Textiles are everywhere, our homes are full of them and we wear them constantly, they have a place in most aspects of our lives and since pre-historic times economies have depended on them. Textiles were such an important part of the economy of the Sumerians that the women and girls who had worked as weavers were buried with their spindles as a mark of respect. Textiles continue to play an important role in modern economies but I doubt if all the high street companies who outsource their textile making to places like Indochina, where they pollute local rivers with impunity, hold any such respect for the people on whose labor they grow rich.
Since coming to France I wrote an essay on textiles in the Ancient Near East for a short course I took with Dr. Diana Stein at Birkbeck University in London. This has encouraged me to consider more closely the art of textile making and the representation of textiles in art. As a subject of research in archaeology textiles, being perishable objects, were almost ignored until relatively recent times. As a craft, weaving is older than that of pottery making and has much to tell us about ancient societies. The archaeologist Elizabeth Barber having noticed that the decoration on ancient pottery looked as if they had been copied from weaving patterns, a subject she was well versed in from an early age, recognized that the level of sophistication reached by ancient people in textile making and patterning was far greater than previously supposed. In her research she revealed much that is of interest about the lives and work of early women, in particular the role they played in the spinning of fibers and the weaving of textiles which was carried out within the home and enabled women to look after children at the same time.
In the Upper Paleolithic or last phase of the Old Stone Age humans appear to have had a burst of creativity producing new tools such as awls, pins and chisel-like objects. They began to sculpt animals and humans on ivory and bone and paint on cave walls. They made beads for decoration and they invented string, needles and sewing. That some of the thread then in use came from twisting natural fibers comes from a bone sculpture of a “Venus Figure” which was found at Lespugue in France and dates to around 20,000B.C. In this image of a woman wearing a string skirt associated with child bearing the sculptor shows us the twists in the individual strings. The earliest example of twisted cord was found fossilized in the caves of Lascaux in 15,000 BCE.
Initially plant fibers including flax, hemp and nettle were used but following the domestication of sheep in 8,000 BCE., and the ensuing selection for long-haired sheep, wool fibers appeared. Textiles made from wool are represented in the art work of the time. Some of the figurines from Ancient Mesopotamia in the Louvre are dressed in woolen garments with the sheep’s tail visible at the back.
Loom-woven textiles date from around this Early Neolithic period. Much has been learned about the early craft of weaving by studying stone loom weights which have survived in profusion and also from the remains of metal spindles. The earliest preserved loom dates to medieval times and the first extant wool textiles are early Bronze Age.
The Minoan frescoes at Knossos in Crete attest to the fact that by the Middle Bronze Age the craft of weaving had reached such a stage that intricate patterned textiles were being produced. Scholars have written about the textile trade that existed from at least 1,900 BCE., between the Old Assyrian capital of Ashur and Anatolia. Thousands of cuneiform tablets discovered in the village of Kultepe proved to be records of Assyrian traders who established themselves near Kanesh in Cappadocia. These merchants traded tin and textiles for silver, gold and copper. Their wives who produced and embellished the textiles looked after the business in Ashur while their husbands were away, often for extended periods. In the Late Bronze Age Textiles were amongst the luxury goods, exchanged as gifts amongst a brotherhood of kings which existed across an area that extended from Egypt, Greece and Cyprus to Syria, Mesopotamia and Iran.
Whereas the frescoes of the Minoans maintain much of their color affording us insight into the beauty of the patterned textiles produced, color has long faded from the stone reliefs of the Assyrian Palaces leaving only tantalizing traces. Cuneiform records however give some insight into the natural colors used to dye wool and linen but in the Ashurbanipal Exhibition at the British Museum the artist has left us a record of a colored textile garment on a torso, which is partially painted and also shows the grid that the artist worked to.
The textile industry was not of course the exclusive preserve of women and men were involved as dyers and fullers. When textile making became part of the palace industries the role of supervisor was generally assigned to men. Textile embellishments included the use of gold, silver and semi-precious stones, as well as embroidery. Then as now, dress was an indicator of social status and ethnicity and only the elite could afford luxury textiles. Variations in draping could denote gender and dress could indicate a person’s place of origin or their occupation. Luxury textiles were also used to dress statues of the gods and goddesses during ritual celebrations. The earliest complete garment found by archaeologists is an Egyptian linen shirt dated to c.3000 BCE.
The introduction of animal fibers such as wool and silk provided better insulation than bast or plant fibers and they were easier to dye. Color and pattern provided increasing non-verbal methods of conveying social signals by way of textiles and dress. In Egypt, where linen rather than wool was predominantly used, clothing remained relatively simple and social signals were mostly carried by jewelry. Textiles and clothing have for millennia acted as a means of conveying non-verbal messages in social settings. Clothing can give information about a woman’s marital status i.e. the wearing or non-wearing of a veil, which can also indicate mourning. In more modern times clothing has carried more direct indications of a person’s political stance or emotional state as printed on tee-shirts or in the case of Melania Trump on the back of a jacket. Messages of political protest have been discreetly woven into textiles as demonstrated in the exhibition “I Object” at the British Museum. Minoan women wore a “sacred knot” at the back of the neck which indicated that she was in the service of the deity. Social rank can be encoded in textiles via symbols, design, color and embellishments. The Roman Emperor alone had the right to wear a garment entirely of purple. Henry VIII’s Acts of Apparel determined that only the King and his immediate family could wear purple silk or gold garments while Dukes and Marquises could only use threads of gold woven into their garments. These and other sumptuary laws were introduced to ensure that the social balance was maintained and like laws in general were used as a means of exercising control. Cloth can also be used to invoke magic with the rose being an ancient symbol of protection, the bird and egg symbols of fertility, and egg-layers such as snakes, frogs and fish symbolizing wealth and fertility. Decorative elements placed at neck openings and cuffs of sleeves acted as deterrents to demons at a time when they were believed to cause illness and the neck opening of a tunic found in Tutankhamun’s tomb is in the form of an ankh or long-life symbol.
Curious to know a little more about the actual process of weaving I booked myself onto a five day weaving course with Stacey Harvey-Brown at The Loom Room https://www.theloomroom.co.uk/ in the Val d’Albret near Nérac in South West France. Sustained by comfortable surroundings, good food and wine, I managed to produce a passable piece of textile and learned something about setting up a loom warp, the design of which presents endless possibilities. Just being surrounded by the wooden structure of the looms and the array of colorful threads was a pleasure in itself and the sensation of beating down the wefts while watching the textile grow was most satisfying. It was lovely to see firsthand what modern day hand-weavers are producing and to see these ancient skills continue to prosper in an overly industrialized world.
References:
Barber, Elizabeth W: Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, Pub. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, London. (1995)
Guralnick, Eleanor: Neo-Assyrian Patterned Fabrics, (2004).
Hall, R. : Egyptian Textiles, Shire Publications Ltd. (2001).
Shaw M.C. & Chapin, A.P.: Woven Threads: Patterned Textiles of the Aegean Bronze Age, Oxbow Books. (2016)
Wild, J.P: Textiles in Archaeology, Shire Publications Ltd. (2003).
