The Competition of Fibres

Early Textile Production in Western Asia, South-east and Central Europe (10,000-500BCE)

Wolfram Schier, Susan Pollock

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789254303
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here. Contributions investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe. The importance of wool in considerations of early textiles is due to at least two factors. First, both wild as well as some domesticated sheep are characterized by a hairy rather than a woolly coat. This raises the question of when and where woolly sheep emerged, a question that has not up to now been resolvable by genetic or other biological analyses. Second, wool as a fiber has played a major role both economically and socially in both western Asian and European societies from as early as the 3rd millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, and it continues to do so, in different ways, up to the modern day. Despite the importance of wool as a fiber resource contributors demonstrate clearly that its development and use can only be properly addressed in the context of a consideration of other fibers, both plant and animal. Only within a framework that takes into account historically and regionally variable strategies of procurement, processing, and the products of different types of fibers is it possible to gain real insights into the changing roles played by fibers and textiles in the lives of people in different places and times in the past. With relatively rare, albeit sometimes spectacular exceptions, archaeological contexts offer only poor conditions of preservation for textiles. As a result, archaeologists are dependent on indirect or proxy indicators such as textile tools (e.g., loom weights, spindle whorls) and the analysis of faunal remains to explore a range of such proxies and methods by which they may be analyzed and evaluated in order to contribute to an understanding of fiber and textile production and use in the past.

1

Introduction

Wolfram Schier and Susan Pollock

Early textile production was linked to raw material procurement strategies. Fibre treatment and processing depend greatly on both the nature and the quality of the resources used as well as on the desired end products. Fortunately, the different modes of exploitation and use leave recognisable traces in the archaeological record. Studies of textile production processes provide various strands of evidence for the investigation of technological changes.

The initial inspiration for our work in the Topoi Research Group that gave rise to the conference behind this volume was to investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and south-eastern Europe. Its major focus on one particular raw material, wool, restricted the potential to address specific factors that condition the dynamics of raw material usage within wider fibre repertoires and selection opportunities. However, as the collected papers here show so clearly, such a question cannot be adequately addressed without devoting attention to the usage of other sorts of fibres and the history of textiles more generally.

Acknowledging this raises the question of defining the notion ‘textile’ more generally. Usually we think of woven cloth, taking the technique of weaving as being both the most widespread and (supposedly) oldest one. Textiles, however, include not only flat fabrics, but also string, yarns, ropes and nets. Importantly, these ‘linear textiles’ are attested archaeologically long before cloth, and even in hunter-gatherer societies prior to the Neolithic. Making these textiles involved techniques such as looping, knotting, twining and splicing, all of which can claim a much older history than weaving.

Due to the scarcity of direct evidence in the form of preserved textiles, weaving is generally assumed to have been practised based on the occurrence of loom weights, which turn up much later (Late Neolithic in SW Asia, Middle Neolithic in SE Europe). Recent research, however, shows that after frequent use in the Middle and Late Neolithic cultures of the Balkans, loom weights disappear for almost one millennium from the archaeological record of SE Europe,1 suggesting that simpler versions of a portable loom were used by more mobile, pastoral communities that do not leave any archaeological traces.2

Shamir notes that the introduction of looms would allow a more mechanised form of production. Their appearance in the southern Levant in the Chalcolithic went hand-in-hand with a marked increase in the use of spindle whorls, and hence presumably with an intensification of thread and yarn production. For Neolithic Greece, Sarri proposes that the adoption of the warp-weighted loom was associated with the introduction of wool.

Just as the techniques used to produce textiles and the form that they took are far more varied than attention to cloth alone would suggest, the contributions to this volume also point to the wide variety of fibres used. Flax and wool are well known, as are their distinct properties and requirements as well as the steps involved in turning the raw material into usable fibres. Less attention has been paid to the use of other vegetal fibres, such as hemp and nettle, which are widely witnessed in the archaeobotanical record by their seeds and/or pollen, but rarely identified as preserved fibre or imprint.

Probably the most underestimated plant fibre is bast, which can be acquired from a wide range of tree species, each with their own properties and requirements for processing. As several contributions to this volume show (Banck-Burgess, Karg, Reichert), tree bast is a very versatile raw material that can be processed into a variety of one- and two-dimensional textiles. It is the predominant type of fibre in the earliest waterlogged sites in central Europe from the late 5th millennium onwards. The lack of direct evidence for bast fibres in south-eastern Europe and western Asia may be in part a matter of preservation – there are no excavated contexts comparable to those of the lake dwellings – but it may also be related, at least in western Asia, to the limited supply of suitable trees.

Among the animal fibres, of course, wool is the primary one, but the use of goat hair is also attested and, as discussed in the contribution by Levy, camel hair must be taken into account for the arid regions of south-western and central Asia.

Despite the tremendous pace of progress in palaeogenetic research in recent years, until now the loci where fur/fleece growth is genetically coded in the sheep genome have not unambiguously been identified. Despite new insights into the relevant mutation process in recent genetics,3 it still remains one of the great challenges for palaeogenetics to directly identify the woolly sheep based on aDNA extracted from archaeozoological material. For the time being, the question where, when and how often this genetic mutation occurred (independently?) must remain open. So far, (indirect) genetic evidence from central Europe offers no indication that woolly sheep were introduced from western Asia, but rather probably developed and were selected independently (Nikulina and Schmölke).

In most archaeological contexts, textiles are poorly preserved, if at all, and hence many archaeological studies of fibres and textiles rely on indirect indicators, especially tools. This was also the reason why the Textile Revolution Group applied a multiproxy approach (Schier), combining several strands of indirect evidence in order to track moments of change and innovation in the early production of textiles.

Tools used for textile production are spindle whorls, which are especially common in the archaeological record, and, where applicable, loom weights, but also needles, shuttles and tools for processing raw fibres, such as flax combs. What has been less systematically studied are impressions and pseudomorphs of textiles, which may not permit fibre identification but do offer information on techniques of plying, weaving, etc.

In general, ethnographic and experimental studies have shown that certain tools and fibres are better suited for particular uses, and there are tendencies for specific kinds of fibres or tools to be used for specific products. Apparently, however, there are few absolutes – an expert spinner, weaver and textile producer is able to adapt tools and fibres for desired uses. Recent analogies suggest a considerable overlap in the relations between tool morphology and functional specialisation.

Two PhD projects within the Textile Revolution Group focused explicitly on spindle-whorl morphology (Schoch and Grabundžija) and were able to demonstrate remarkable and hitherto unrecognised differences in the weights and formal properties of spindle whorls between SW Asia and SE Europe. Despite the ambiguity of morphological variability, their results point to an earlier onset in the processing of short staple fibres (wool?) in SW Asia, and, one millennium later, a much wider variation of weights and proportions of SE European spindle whorls, suggesting simultaneous processing of both early wool and long vegetal fibres (flax?) in the 4th millennium.

In her PhD dissertation, Schoch has argued that wool fibres were first used long before a wool industry based on long-staple fibres developed, and hence well before an intensification of sheep husbandry is visible in the zooarchaeological record on the basis of age profiles as well as changing sizes and breeds of sheep. The increasing frequency of spindle whorls in the later 7th millennium might be an effect of weaving, which would raise the demand for spun yarn significantly, as she suggests. The high degree of standardisation in whorl parameters in SW Asia, however, makes it rather difficult to track the suspected growth in importance of wool with greater time resolution based on this kind of indirect evidence (Schoch and Grabundžija).

Becker, Benecke, Küchelmann and Suhrbier present the first results of the analysis of a very large body of published osteological data, which was collected by the Textile Revolution team. Sex and age distributions of sheep bones display considerable variability in husbandry strategies, both in SW Asia and SE Europe, but no clear linear trend towards specialised wool production. In both areas, however, a statistically significant rise in the average size of sheep can be observed – in SW Asia it occurs between 4500 and 4000 cal BC, in SE Europe about one millennium later (3500–2500 cal BC). This could be indicative of a new breed or phenotype of sheep, possibly bearing a woolly fleece, as the authors suggest.

The chronology of fibre use is one of the most challenging tasks in the archaeology of early textiles. The scarcity of preserved textiles makes it difficult, if not impossible, to search for ‘the oldest’ evidence for a specific kind of fibre or processing technique. Besides, it is not solely a matter of when a specific fibre such as wool was first used, but rather a question of how and with what intensity. Intensity can refer to either the production of the raw material – e.g. husbandry of sheep – or of textiles, and may in turn become part of the production and control of wealth and labour (Nelson); it is often connected with specialisation (Schrakamp).

Several contributions also discuss the social dimensions of early textile production. Although archaeological evidence may not always be amenable to specifying gender, the possibilities of gendered associations in textile production and/or in portions of the production process should not be ignored. They may be of particular salience when new fibres, tools, and techniques are introduced as well as when these activities were intensified.

It has long been known from well-studied text corpora from 3rd millennium BC Mesopotamia that women played a major role in textile production in large workshops (Breniquet, Schrakamp). Such evidence should not simply be generalised. Thus, in an ethnographic example from Oman, Levy shows that the fibres and tools used as well as the form of the textiles produced may vary by gender.

Social dimensions of textiles pertain not only to their production, but also to their use and perception within the social group. In addition to the possibility that the early uses of clothing were connected to prestige rather than being solely utilitarian (Breniquet), it is clear that cloth and clothing, including the fibres of which they were made, but also their weaves, elaboration, etc., were significant contributors to social expression (Grömer). It is widely assumed that wool, owing to its greater ability to take up dyes, provides far more possibilities for colourful patterns and, thus, distinction along social gradients and group identities. While this holds true for cloth and costumes composed of different fabrics, it is unlikely to have been the case for most linear textiles, such as rope, string, nets, etc., which were mostly intended for utilitarian usages.

There is also a temporal dimension in the social meaning of textiles, since fibre usage turns plant and animal products into material that can be kept for many years, whether in the form of processed fibres or textiles (Reichert). In a way, textiles could be regarded a ‘secondary product’ in a different sense – one that prolongs the potential usage of plants and animals beyond their lifetime. The potential to stockpile fibres and/or textiles can contribute to wealth accumulation as well as allowing a degree of flexibility in the scheduling of tasks.

The somewhat provocative title for the workshop, Competition of Fibres, was chosen under the influence of results from the research of A. Grabundžija and S. Karg, which suggested an intensification of both flax cultivation and wool production during the later 4th millennium in central Europe. The high variability of spindle-whorl weights and proportions during this period points to a wide range of different fibres and fabrics being produced in contemporaneous, increasingly specialised communities. Karg argues for a differentiation of flax cultivated for oil vs. linen during the second half of the 4th millennium, supported by the occurrence of distinct metric clusters of flax seeds retrieved from lake dwellings in SW Germany and Switzerland.

In general, however, the various case studies presented here point to complementarity rather than competition, with different fibres better suited for different products, sometimes used by different groups and involving different knowledge, organisation and skills (Ulanowska).

In some specific cases, the adoption of a new fibre such as wool may have led to substitutions for previous fibre usages (Grömer, Breniquet). This seems often to represent a social distinction – e.g. in Mesopotamia linen became associated with the gods and kings.4 Over time some fibres even ceased to be used: the knowledge of how to deal with most tree basts seems to have disappeared already in the Bronze Age and has been lost today (Banck-Burgess), suggesting that over the long term a certain competition and exclusion can also be recognised.

Compared to other prehistoric innovations and technical evolutions, such as the production of pottery or early metallurgy, the early history of textile production contains many open questions, lacks temporal resolution and offers a great potential for future research.

Notes

1 Grabundžija 2018, 269–273.

2 Petrova 2016.

3 Demars et al. 2017.

4 McCorriston 1997.

References

Demars, J. et al. (2017) Genome-wide identification of the mutation underlying fleece variation and discriminating ancestral hairy species from modern woolly sheep. Molecular Biology and Evolution 34(7), 1722–1729 doi:10.1093/molbev/msx114.

Grabundžija, A. (2018) Eneolithic textile production. In J. Balen, I. Miloglav, D. Rajković (eds) Back to the Past: Copper Age in Northern Croatia, 257–285. Zagreb, Tiskara Zelina.

McCorriston, J. (1997) The fiber revolution: textile extensification, alienation, and social stratification in Ancient Mesopotamia. Current Anthropology 38(4), 517–535.

Petrova, V. (2016) History of the warp-weighted loom from the Neolithic till the end of Antiquity. Studia Archaeologica Universitatis Serdicensis 5, 115–218.

2

The Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent and the origins of fibre technology

Ofer Bar-Yosef

The origins of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent took place in a core area located in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Editors’ preface
• 1. Introduction : Wolfram Schier and Susan Pollock
• 2. The Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent and the origins of fibre technology : Ofer Bar-Yosef
• 3. Early wool of Mesopotamia, c. 7000–3000 BC. Between prestige and economy : Catherine Breniquet
• 4. Continuity and discontinuity in Neolithic and Chalcolithic linen textile production in the southern Levant : Orit Shamir and Antoinette Rast-Eicher
• 5. Fibres, fabrics and looms: a link between animal fibres and warp-weighted looms in the Iron Age Levant : Thaddeus Nelson
• 6. An archaic, male-exclusive loom from Oman : Janet Levy
• 7. The Topoi Research Group Textile Revolution: archaeological background and a multi-proxy approach : Wolfram Schier
• 8. Fibres to fibres, thread to thread. Comparing diachronic changes in large spindle whorl samples : Ana Grabundžija and Chiara Schoch
• 9. Finding the woolly sheep: meta-analyses of archaeozoological data from south-western Asia and south-eastern Europe : Cornelia Becker, Norbert Benecke, Hans-Christian Küchelmann and Stefan Suhrbier
• 10. Taming the fibres: traditions and innovations in the textile cultures of Neolithic Greece : Kalliope Sarri
• 11. Ex Oriente Ars? ‘Anatolianizing’ spindle whorls in the Early Bronze Age Aegean islands and their implications for fibre crafts : Sophia Vakirtzi
• 12. Different skills for different fibres? The use of flax and wool in textile technology of Bronze Age Greece in light of archaeological experiments : Agata Ulanowska
• 13. Neolithic flax production in the pre-Alpine region: knowledge increase since the 19th century : Sabine Karg
• 14. Underrated. Textile making in Neolithic lakeside settlements in the northern Alpine foreland : Johanna Banck-Burgess
• 15. Textile materials in the Mesolithic and Neolithic and their processing : Anne Reichert
• 16. Raw materials, textile technologies, innovations and cultural response in central Europe in the 3rd–1st millennia BC : Karina Grömer
• 17. The first genetic evidence for the origin of central European sheep (Ovis ammon f. aries) populations from two different routes of Neolithisation and contributions to the history of woolly sheep : Elena A. Nikulina and Ulrich Schmölcke
• 18. Sheep husbandry in the Ancient Near East. Cuneiform evidence from the archaic texts from Uruk (c. 3500–2900 BC) : Ingo Schrakamp