Fibres and Tools for Spinning and Weaving in Archaic to Classical Period, Greece

Abstract

The question of what people in bygone times wore and the way in which textiles were manufactured has exercised the minds of archaeologists for a considerable time. Since the later part of the twentieth century, the use of experimental archaeology in replicating the manufacture of ancient textiles has risen exponentially with the change in attitude of field archaeologists towards the recovery and study of domestic items, particularly spindle whorls and loom weights. The focus of this thesis is on textile production in Archaic and Classical Greece. It investigates whether identification can be made of the specific types and characteristics of the fibres employed and also investigates whether we can identify the fibres being worked with specific types of textile tools. In an attempt to answer these questions, this thesis first explores research into ancient fibres from the coat of the wild primitive sheep and those from the ancient flax plant: the fibres of both have continued changing to the modern day. As there is on-going scholarly discussion concerning the possible changes to the coat of the wild primitive sheep, the thesis queries which breed(s) of sheep produced the type(s) of fibres which may have been used for textile manufacture in Archaic and Classical Greece. The thesis then investigates the specific case studies of textile tools recovered from three Greek sites: House D-C in the Athenian Agora, Bau Z in the Athenian Kerameikos and the settlement of Halieis in the Peloponnese. As no experimental archaeology has as yet been conducted with respect to Greek Classical period textile manufacture, of necessity experimental results produced by the Danish Centre for Textile Research (CTR) for the manufacture of Bronze Age textiles are used as a starting point for the study of this later material. In contrast to the larger and heavier spindle whorls and loom weights used in the CTR experiments, it is concluded that the textile tools from the later Greek sites are much smaller and lighter, which may point to the use of finer wool fibres.