Report of Textiles from Çatal Hüyük

Extract

The textiles examined were from building-level VI provisionally dated as c. 6000 B.C. They were black, stiff and brittle, apparently owing to carbonization, and comprised some found in 1962 and others found in 1963. No attempt will be made to describe the structure of the cloth except to say that no weave was evident in the 1962 specimens; one series of yarns lay parallel, with no other yarns woven through them. In places other parallel yarns were fused at an angle across (but not interwoven with) the first ones. It was as if either the warp or weft had decayed, but there were no waves in the remaining yarns to indicate where the decayed yarns had been. This was probably the material described by Helbaek as resembling fishnet without knots. The yarns were less than 0·5 mm. in width, yet despite this fineness most were clearly two-ply. The specimens found in 1963 comprised one that had apparently been like the above but had broken into many short, straight pieces of yarn. There were also two pieces of cloth clearly woven, in apparently plain weave, from even finer yarns that nevertheless appeared to be two-ply. One piece of cloth had a selvedge.