The textile chaîne opératoire: Using a multidisciplinary approach to textile archaeology with a focus on the Ancient Near East

Abstract

Knowledge of textile history, including fibre, technology, tools etc, is essential and absolutely necessary for our understanding of the past. Textile research has become an important field of archaeology and has an enormous potential, being able to tell us about economic, social, chronological, and cultural aspects of past societies. Due to poor preservation conditions, few textiles have survived in the Near East. However, the few existing fragments, in combination with other sources, provide evidence of a well-developed knowledge of how to use fibres for producing textiles. Furthermore, the analyses demonstrate that several types of plant and animal fibres were used in textile production. Flax fibres and sheep wool are considered to be the two most important textile fibres from Neolithic to modern times. Information gathered from the analysis of textiles suggests that it is highly plausible that the different stages of processing fi bres were similar across ancient Eurasia even if it is, of course, important to consider that different climate zones will affect both the need for and access to fi bres. Archaeobotanical and zoo ostelogical material also provide information on the use of textile fi bres. Additionally, different types of installations (e. g. retting pits, workshops) and textile tools (e. g. mallets, spindles, looms) would have been used and even if many tools were made of perishable materials textile tools such as spindle whorls and loom weights are well known from archaeological contexts. Therefore, this paper will give a basic framework for textile production that will provide important insights into the procurement and processing of plant and animal fibres and briefly on spinning and weaving. This will be accomplished with information from archaeological and written sources used in combination with ethnography and experimental archaeology.