First Textiles

Małgorzata Siennicka is an Associate Professor at the Saxo Institute, University Copenhagen and holds a PhD in Aegean archaeology from Warsaw University. Her research interests focus on the Neolithic and Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, prehistoric cloth and textile production, craftsmanship, balance weights and metrology, settlements and architecture. She was awarded with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at The Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen (2013-2017). In 2013-2017 Małgorzata Siennicka directed an international research project “First Textiles” at the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen. Lorenz Rahmstorf is a Professor in the Department of Prehistory and Early History at the University of Göttingen. His research interests focus on the third and second millennia BC Aegean, Europe and West Asia and more specifically on weight metrology, early trade, textile production, transfer of innovations and urbanisation processes. He has obtained an MA (Bristol), PhD (Heidelberg) and Habilitation (Mainz), and participates in various international research projects. In 2015 he was awarded an European Research Council Consolidator Grant to lead a 5-years project “Weight and value. Weight metrology and its economic and social impact on Bronze Age Europe, West and South Asia”. Agata Ulanowska is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Research on Ancient Technologies of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences in Łódź and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw (sabbatical). Her research interests focus on the Bronze Age Aegean, textile production and technology, experimental and experience archaeology and Aegean seals and sealing practices. She holds a PhD in Aegean archaeology from the University of Warsaw. In 2015-2017 she was awarded with FUGA post-doctoral grant of the National Science Centre for the project “Textile production in Bronze Age Greece – comparative studies of the Aegean weaving techniques”.

This is an important, well-illustrated and well-edited publication that I highly recommend to anyone interested in prehistory and ancient protohistory.

• List of contributors Preface 1. IntroductionMałgorzata Siennicka, Lorenz Rahmstorf and Agata Ulanowska 2. Early loom types in ancient societiesEva Andersson Strand 3. Discussing flax domestication in Europe using biometric measurements on recent and archaeological flax seeds – a pilot studySabine Karg, Axel Diederichsen and Simon Jeppson 4. From adorned nudity to a dignitary’s wardrobe: symbolic raiment in the southern Levant 13 500 BC–3900 BCJanet Levy 5. The earliest cloth culture in DenmarkUlla Mannering 6. Loom weights and weaving at the archaeological site of São Pedro (Redondo, Portugal)Catarina Costeira and Rui Mataloto 7. Evidence of textile technology in the Early Neolithic site of La Draga (Banyoles, Spain). Some hypothesesMiriam de Diego, Raquel Piqué, Antoni Palomo, Xavier Terradas, Maria Saña, Ignacio Clemente and Millán Mozota 8. From east to west: the use of spinning bowls from the Chalcolithic period to the Iron AgeMaría Irene Ruiz de Haro 9. From the loom to the forge. Elements of power at the end of Neolithic in western Europe: a focus on textile activitiesFabienne Médard 10. Textile manufacture in the prehistoric pile dwellings of south-west Germany: planned investigationJohanna Banck-Burgess 11. Late Neolithic weaving tools from Melk-Spielberg in Austria: experiments with crescent-shaped weightsKarina Grömer 12. Two sides of a whorl. Unspinning the meanings and functionality of Eneolithic textile toolsAna Grabundžija 13. Plant textiles in a grave mound of the Early Bronze Age in eastern RomaniaNeculai Bolohan and Ciprian-Cătălin Lazanu 14. Social contexts of textile production in Bulgaria during the Late Chalcolithic: from multimedia work-areas to material, social and cultural transformationsPetya Hristova 15. Experimenting with loom weights. More observations on the functionality of Early Bronze Age textile tools from GreeceAgata Ulanowska 16. Textile tools and manufacture in the Early Bronze Age Cyclades: evidence from Amorgos and KerosGiorgos Gavalas 17. Fibre crafts and social complexity: yarn production in the Aegean islands in the Early Bronze AgeSophia Vakirtzi 18. In search of ‘invisible’ textile tools and techniques of band weaving in the Bronze Age AegeanAgata Ulanowska 19. The Early Bronze Age textile implements from the Eskişehir region in inland north-western AnatoliaDeniz Sarı 20. Investigating continuity and change in textile making at Arslantepe (Malatya, Turkey) during the 4th and 3rd millennia BCRomina Laurito