizations by suggesting that they display
features usually associated with the opposite gender.
Written sources from the ancient Near East and eastern
Mediterranean, from the third to the first millennia BC, provide a
wealth of terms for textiles. The twenty-two chapters in the
present volume offer the first comprehensive survey of this
important material, with special attention to evidence for
significant interconnections in textile terminology among languages
and cultures, across space and time. For example, the Greek word
for a long shirt, khiton, ki-to in Linear B, derives from a Semitic
root, ktn . But the same root in Akkadian means linen, in Old
Assyrian a garment made of wool, and perhaps cotton, in many modern
languages. These and numerous other instances underscore the need
for detailed studies of both individual cases and the common
threads that link them. This example illustrates on the one hand
how connected some textiles terms are across time and space, but it
also shows how very carefully we must conduct the etymological and
terminological enquiry with constantly changing semantics as the
common thread. The survey of textile terminologies in 22 chapters
presented in this volume demonstrates the interconnections between
languages and cultures via textiles.
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