Textiles and clothing are fundamental aspects of everyday life in the past but are often overlooked in archaeology. Fortunately, this is changing, as witnessed by three new books, reviewed here. Two deal with the beginnings of clothing and textile production, but in different ways; the third contains contributions reflecting on this theme. The monograph by Ian Gilligan—a polyhistory of medicine, psychology, prehistoric archaeology and biological anthropology—presents new theories on the emergence of clothing and textiles in a sustained argument; the two other books, edited volumes comprising 29 papers by textile specialists, each present new research on different aspects of ancient textiles and clothing. In several cases, authors disagree, enhancing the value of the debates, and adding to our understanding of the impact on society of ancient textile production and clothing.
In Climate, clothing, and agriculture in prehistory, Gilligan traces the emergence of clothing through climate changes over millennia. Using genetic studies of lice, he argues that hominids became naked 3–4 million years ago, before the beginning of the Pleistocene, and goes on to explore how humans respond to cold and warm weather. He points out that some groups, such as Indigenous Australians preferred nudity, and only donned what Gilligan terms “simple clothing” (p. 61), loose cloaks, usually made from animal skins when it was cold.
To make simple clothing, scrapers are required; tracing these tools in the archaeological record, Gilligan finds that scrapers appear first in China 1.4 million years ago, were widely used around the world 800 000 years go, and are evident in Europe 500 000 years ago. It follows that simple clothing was used by Homo erectus and Homo Heidelbergiensis, and by Neanderthals who developed specialised scrapers.
Complex clothing, i.e. multi-layered fitted garments were a later development that made it possible to survive in colder environments. Making these garments requires more tools. Toolkits for complex clothing, i.e. scrapers, blades and awls, are found at Homo sapiens sites in Africa around 75 000 years ago, at a time when the global climate cooled. Gilligan argues that this indicates the advent of complex clothing, and that this made it possible for Homo sapiens to migrate to Europe and northern China and remain there when the climate cooled again around 45 000 years ago. Eyed needles appear later, and are common on sites dating to the coldest part of the last Ice Age. Gilligan further argues that the Châtelperronian industry that includes blades and bone awls signifies that Neanderthals also began using complex clothing. Gilligan suggests rising temperatures and increased humidity at the end of the Ice Age caused a change from skins to woven textiles; he goes on to argue that the need for fibres for textiles was the main reason for Neolithisation: sheep and goats were domesticated for their wool rather than for meat and cereals were grown for fodder rather than food. In this, he turns much well-established knowledge upside down.
Gilligan's book is very well written, making it a compelling read as well as a challenging and thought-provoking one. I am sure it will inspire scholars to consider the evolution of mankind and the role of clothing in Neolithisation in a new light. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, Gilligan's account of the emergence of clothing is convincing; his knowledge of textiles, however, is limited and this part of his argument is problematic. The terms ‘weaving’ and ‘woven textiles’ are used indiscriminately and cover anything made of fibres including rope, netting, basketry and matting. This conflates a wide range of different technologies, each with a long history. ‘Textiles’ may be used as a general term for cordage and for flat, flexible fabrics in netting or twining. The art of weaving, however, is a later development, and ‘woven textiles’ is a term not to be confused either with non-woven textiles, or matting and basketry. Gilligan concludes that “the technology of weaving was not new—weaving goes back a long way” (p. 129), but only one of the many finds he lists in support of this statement is in fact woven. He also dismisses established research on the evolution of sheep's wool, claiming it is “simply false” that wild sheep have no wool (p. 147), and arguing that wool was the main reason for the domestication of sheep. In this regard, the papers in First textiles offer a very different view.
Based on conferences held in 2014 and 2015, First textiles consists of 20 articles investigating the tools and methods of textile production in Europe and the Mediterranean from the Late Palaeolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Most papers focus on the Mediterranean; three papers deal with Central Europe, and Northern Europe is represented by only one.
The Introduction, by editors Małgorzata Siennicka, Lorenz Rahmstorf and Agata Ulanowska, presents the research project on which the book is based and offers an excellent overview of current evidence for early fibre technologies. Many are the same as those listed by Gilligan; here, however, they are grouped by their different technologies with clear distinctions drawn between the broader terms ‘textiles’ and ‘woven textiles’. It is also emphasised that plant fibres were used for all the earliest ‘textile’ products, with sheep's wool introduced much later.
The type of fibres used for early textiles is a recurrent question. Sabine Karg, Axel Diederichsen and Simon Jeppson's paper presents a pilot study on the domestication of flax in Europe, comparing sizes of wild and domesticated flax seed from archaeological finds and modern samples. The papers by Janet Levy on Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic garments from the southern Levant, and Ulla Mannering on the earliest cloth culture in Denmark, also emphasise the use of plant fibres, suggesting that wool is not used until the Bronze Age. In both regions the earliest textiles are non-woven. Textile tools such as spindle whorls and loom weights are also later phenomena; in the southern Levant, spindle whorls appear during the pottery Neolithic, and in Denmark, loom weights are not known until the Late Neolithic. This is further elaborated on in papers by Catarina Costeira and Rui Mataloto and Miriam de Diego et al. on textiles and textile tools from the Iberian Peninsula. Textiles dating to the fourth to second millennia BC are all made of plant fibres except for a woollen cap dated to the second millennium BC. Botanical data from La Draga in Spain indicate that nettle was used for rope and perhaps textiles. María Irene Ruiz de Haro's paper discusses ‘spinning bowls’ around the Mediterranean. This is an artefact type associated with the spinning (or rather plying) of flax. Appearing first in the Chalcolithic, it remained in use in the Eastern Mediterranean until the end of the Bronze Age, but is still evident in the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age. Ruiz de Haro links its disappearance from the Eastern Mediterranean to a change from splicing and plying flax fibres to draft spinning.
Three papers by Fabienne Médard, Johanna Banck-Burgess and Karina Grömer deal with the rich finds of Neolithic textiles and textile tools in the Alpine region. The textile remains consist of strings and cordage, netting, twining and woven textiles made of bast fibres from various trees and flax. Textile tools consist mainly of spindle whorls and loom weights in various shapes and weights that change over time. Médard, summarising many years of research on Swiss finds, argues that a new, lighter type of spindle whorl appearing in the Final Neolithic reflects the emergence of wool as a clothing fibre. Banck-Burgess presents a new research project on textile manufacture in the pile dwellings of southern Germany. One of the research questions is whether flax was first used for fishing equipment and only later for weaving. Grömer gives a brief overview of textiles and textile tools in Central Europe during the fourth and third millennia BC, again emphasising that tree bast was the main raw material for cordage, matting, basketry and twining. Spindle whorls from Central Europe differ in size and weight, and a row of 35 loom weights testify to the presence of a warp-weight loom in a building dated to c. 3150 BC. Grömer's main focus, however, is on crescent-shaped loom weights that she finds work well for techniques such as warp-twining and band weaving, and even for weaving large textiles on a loom.
Ana Grabundžija explores the meanings and functionality of Eneolithic spindle whorls from the Pannonian Plain. Like Médard and Grömer, she finds chronological differences. Whorls from the Middle Eneolithic are smaller and lighter, supposedly reflecting the introduction of wool; in the Late Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age, whorls were very heavy and apparently used for plant fibres.
A large funerary shroud from an Early Bronze Age Yamnaya mound in eastern Romania is discussed by Neculai Bolohan and Ciprian Cătălin Lazanu. It consists of several layers of matting woven in tabby and is believed to be made from plant fibres. Similar mats are reported from several other burials in the area including Moldova and Bulgaria. The social context of Late Chalcolithic textile production in Bulgaria is explored by Petya Hristova who suggests that some degree of specialisation was taking place.
Four papers deal with Early Bronze Age Greece and the Aegean. Two are by Agata Ulanowska who reports on a series of experiments with different types of loom weights and explores the question of band weaving. Giorgos Gavales surveys textile tools from two sites in the Cyclades, finding a range of different spindle whorls but no loom weights, indicating specialisation in yarn production. Sophia Vakirtzi investigates the connection between fibre crafts and social complexity in the Aegean, finding a shift from larger to smaller spindle whorls. She suggests that yarn production was organised in small units on a household level and transformed into a dynamic industry during the third millennium BC.
The last two papers report on textile tools from Anatolia. Deniz Sarı presents tools from three Early Bronze Age sites in north-western Anatolia, while Romina Laurito investigates continuity and change in textile production during the fourth and third millennia BC at Arslantepe in eastern Anatolia.
First textiles is an attractive book bringing together data on early textiles and textile production from all over Europe. Papers on the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans are particularly welcome, as little from these areas has previously been published in English. The papers are somewhat uneven. Only a few authors mention splicing, which is now recognised to have been the main method of producing flax yarn throughout the period in question. Technical terms are inconsistent, dates are mostly given as BC, occasionally as cal BC, and some papers do not mention absolute dates at all; a little more attention to these things would have been helpful, as would a timeline aligning the different parts of Europe and the Mediterranean.
Ancient textiles, modern science II brings together the proceedings of the European Textile Forum, a yearly gathering of craftspeople, technicians, historians and archaeologists working on archaeological and historical textiles. The nine papers have a broad chronological and thematic range. Some deal with terminology, notation systems or factual evidence of specific techniques, others discuss how garments were worn or focus on dyeing techniques.
Ruth Gilbert's paper offers a very useful terminology on non-woven textile structures and techniques, some of which are predecessors to woven textiles. They include plaiting, linking, looping, knotted nets, various forms of interlooping, sprang (a technique for openwork textiles), interlacing and interknotting, and twining. Gilbert's text is succinct, well-illustrated and very relevant. Harma Piening also deals with non-woven textiles, presenting a new notation system for nalbinding. This is a technique that was used to make items such as socks and mittens in Antiquity; later replaced by knitting, it remained in use in places such as Northern Scandinavia for specific items. Piening's notation system will be useful for specialists and practitioners, but is, perhaps, too detailed for the general reader.
Heather Hopkins's paper on lost weaving tablets questions whether such aforementioned textile tools are sufficiently well known by excavators to be recognised. Hopkins argues that, as finds of tablet-woven textiles rarely coincide with discoveries of weaving tablets, the identification of tablet-woven textiles may be based on “the application of reverse engineering from a modern assumption” (p. 32). Although she may have a point, her find lists are outdated and do not include important finds of early tablet-woven braids such as Hochdorf and Verucchio, or recent studies of textile tools with weaving tablets pre-dating Verucchio.
Julia B. Krug-Ochmann examines an assemblage of Roman leather underwear, termed briefs, from the collections of the Museum of London and the Landesmuseum in Trier, Germany. They fall into two groups, each of which has been reconstructed and tested on living models. One consists of a front made from a piece of triangular, openwork leather, with the reverse made from netted laces. Experiments showed that the briefs were comfortable to wear, and the lacing easy to manage. Another type proved more difficult, proving ill-fitting on adults and leading Krug-Ochmann to suggest that it could be “nappy pants” (p. 56) for toddlers.
The paper by Beatrix Nutz revises an earlier interpretation, as a brassiere, of an item of clothing found in refuse layers at Lengberg Castle, Austria, dated to the fifteenth century. Closer examination shows that it was a headdress that appears in contemporaneous depictions of both men and women. It included a piece of sprang that Nutz argues must have been common in Central Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Petra Linscheid presents an early Byzantine tunic with embroidered decoration, an unusual phenomenon as this was normally carried out as tapestry weaving. Briefly reviewing other embroidered items from Late Roman and Early Byzantine Egypt, Linscheid establishes two chronological groups and discusses whether patterns were transferred by pattern sheets or drawing.
The final three papers deal with various aspects of dyeing in Antiquity. Katrin Kania and Sabine Ringenberg (with contributions from Sabine Schrenck) discuss Late Antique resist-dyeing techniques, focusing on the method and the substances that may have been applied to create the desired patterns. Katrin Kania, Heather Hopkins and Sabine Ringenberg investigate the influence of metal kettle materials on mordanting and dyeing; and the final paper by Heather Hopkins examines the supply of water to the dyeing workshop of Pompeii and the effects of hard and soft water. While the findings of each of these papers are interesting, it is conspicuous that none of them refer to important recent works such as D. Cardon's (Reference Cardon2007) authoritative book, Natural dyes, on dyeing techniques including mordants and mordanting. Published proceedings of the Dyes in History and Archaeology (e.g. Kirby Reference Kirby2001, Reference Kirby2002, Reference Kirby2003, Reference Kirby2005, Reference Kirby2008) and PURPUREAE VESTES conferences (e.g. Alfaro et al. Reference Alfaro, Wild and Costa2004, Reference Alfaro, Brun, Borgard and Benoit2011, Reference Alfaro, Tellenbach and Ortiz2014; Alfaro & Karali Reference Alfaro and Karali2008; Busana et al. Reference Busana, Gleba, Meo and Tricomi2018; Ortiz el al. Reference Ortiz, Alfaro, Turell and Martinez2016) are not cited either, making the papers on dyeing appear self-contained and not quite up to date.
The chronological and thematic diversity of Ancient textiles, modern science II makes it rather unclear which readership it aims to serve. The title suggests papers presenting research using the latest scientific methods such as aDNA or isotope studies that have produced spectacular results when applied to ancient textiles, but this is not the case. Instead, focus is on a practical approach to archaeological and historical textiles. Like First textiles, Ancient textiles, modern science II has been accepted into the Copenhagen Centre for Textile Research's Ancient Textiles Series, and contains important new insights into how experimental research and craft knowledge can add to archaeological understanding of ancient textiles.
The three books demonstrate that ancient textiles and clothing is a vibrant field of archaeological research. New data and methods are presented and well-established knowledge challenged, opening new avenues for further work.
