Exploring Ancient Textiles

Alistair Dickey is currently a doctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool. His research interests include Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age textiles from ancient Egypt. He has excavated at sites in Egypt, Cyprus, Italy, Kazakhstan and Northern Ireland. Margarita Gleba is Assistant Professor at Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy, and an Affiliated Researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. She has previously held research and teaching positions at University College London, University of Cambridge, the University of Copenhagen and Rutgers University. The author or editor of a number of books, she is also a former Editor of Archaeological Textiles Review. Sarah Hitchens is currently a doctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include textiles and processing implements from ancient Egypt and Nubia. She has excavated in Egypt, Mexico, Sudan and the UK. Gabriella Longhitano is an archaeologist working in Italy and Crete. She specialises in ancient textile production and related social practices. She holds a PhD in Archaeology (2019) from the University of Liverpool. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Cultural Heritage at the University of Catania.

List of Contributors and Editors

 

Preface

Ian Shaw

 

Ancient tools and textiles: Thinking outside the box

Gabriella Longhitano, Sarah Hitchens, Alistair Dickey and Margarita Gleba

 

Part I: Application of Analytical Techniques on Tools

1. Preliminary remarks on some wear traces on Egyptian and Levantine textile tools

Chiara Spinazzi-Lucchesi

2. Visible tools, invisible craft: an analysis of textile tools in Iron Age Cornwall

Lewis Ferrero

3. Tools and their products: spindle whorls decorated by yarn impressions from Iron Age Donja Dolina in Northern Bosnia and Herzegovina

Julia Kramberger

4. Shears in the ancient world: A comparison between the Iberian culture of southern Spain and Roman culture in northern Italy

Patricia Rosell Garrido and Fabio Spagiari

 

Part II: Application of Analytical Techniques on Textiles and Fibres

5. Early fibre production in the west coast of South America: The case of plant-fibre technology of the south coast of Peru

Camila Alday

6. Humans, wool textiles, chronology and provenance: a case study from the Orenburg region in the southern Urals, Russia

Natalia Shishlina, Olga Orfinskaya, Daria Kiseleva, Anna Mamonova, Lidia Kuptsova, and Tomasz Goslar

7. Using textiles to reconstruct looms: burial shrouds from Deir el-Banat (Fayum, Egypt)

Olga Orfinsaya and Darya Klyuchnikova

8. EDS analysis of Neolithic to Early Dynastic Egyptian woven cloth in the Bolton Museum collection

Alistair Dickey

9. A post-excavation study using the archaeothanatological approach to determine the possibility of wrapping in Early Bronze Age burials

Eleanor James

 

Part III: Cultural and Personal Identity

10. Beyond textile production: What textile tools can tell us about networks of craftspeople and cultural identity

Gabriella Longhitano

11. Textiles and human needs. A discussion of textile production in the Hallstatt Culture

Karina Grömer

12. Textile tools and textiles from the ninth–eighth century BC necropolis of Incoronata (Basilicata, Italy): Evidence for culture, status and specialisation in south Italian indigenous community

Francesco Meo

13. Translating sailcloth into raw materials, land, and labour

Lise Bender Jørgensen

 

Afterword

Lin Foxhall