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Textile production is one of the most important crafts in Aegean
and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age societies and recent
interdisciplinary and collaborative work offers crucial new
perspectives into this field. The new and updated catalogue of
archaeological textile finds presented here clearly demonstrates,
even from the few extant finds, that knowledge of the use of fibers
and of elaborate textile techniques that were used to produce
textiles of different qualities was well developed. The functional
analysis of spindle whorls and loom weights can be explored through
experimental archaeology employing newly developed methodologies.
The results bring new insights into the types of textile that may
potentially have been made by such tools. This is highly pertinent
as textile tools often constitute the single most important and
plentiful type of evidence for the various stages of textile
production in the archaeological record. The combination of
experimental archaeology, analyses of textile tools and find
contexts allows for a discussion of the nature of textile
production at different sites, regions and time periods. A
collaboration between archaeologists specialized in their site and
textile tool specialists has produced data sets of a large number
of textile tools from several Bronze Age settlements, including
Khania, Malia, Midea, Tiryns, Troia and Tel Kabri. The results of
these analyses provide unique insights into both the production
processes and, significantly, into the range of types of textiles
that could have been produced at specific sites. These results
illustrate the central, social and economic impact of textile
production in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age
societies.
Textile imagery is pervasive in classical literature. An awareness
of the craft and technology of weaving and spinning, of the
production and consumption of clothing items, and of the social and
religious significance of garments is key to the appreciation of
how textile and cloth metaphors work as literary devices, their
suitability to conceptualize human activities and represent cosmic
realities, and their potential to evoke symbolic associations and
generic expectations. Spanning mainly Greek and Latin poetic
genres, yet encompassing comparative evidence from other
Indo-European languages and literature, these 18 chapters draw a
various yet consistent picture of the literary exploitation of the
imagery, concepts and symbolism of ancient textiles and clothing.
Topics include refreshing readings of tragic instances of deadly
peploi and fatal fabrics situate them within a Near Eastern
tradition of curse as garment, explore female agency in the
narrative of their production, and argue for broader symbolic
implications of textile-making within the sphere of natural wealth
The concepts and technological principles of ancient weaving emerge
as cognitive patterns that, by means of analogy rather than
metaphor, are reflected in early Greek mathematic and logical
thinking, and in archaic poetics. The significance of weaving
technology in early philosophical conceptions of cosmic order is
revived by Lucretius' account of atomic compound structure, where
he makes extensive use of textile imagery, whilst clothing imagery
is at the center of the sustained intertextual strategy built by
Statius in his epic poem, where recurrent cloaks activate a
multilayered poetic memory.
Twenty-four experts from the fields of Ancient History, Semitic
philology, Assyriology, Classical Archaeology, and Classical
Philology come together in this volume to explore the role of
textiles in ancient religion in Greece, Italy, The Levant and the
Near East. Recent scholarship has illustrated how textiles played a
large and very important role in the ancient Mediterranean
sanctuaries. In Greece, the so-called temple inventories testify to
the use of textiles as votive offerings, in particular to female
divinities. Furthermore, in several cults, textiles were used to
dress the images of different deities. Textiles played an important
role in the dress of priests and priestesses, who often wore
specific garments designated by particular colours. Clothing
regulations in order to enter or participate in certain rituals
from several Greek sanctuaries also testify to the importance of
dress of ordinary visitors. Textiles were used for the furnishings
of the temples, for example in the form of curtains, draperies,
wall-hangings, sun-shields, and carpets. This illustrates how the
sanctuaries were potential major consumers of textiles;
nevertheless, this particular topic has so far not received much
attention in modern scholarship. Furthermore, our knowledge of
where the textiles consumed in the sanctuaries came from, where
they were produced, and by who is extremely limited. Textiles and
Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean examines the topics of textile
production in sanctuaries, the use of textiles as votive offerings
and ritual dress using epigraphy, literary sources, iconography and
the archaeological material itself.
Minoan ladies, Scythian warriors, Roman and Sarmatian merchants,
prehistoric weavers, gold sheet figures, Vikings, Medieval saints
and sinners, Renaissance noblemen, Danish peasants, dressmakers and
Hollywood stars appear in the pages of this anthology. This is not
necessarily how they dressed in the past, but how the authors of
this book think they dressed in the past, and why they think so. No
reader of this book will ever look at a reconstructed costume in a
museum or at a historical festival, or watch a film with a historic
theme again without a heightened awareness of how, why, and from
what sources, the costumes were reconstructed. The seventeen
contributors come from a variety of disciplines: archaeologists,
historians, curators with ethnological and anthropological
backgrounds, designers, a weaver, a conservator and a scholar of
fashion in cinema, are all specialists interested in ancient or
historical dress who wish to share their knowledge and expertise
with students, hobby enthusiasts and the general reader. The
anthology is also recommended for use in teaching students at
design schools.
In the past, textile production was a key part of all ancient
societies. The Ancient Near East stands out in this respect with
the overwhelming amount of documentation both in terms of raw
materials, line of production, and the distribution of finished
products. The thirteen intriguing chapters in Textile Production
and Consumption in the Ancient Near East describe the developments
and changes from household to standardised, industrialised and
centralised productions which take place in the region. They
discuss the economic, social and cultural impact of textiles on
ancient society through the application of textile tool studies,
experimental testing, context studies and epigraphical as well as
iconographical sources. Together they demonstrate that the textile
industries, production, technology, consumption and innovations are
crucial to, and therefore provide an in-depth view of ancient
societies during this period. Geographically the contributions
cover Anatolia, the Levant, Syria, the Assyrian heartland, Sumer,
and Egypt.
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.
The eight papers presented here provide a useful introduction to
medieval broadcloth, and an up-to-date synthesis of current
research. The word broadcloth is nowadays used as an overall term
for the woven textiles mass-produced and exported all over Europe.
It was first produced in Flanders as a luxurious cloth from the
11th century and throughout the medieval period. Broadcloth is the
English term, Laken in Flemish, Tuch in German, Drap in French,
Klaede in the Scandinavian languages and Verka in Finish. As the
concept of broadcloth has deriving from the written sources it
cannot directly be identified in the archaeological textiles and
therefore the topic of medieval broadcloth is very suitable as an
interdisciplinary theme. The first chapter (John Munro) presents an
introduction to the subject and takes the reader through the
manufacturing and economic importance of the medieval broadcloth as
a luxury item. Chapter two (Carsten Jahnke) describes trade in the
Baltic Sea area, detailing production standards, shipping and
prices. Chapters three, four and five (Heini Kirjavainen, Riina
Rammo and Jerzy Maik) deal with archaeological textiles excavated
in the Baltic, Finland and Poland. Chapters six and seven (Camilla
Luise Dahl and Kathrine Vestergard Pedersen) concern the problems
of combining the terminology from the written sources with
archaeological textiles. The last chapter reports on an ongoing
reconstruction project; at the open air museum in Eindhoven,
Holland, Anton Reurink has tried to recreate a medieval broadcloth
based on written and historical sources. During the last few years
he has reconstructed the tool for preparing and spinning wool, and
a group of spinners has produced a yarn of the right quality. He
subsequently wove approximately 20 metres of cloth and conducted
the first experiment with foot-fulling."
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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