This NBC considers a collection of volumes that spotlight textiles in the archaeological record. The specific conditions required to preserve fabrics mean that there are very few places or contexts in which they survive archaeologically, and when they do, they are often fragmentary and fragile. Consequently, our understanding of textiles comes as much from the evidence for their manufacture as from the fabrics themselves. Despite these challenges, textiles have been vital to both the physical and economic survival of human societies. The volumes under review shed new light on archaeological textiles, with studies that range from detailed investigations of specific weaving techniques in Bronze Age Sicily to broad overviews of the significance of textiles in the past, and to theoretical approaches to production processes that challenge us to explore more fully the phenomenological considerations of crafting.
In the preface to this compelling volume, Postrel deftly demonstrates the importance of textiles in the human story. From the plethora of weaving terms that permeate language and expression, to the role of textiles in the building of civilisations, the importance of fabrics and their manufacture is writ large throughout this book. Postrel's seven chapters are named for aspects of the textile process: Fibre, Thread, Cloth, Dye, Traders, Consumers and Innovators. Chapter 1 considers the technological leap from the creation of string by twisting fibres—a technique known during the Palaeolithic—to the manufacture of fabric in the Neolithic, when sheep were domesticated and wild flax began to be exploited. The chapter then takes the reader through millennia of fabric production, from the domestication of flax to the development of synthetic fabrics.
Focusing on thread, Postrel takes in a vast timespan of spinning innovation in Chapter 2, taking the reader from third-millennium BC spindle whorls to a modern-day American yarn factory. The hours of work involved in spinning yarn are the emphasis of this chapter, together with the life-changing (particularly for women, argues Postrel) innovations that reduced the labour required. Alongside the historical commentary, the author discusses depictions of women spinning. Postrel challenges perceptions of these images as symbolic of domestic submission, subverting this imagery instead to interpret the representations as portraying the heart of productive industry. Images of women spinning, says Postrel, “reflected a fundamental fact of life: without this constant labor, there could be no cloth” (p. 51). This approach echoes arguments made elsewhere for the power and agency that women in some societies derived from cloth production (Hayeur Smith 2020).
While Chapter 3 highlights the mathematics of creating cloth, particularly in woven patterns, and the increased use of knitted fabric in modern mass textile production, Chapter 4 considers how colour has been added to fabric, from ancient Mesopotamia to nineteenth-century global production. In the following chapters, the focus shifts away from manufacture to the economics of fabric, through attention to traders, consumers and innovators. Accessing the subject through the lens of a 4000-year-old cuneiform clay tablet written by a woman creating woollen cloth for long-distance trade, Postrel investigates the commerce of fabric following the economic trail from this Bronze Age tablet through intermediary traders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The political potency of fabrics is addressed in Chapter 6, which deals with consumers. Here, Postrel considers how luxury fabrics helped shape Mongol commercial arteries, and legislation around fabrics and styles of dress in Ming China, Edo Japan and sixteenth century Europe.
Viewing the history of textiles as very much a human story and drawing on global examples, Postrel's volume charts the development of fabrics and their impact on economies, politics and identity across the longue durée, providing an eminently readable and accessible overview of the importance of fabrics to human societies.
Our next volume offers a more focused approach to fabrics, centring on Bronze Age Europe. The textile revolution in Bronze Age Europe aims to highlight innovations in the scientific study of textile production in this period, shifting the focus away from the well-studied Mediterranean and Near Eastern written sources to the archaeological evidence from continental and northern Europe, and the scientific processes that can reveal its secrets. Comprising 14 chapters by scholars from across northern Europe, the volume offers a diverse range of studies not only highlighting new evidence, but also considering how it enhances our understanding of Bronze Age society. Editors Serena Sabatini and Sophie Bergerbrant set the scene in Chapter 1, outlining the aims and parameters of the volume together with an overview of how the following chapters contribute.
Eva Andersson Strand and Marie-Louise Nosch advocate for interdisciplinary approaches to textile research and employ experimental archaeology as one of several methods to understand the tools of wool-textile manufacture. Their investigations reveal that Bronze Age spinners could produce a variety of different types of yarn, making possible a range of textiles from very fine to very coarse; that different looms and different weaving techniques were employed simultaneously at the same site or in the same period; that weaving may have been undertaken not only on warp-weighted looms, but also on archaeologically invisible weaving devices; and that interdisciplinary research may be key to understanding the gap in knowledge between the earliest textual references to wool and the earliest archaeological evidence for wool textiles.
The focus shifts to extant textile evidence in Joanna Słomska and Łukasz Antosik's chapter on Early Iron Age Polish cemeteries. Here, fragmentary evidence of woven fabric is presented, including wool discovered in graves distributed across 20 cemeteries in south-west Poland. The fragments are believed to represent headbands, shrouds or headscarves, and perhaps scraps of other clothing. The authors conclude that the technical level of textile production in this area of Poland in the Early Iron Age was equivalent to earlier Bronze Age production in this area and not commensurate with the more advanced craftworking of the neighbouring Hallstatt, further demonstrating the co-existence of different types of production across northern Europe.
Susanna Harris considers the knowledge that may be gained by investigating fragmentary and friable textiles from Early Bronze Age burial contexts, arguing that they provide “fleeting glimpses into the magnificence of these textile traditions” (p. 154). Addressing questions such as how people used textiles to present bodies in death, the contribution of textiles to the funerary assemblage, and how these materials embodied social networks, Harris considers textiles from 38 burial sites around the UK. The results reveal a previously unidentified dynamic in burial: “through enclosing and covering bodies and objects with textiles, people joined the separate parts of burial assemblages … to present them as wholes” (p. 171).
Concluding reflections are offered by Kristian Kristiansen and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, who draw together the evidence presented for the impact of wool production on Bronze Age European societies. Reflecting on the contributions to the volume, Kristiansen and Sørensen highlight the importance of this research for understanding how the socio-political challenges associated with the wool economy were addressed by Bronze Age societies in Europe. The volume offers diverse perspectives and new insights that have much to offer our understanding of woollen textile production.
Focusing on the Bronze Age Mediterranean, our next book, by Gabriella Longhitano, aims to be the first volume to reconstruct textile activity in Sicily systematically. The six relatively short chapters belie the depth of research behind the volume, which looks beyond the technological aspects of textile production to read, in addition, the various aspects of social and personal identity woven into the cloth. The author is particularly interested in understanding the role of women: their impact on society, their technological choices, and their social and economic roles in society. Undaunted by the lack of preserved textile remains from Sicily, Longhitano makes excellent use of material culture (primarily the tools associated with textile manufacture), iconography in the archaeological record—for example, Greek vase painting and funerary stelae—and documentary evidence from ancient texts, sanctuary records and epigraphy. These sources and their chronological and archaeological contexts are introduced in Chapters 1 and 2.
The volume is structured around evidence from seven sites dating from the thirteenth to fifth century BC, discussion of which forms the focus of Chapters 3 and 4. These are Late Bronze Age–Iron Age settlements at Metapiccola, the Cittadella hill and Sabucina on mainland Sicily, and Lipari—the largest of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily. Archaic-period settlements are represented by the later phases of the Cittadella hill and Sabucina sites, and also Himera, Monte Maranfusa and Monte Polizzo. Chapter 5 discusses the major characteristics and changes in textile traditions in Sicily over the study period, as reflected in the archaeological record of these sites. The author finds an unclear picture of production and manufacture, as evidence varies between sites. What can be drawn out from the evidence is that textile production is more evident from the late seventh century BC, suggesting a significant change in production. At this time, production appears to have been undertaken in domestic buildings but may have produced more than required for household consumption, blurring the distinction between managing a household economy and the production of surplus textiles for exchange.
Key to the changes in production is how existing communities in Sicily adapted to the arrival of Aegean incomers, including the extent to which the production of Greek-style, weft-faced tabby textiles (a plain weave) replaced the traditional Sicilian twill weave (a denser fabric made using a larger number of loom weights), or whether, in fact, weft-faced tabby was already part of the Sicilian textile culture. Having considered the evidence, Longhitano finds that the Sicilian Bronze Age textile tradition was little influenced by Greek culture. Sicilian communities’ choice of textile tools and technologies “was an element of self-representation” and the “mechanisms of transmission in cross-cultural situations were varied and complex” (p. 46). This engaging volume serves not only to present a very useful dataset that will contribute to broader textile studies, but also reveals that while contact with Greek populations significantly affected some aspects of Sicilian material culture and architecture, it did not immediately penetrate established textile traditions.
This broad-ranging volume is dedicated to the late Peter Collingwood, a pre-eminent weaver and teacher. It comprises 11 chapters featuring new research on the subjects that most interested Collingwood. With contributions by scholars from across Europe and North America, the volume is divided into four sections devoted to ‘Tablet weaving’, ‘Sprang’, ‘Braiding and Lace making’, and ‘Spinning’, with subject matter ranging from the Bronze Age to the fifteenth century.
Karina Grömer begins with a report of new archaeological evidence for tablet weaving in Europe. This chapter details well-preserved finds from the salt mines at Hallstatt and Dürrnberg in Austria, which date to c. 1600–400 BC. One of the finds from Dürrnberg, a high-quality woollen textile, is the earliest evidence for colour-patterned tablet weaving in Central Europe. The excellent preservation qualities of the salt means that the coloured threads in the fabrics have remained vibrant and the high-quality colour images in the volume illustrate them beautifully.
Claire Gérentet-de-Saluneaux and Fabienne Médard document a reconstruction of a bourrelet (a plaited woollen band) headdress from Roman-period Antinoöpolis, Egypt. The experiment demonstrates the importance of choosing the appropriate materials, including the correct type of wool. It also proves that the techniques of manufacture deduced from the archaeological evidence were accurate; for example, showing the importance of techniques such as ‘felting’ (spraying the bourrelet with boiling water to open the wool fibres, and then rolling the fabric to create solidity) in the final appearance of the textile.
Section II considers ‘sprang’, a type of weaving that uses only warp threads (with no weft threads), making it flexible and giving it the appearance of netting. Archaeological examples of this type of textile production are investigated by Petra Linscheid (Chapter 5), who considers the technique used to create hairnets decorated with gold tube beads discovered in the Roman Rhineland. These accessories demonstrate not only the spread of Roman fashions to the northern edge of the Empire, but also provide evidence for their manufacture using the sprang technique—otherwise undocumented in the Roman Rhineland. Similar accessories discovered in Roman and early medieval burials at Fayum, Egypt, are discussed by Anne Kwaspen and Kristin South. Their study considers a less common type of hairnet that was made without side seams. Experimental reconstruction of one of these hairnets allowed the authors to recreate a head-covering resembling that depicted in a bust held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Kwaspen and South aim to continue their studies of hairnets preserved at this site to try to understand the significance of their inclusion in burials.
The closing chapter, by Katrin Kania, returns to the first stage of the textile production process to consider variations in spinning techniques. The author provides a detailed summary of the technical aspects of spinning and the archaeological evidence that reveals its development. Results of a handspinning experiment organised by the author reveal that ancient yarns had a higher degree of ‘twist’ than yarn produced by modern spinners. The advantages of a higher twist yarn lie in its durability. It is smooth but tough, difficult to break and is less prone to pilling. Lower twist yarn is favoured for modern fabrics because it is softer, more pliable and provides better insulation. This volume offers a wealth of new research on textiles and the diverse aspects of society that can better be understood through understanding textile production and use.
Alexandra Lester-Makin's book focuses on embroidery in early medieval Britain and Ireland. Taking an integrated approach, the volume aims to explore the significance of embroidery in the archaeological record as material culture and, more broadly, to use embroidery to understand the early medieval world. The first chapter clearly defines the parameters of the study and the theoretical approach taken; this draws on the work of Alfred Gell to use a now well-established object biography approach to the study of material culture. The data and their analyses are unpacked in Chapter 2, which outlines observations of patterns in object types, materials, motifs and stitching. The difficulties inherent in the study of embroidery are also discussed, including preservation and survival issues relating not only to fragments of embroidery, but also to their individual components, such as diverse types of thread.
A case study—the biography of a single object—is included as Chapter 3, which focuses on the Kempston embroidery. This example comprises seven fragments of wool embroidery excavated in the nineteenth century from a seventh-century AD grave. Lester-Makin's hypothesis is that the fragments represent a high-status garment, perhaps originally belonging to a religious individual; the garment was probably recycled because of its perceived power or symbolism, possibly through more than one iteration, ultimately being interred with the individual at death. The object continued its biography post-nineteenth century in a museum and research context, allowing the reconstruction of its story and, through that, the reading of wider social and cultural developments.
Chapter 4 broadens the study to consider how embroidery can be used together with other archaeological evidence to understand the processes of reshaping the early medieval landscape of individual kingdoms into a unified country. Chapter 5 addresses the question of production, including what the embroideries reveal about the materials, techniques and workers involved. This chapter includes a detailed section on the evidence for women as the sole producers of embroidery in England and Ireland during the early medieval period.
Lester-Makin's research demonstrates that beyond being simply a decorative form of artistic expression, embroidery had a fundamental role as a material expression of early medieval society. It was a valuable tool of expression for both politics and religion, contained markers of identity and status, and conveyed messages of relationships and authority. During the seventh century AD, the growth in demand from the newly established churches drove occupational specialisation so that embroidery moved away from being used simply to embellish goods for personal consumption; instead it was undertaken by trained workers. The author concludes that embroidery produced in Britain and Ireland was “not simply a craft worked by elite women; it was an art form as highly regarded as metalwork, sculpture and manuscript illumination” (p. 147). This volume shows how much information is contained within these fragmentary embroideries when they are properly read.
Continuing the theme of how materials and technologies can reflect social practices and how crafting embodies multiple meanings and significance is Crafting the world, in which Clare Burke and Suzanne Spencer-Wood bring together a group of diverse and international scholars to reflect on the process of crafting materiality, “to consider how not only individuals but their social relations, accompanying power dynamics, and world view are mutually constituted through crafting” (p. 2).
The volume, which has a global geographical scope and features case studies from the Bronze Age to the present, comprises 14 chapters grouped into four sections dealing with ‘Reconstructing ancient craft practice through archaeology and experiment’; ‘Reconceptualizing crafting and identity’; ‘Teaching, learning and experiencing crafts’; and ‘Socio-politics and the changing meanings of crafting in modern societies’. The editors are clear from the outset that their aim is to draw out the physical, psychological, social and political engagement in the production of objects, rather than the technological aspects of manufacture, and in this way access the phenomenological experiences of crafting.
Archaeological case studies are represented in the first half of the volume, with the second half focusing on contemporary reconceptualisation of crafting. Metalwork is the subject of the first two chapters, with Rob Lee considering how Bronze Age metal tools were transformative in that they were ‘made for making’. Lee argues that these tools manifested both the means and the idea of craft, and that they were part of a cyclical process in which the world was remade in both physical and metaphysical terms, with the tools created continuing the cycle. Also attending to the metalsmith is E. Giovanna Fregni, who considers how metal objects embody the actions of the smiths who made them, allowing other craftspeople to read their production through the detailed techniques recorded in objects.
Resonating with the other volumes reviewed here is Chapter 4, by Ulla Zagal-Mach Wolfe, which returns to textiles to assess the beginnings of sail production in Scandinavia. Exploring the potential of actor-network theory, Wolfe considers the relationship between crafting and social change in ways that we can see echoed in the other volumes. This collection makes a compelling case for crafting to be viewed as a performative process—one which allows the emergence of changed artefacts, people and societies. Collectively, the papers present persuasive evidence that “processes and experiences of crafting are fundamental to human identity, social interaction and culture” (p. 12). Crafting the world is an excellent volume that challenges the reader to reconceptualise crafting as more than a manufacturing process and to view it instead as a transformative and interactive performance.
Indeed, collectively, the volumes reviewed in this NBC ask us to look again at crafting, and in particular at textiles—the often ‘invisible’ evidence for a range of social indicators. Relatively poorly represented due to their slim chances of survival in the archaeological record, textiles are made doubly invisible because they are often taken for granted. These volumes reveal the enormous investments of time, resource and skill that were required simply to clothe a society, before considering surplus cloth for exchange or to produce sails for a Viking fleet, and the ways that meeting these requirements transformed both individuals and societies.
This list includes all books received between 1 November 2021 and 31 December 2021. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle, however, have not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
