106 from a kalathos standing on the floor and passes it over her lower leg, which is stretched out forwards. Next, a small female figure walks to the right, turning her head backwards. The last seated woman in the row is probably of higher social standing: she is dressed more elaborately than the others, in a mantle, and also holds a wreath in her left hand. Two young, beardless men approach her from the right, each with his right hand raised in a gesture of speech. The rest of the frieze focuses on Dionysian themes: the divine couple Dionysus and Ariadne, a large vine and a satyr. The first step in textile production – after extracting and cleaning the raw material – is to create thread by spinning. In many pre-modern cultures, a simple hand or drop spindle was used to produce a continuous thread by pulling and simultaneously twisting the individual fibres (fig. 1). A drop spindle is operated by tucking the distaff – usually a long, wooden stick – under one arm and loosely binding the prepared fibres to it with a cloth to hold them together. Alternatively, the loose fibres can be placed in a basket. The fibres are then pulled out one by one with one hand and fed to the spindle, which is twirled with the other hand. The spindle whorl, which is attached to the spindle, acts as a swing weight to make the spindle rotate evenly (fig. 2). Pictorial representations of women with spindles and distaffs, as well as finds of such tools as grave goods in women’s and girls’ burials, indicate that spinning was considered a typically female activity in antiquity (and beyond). Various stages of textile production in a domestic setting are depicted on a Greek, Attic black- figure pyxis (a jewellery container) from c. 530/520 BCE (fig. 3 a–b)4: on the left stands a woman in a long robe, holding a spindle in her left hand and turning the woollen thread hanging from the distaff with her right hand; a small, naked boy looks on. To the right, we see another woman sitting on a stool, in front of her, we can just make out a kalathos (a wool basket) with a strand of wool pulled upwards, and a standing girl; beside her sits another woman who holds a strand of wool in her hands and turns to face the other woman. A naked boy points with his right hand to a kalathos standing on the ground between the two women; while the woman seated next to them leans slightly forward and braces her left leg against the stool on which another woman sits. She uses both hands to pull a strand of wool 1 Spindle and distaff with raw and spun cotton, Salasaca (Ecuador), 20th century, bamboo, wood, terracotta, Bonn, BASA Museum, inv. 3025e, length 41.0 and 76.0 centimetres respectively. Spindles were used to process cotton and wool into thread. The cotton bale on the distaff has been wrapped in a purple cloth for a better grip. Although cotton and camelid wool were replaced by sheep wool and synthetic fibres in the early 20th century, the old materials are still being used in many rural areas today.
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